Mojave & Nvidia GPUs (Nvidia Web Drivers)

[MoHaya]

I know that many people may not be interested in this, but I thought it might make an interesting topic.

 

There is no support for Nvidia GPUs in Mac OS Mojave. I shouldn't no support only Nvidia Kepler architecture GPUs are supporred; so the 600 and 700 series GPUs as well as Quadro K5000. These GPUs are very old now. These GPUs are supported as their drivers are built into Mojave because back between 2012 to 2014 Apple shipped Kepler based Macs.

 

Any newer Nvidia GPU architecture whether it's Maxwel, Pascal, Volta, & now Turing requires Nvidia's Web Drivers to function at all. Apple dose not support these GPUs natively at all.

 

In the past Nvidia has always released new Nvidia Web Drivers within a few days of every major Mac OS release to support its GPUs release at that time, I believe this has been the case since Montain Lion.

 

Nvidia unfortunately did not release any Web Drivers for the GPUs at all for Mojave. Mojave was released on September 25.

 

Nvidia indirectly blames Apple for this and Apple has not respibded or commented on this at all.

 

Part of the reason is Apple switching Graphics APIs in Mojave. Prior to Mojave Apple used OpenCL/GL now with Mojave Apple used Metal. This however still doesn't explain why there are no Metal based Web Drivers for Mojave Apple has had a Mojave beta program since June so Nvidia had plenty of time to develop the drivers.

[MoHaya]

Ok some more input from Nvidia, Nvidia has confirmed that it is Apple that allows for the release of Web Drivers, for some reason Apple is not allowing Nvidia Web drivers to be released for Mojave. 

 

Apple deletes any mention of Nvidia Web Drivers for Mojave on it's discussion forum. 

[Madgemade]

15 hours ago, MoHaya said:

Any newer Nvidia GPU architecture whether it's Maxwel, Pascal, Volta, & now Turing requires Nvidia's Web Drivers to function at all. Apple dose not support these GPUs natively at all.

Why would apple support them? If nothing they have sold came with these chips then why waste effort supporting something nobody can use.

 

Of course when I say "nobody can use" I mean that it's not possible to use these GPUs in any apple system except for the Original Mac Pro Desktops (which have PCIe slots).

Apple only supports the Mac Pro (late 2013 or newer, or mid 2010 and mid 2012 models with Metal capable GPU) in mojave.

The 2013 is the trash can and not be upgraded. The mid 2010 shipped with AMD GPU options only. The mid 2012 also shipped with only AMD GPU options.

 

So there is no reason at all (in apples world) to support anything except Nvidia Kepler, and they build in the drivers for that.

 

If you own a Mac Pro 2010/2012 and upgraded your GPU then I guess apple doesn't care about those people. And if you have a Hackintosh then they want to freeze you out and stop you from doing that. Hackingtoshes are probably the main reason for locking this down.

 

If the rumors about ARM based Macs are true then this behavior from Apple is not going to change in future.

My advise is that if you have a Mac Pro then just delete MacOS and install a linux distro instead. You can then do whatever you want, not just what apple allow. I have an old Mac Pro that can't run the latest MacOS but it runs Ubuntu great, funnily enough I'm using a Pascal card in that system too. You could even triple boot windows with MacOS and Linux.

[MoHaya]

Why would apple support them? 

On 11/3/2018 at 6:47 AM, Madgemade said:

Why would apple support them? 

Apple "never" supported them since Mountain Lion, but Nvidia "did", through it's release of Nvidia Web Drivers. 

 

Apple has an authentication system for foreign non Apple drivers to be installed on Mac OS. Through which, Apple sends instructions to Mac OS to either let the drivers install or reject them.

 

So in order for Nvidia Web Drivers to be installed on Mac OS Apple must approve them first. Apple has approved every single Nvidia Web Driver released for every single Mac OS in the past half decade, except for Mojave.

 

As for the Hakintoshers, Nvidia cards have always been an absolute pain for them because of the fact they have had to install the Web Drivers. Now they will simply move to AMD cards which have built in support and require no Web Drivers. So there performance will suffer but only to the point where it is equal to a similar speced Mac. So blocking Nvidia drivers won't deter many hacintoshers, especially those that rely on Mac OS for work.

 

Yes I dual boot between Mojave and Windows with my HD 7950, I want to replace it with a GTX 980 or 1080 instead of a RX 580 or Vega 56/64. Which I can't because there are no Web Drivers for Mojave unfortunately. 

[Gogeta Blue]

madgemade you are correct about some points but you are missing a few inportant points, nvidia cards are not for the old mac pro only, you forgot all about eGPU here is the problem, many users will love to buy a eGPU enclosure ir simply change the card that came inside their enclousure if possible for a newer card, so nvidia cards are just not limited to old mac pros, they can also be use on newer macs, the problem is that there are no web drivers, even with that brick wall standing on the way, many mac users use their nvidia cards on windows 10 using an eGPU enclousure, thereyou don’t need web drivers for the card to wirk so it will be fully supported on w10, i think it comes down to money, AMDcards are cheaper than Nvidia cards