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nVidia GPUs and the infamous lag issue, Why is that happening?

Cyberdevs

By Cyberdevs,
in nVidia

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mathq
mathq
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Posted

I also get huge lags with latest drivers (UI is horribly slow, whole computer feels sluggish).

 

It does fix the UI glitches with 106 driver version. However, performances in games such as World of Warcraft are horrible when compared to 156 (after a fresh boot). Has anyone else experienced this?

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d5aqoep
d5aqoep
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Patched 104/106 driver still causes micro stutters in the UI. It is definitely not as smooth as things were in Sierra 10.12.X

 

If I use 104/106 patched driver in 10.13.4 B2, I lose HDMI Audio.

 

Has anyone managed to get HDMI Audio working on 10.13.4 B2 ?

 

NvidiaGraphicsFixup.kext seems to have been broken by internal changes in the OS.

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Fergarth
Fergarth
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Patched 104/106 driver still causes micro stutters in the UI. It is definitely not as smooth as things were in Sierra 10.12.X

 

If I use 104/106 patched driver in 10.13.4 B2, I lose HDMI Audio.

 

Has anyone managed to get HDMI Audio working on 10.13.4 B2 ?

 

NvidiaGraphicsFixup.kext seems to have been broken by internal changes in the OS.

Try with voodooHDA ?
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SavageAUS
SavageAUS
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Patched 104/106 driver still causes micro stutters in the UI.

Has anyone managed to get HDMI Audio working on 10.13.4 B2 ?

Well it is a patched driver and not made for the beta 2.

 

HDMI audio is broken on the Nvidia drivers on beta 2 yes but again it's a beta using patched drivers.

 

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

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MaLd0n
MaLd0n
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Patched 104/106 driver still causes micro stutters in the UI. It is definitely not as smooth as things were in Sierra 10.12.X

 

If I use 104/106 patched driver in 10.13.4 B2, I lose HDMI Audio.

 

Has anyone managed to get HDMI Audio working on 10.13.4 B2 ?

 

NvidiaGraphicsFixup.kext seems to have been broken by internal changes in the OS.

i use it, check

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/323010-please-help-me-fix-brightness-control-nvidia-graphics-only-laptop/?p=2582830

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TheBloke
TheBloke
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One thing I'm wondering is whether going back to native drivers would give improvement, for those who have GPUs supported by native.

 

My 980 Ti is not.  However I still have my previous GPU, the NVidia 760 2GB.   

 

It seems a bit weird to do such a large downgrade.  But right now I am not really doing any 3D stuff in macOS.  I would reboot into Windows when I want to play games.  Of course that means I'd have to sometimes swap out GPUs.  But I'm unlikely to play any games any time soon.

 

So, does anyone know if native NVidia drivers for previous-gen GPUs are working OK/better in 10.13 compared to NVidiaWeb?

 

Thanks.

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Cyberdevs
Cyberdevs
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One thing I'm wondering is whether going back to native drivers would give improvement, for those who have GPUs supported by native.

 

My 980 Ti is not.  However I still have my previous GPU, the NVidia 760 2GB.   

 

It seems a bit weird to do such a large downgrade.  But right now I am not really doing any 3D stuff in macOS.  I would reboot into Windows when I want to play games.  Of course that means I'd have to sometimes swap out GPUs.  But I'm unlikely to play any games any time soon.

 

So, does anyone know if native NVidia drivers for previous-gen GPUs are working OK/better in 10.13 compared to NVidiaWeb?

 

Thanks.

As far as I know the Kepler series should work ok with the native drivers. I have tested several iMacs with nVidia GPUs and they have no problem with the native drivers.

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TheBloke
TheBloke
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As far as I know the Kepler series should work ok with the native drivers. I have tested several iMacs with nVidia GPUs and they have no problem with the native drivers.

 

Great, thanks, I will give it a go later then.

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TheBloke
TheBloke
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You're welcome, let me know how it works.

 

Right, interesting results:

  • Chrome on macOS is really laggy for me, and this was a major part of what I previously noticed as 'system lag';
  • Firefox is significantly better, to the point of being lag-free.  It also uses less CPU, especially when playing videos;
  • However, Firefox with the NVidiaWeb drivers has a major problem when playing videos (at least HTML5 videos, eg YouTube and Twitch), that renders it unusable with version 106 and highly laggy with 156 (at least with my multi-monitor/Spaces setup);
  • Therefore, I am now on Firefox with Native drivers.

Before I go into detail, I will explain my monitor setup.

 

I have the setting Mission Control->"Displays Have Separate Spaces", which alters UI behaviour in several ways. I have four screens, arranged and used in my tests as follows:

  1. 32" 1920x1080
    • 1 x browser with YouTube or Twitch (HTML5) video playback - generally full screen, but not always.
  2. 24" 1200x1920 (rotated 90°)
    • Path Finder 7, maximised;  Bottom half: Wavebox email client (based on Chromium)
  3. 40"  3840x2160:
    • Left half screen: 1 x multi-tab browser window;  Right half screen: 1 x multi-tab browser window
  4. 24" 1200x1920 (rotated 90°)
    • HWMonitor detached pane;  Activity Monitor

I started my testing between NVidiaWeb (NVW) and Native by trying to stress the system - having a 1080p60 video playing full screen in Chrome on screen 1, two copies of the Pasta WebGL demo on the two browsers on screen 3 respectively, and also loading a 4K video in VLC and sometimes having it maximised on screen 3, sometimes half or quarter screen and then moving it around.

 

This generally worked OK, except:

  • I had a repeated problem opening the Pasta GL demo on Chrome; in both NVW and Native, many times when I opened this demo it would run at 3-5 FPS and cause all other GFX activity to grind to a halt.  It was not predictable as to when this would happen, but it now appears to happen more often than not.  And it never happened in Firefox.
  • Once on NVidiaWeb driver, on an occasion where I did have Pasta GL open in both Firefox and Chrome, I re-opened the 4K video in VLC and it brought the entire system to its knees for nearly 10 minutes.   I had to wait literally 4-5 minutes before I could get the Force Quit dialogue open, then more time to select VLC and close it.  After that it was slightly faster, but still took several more minutes before I could first stop the playing YouTube video, then kill the two Pasta GL browser tabs.   At that point the GUI was fully responsive, however it then dropped to a crawl again when I next opened Pasta GL (although I did this in Chrome, so that may have been the normal Chrome issue.)  I rebooted at that point.
    • My guess is this was again the issue Chrome has with that GL demo (or all GL demos?), except this time it didn't happen when I first opened it, but later when a video was added.
    • Given that I also have the general Pasta GL problem in Native, I can't be certain that this more serious issue was specific to being in NVW.

Besides those issues, I could not notice much difference between NVW 106 and Native.  In both cases it was generally responsive, however I could repeatably create a stutter in the playing YouTube video by clicking between windows on different monitors (eg clicking away from Chrome onto Path Finder, or from Chrome to Activity Monitor.)  It also often happened when I clicked between Chrome browser tabs in either browser on monitor 3, and/or opened a new tab.

 

This stutter was sometimes very brief - a handful of frames - but sometimes it would last a whole second or two.  I wondered if it might be related to "Displays Have Separate Spaces", but I confirmed it existed also with that off.

 

Then, in the Native drivers, I repeated this test with Firefox alone, and realised it was barely happening at all.   Running the video in Firefox instead of Chrome, and having my Screen 3 browser windows be Firefox windows, caused the video on Screen 1 to continue unaffected regardless of how I clicked about in Firefox.

 

It was also unaffected when I opened Photoshop and scrolled around, when I opened the 4K video in VLC and resized and moved its window, and when I clicked from Firefox to Activity Monitor.

 

However I could still detect a small but repeatable frame-skip when I clicked from Firefox to Path Finder on Screen 2.  This was not replictated by clicking on Wavebox, the other app on that screen.  I therefore conclude this is a peculiarity of Path Finder; or at least, a peculiarity of some apps, of which Path Finder is one (more testing would be needed to see if any other apps do the same.)

 

But beside that minor quirk, Firefox in Native was perfectly responsive, with nothing affecting my full screen video and other activities - fast scrolling, resizing windows, etc - all fine.   The rest of the OS GUI - moving windows about, Cmd-Tabbing, etc - was also fine in Native.

 

Then I tried the same Firefox test in NVW 106, and found the huge problem Firefox has with these drivers; at least, on my current GeForce 760.

 

Playing my usual YouTube full screen video on Screen 1, the picture would very often have major stutters, and (on 106) also often freeze completely.    The sound would continue, but the picture would either stutter badly or freeze  This happens when I click around in other windows (regardless of what monitor they're on), including other Firefox windows.  Once the video picture froze, I had to refresh the browser tab to get it back.  Stopping/re-starting the video did not help.

 

This problem is not present in any other software I've yet tried, it seems specific to Firefox.  And it's completely absent in Native drivers.

 

I re-installed NVW 156 to test in that and it was slightly improved in the sense that I never got a YT or Twitch video to completely freeze.  However there was still major stuttering in the video as I clicked around other windows.  In 156 I also noticed some other general stuttering, eg the Pasta GL demo would sometimes stutter when I clicked to another tab (in the same window, hiding it) and back again.  And I also detected general GUI lags, eg when Cmd-Tabbing back to hidden windows and when resizing windows.  These further issues are no doubt the general lags that everyone is reporting in 156.

 

So right now, it seems clear that the best experience I can get is to ditch Chrome for Firefox for all browser usage, which further requires I stick to Native drivers and therefore that I stay on the NVidia 760.

 

The Firefox issues with NVW do seem like they must be a Firefox bug, and so might be fixed over time.  Whether a fix would also help the older 106 drivers, I don't know.  If they did get fixed for 106 as well, then based on my testing I can't see any reason why I couldn't use NVW 106 and therefore go back to my 980Ti.   Or even if Firefox only gets fixed for later NVW drivers, maybe in time there will be a later NVW release that fixes the general UI lags.

 

The final test I'm yet to do is to go back to the 980Ti and confirm this Firefox-NVW issue continues.  Seems unlikely it wouldn't, but it should be tested.

 

Failing that working, I think I can be generally happy on Native with the 760.  It won't be an issue until I find I want to play a game again, or do some other 3D stuff (Adobe Premiere Pro maybe) that would highlight the massive drop in performance of the 760 versus 980 Ti :)    I can of course swap cards out, though this is a bit more work than it might seem given it also requires using a couple of different cables (the 760 has 2 x DVI + HDMI + DP, where the 980 Ti is DVI + 3 x DP + HDMI.)   But it's doable for times when I know I'm going to spend a while needing the other card, eg when rebooting into Windows.

 

So there you go.  I would suggest that anyone experiencing lag identifies tests to see if their lag is isolated like mine was - is it all GUI windows, or is it, like for me, primarily related to browser usage?  If you currently use Chrome then I'd definitely suggest trying Firefox instead as you may find it makes a big difference, even in NVW as long as you don't play a lot of videos while continuing to use other windows in parallel.

 

Of course if you are able to use Native instead then I'd definitely do that - even it means swapping out a GFX card, as I've done.

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bolonia
bolonia
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Posted

So many words. Just admit, nVidia making {censored} drivers. There's no actual mac with built-in nvidia cards, so no $ reason for nvidia to solve this problems.

My suggestion is to use AMD video instead of waiting years until nvidia make any decision.

 

BTW, read how really bad nvidia cards under linux.

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TheBloke
TheBloke
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So many words. Just admit, nVidia making {censored} drivers. There's no actual mac with built-in nvidia cards, so no $ reason for nvidia to solve this problems.

My suggestion is to use AMD video instead of waiting years until nvidia make any decision.

 

BTW, read how really bad nvidia cards under linux.

 

Several older Macs had NVidia graphics, and Apple still support them.  Eg the Macbook Pro I had in 2013 had onboard NVidia.  That's why the Native drivers are working fine for me with the GeForce 760.

 

Both the desktop GPUs I currently own are NVidia.  I'm not going to spend significant money on buying a new GPU if I can find a way to make what I already have work.  Especially as I really don't need much 3D in macOS.

 

NVidia may make bad drivers on non-Windows platforms, but that's the point of this thread; to find a way to get it to work anyway.

 

Also why are you in an NVidia thread if you don't use and don't like NVidia cards?

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Guest
Guest
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Posted (edited)

Fantastic

No more lags here in WebGl water pool page :)

Maybe Nvidia tech department guys read this page!:)

 

Ps deleted previous post because I was testing before in windows (sorry) :)

Edited by Guest
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TheBloke
TheBloke
Posted
Posted

Thanks Kynyo.  Hmm, strange, I used the tool and it downloaded 159 OK.  But then when I rebooted, I got an NVidia popup saying "default macOS drivers have been used because your system is not compatible", and the PrefPane shows:

 

RJrWvL3.png

 

It said it was patching it for my current OS?   Maybe I should just upgrade to 17D2102 - that's the new 10.13.3 "supplemental update" I see in App Store Updates, I assume?

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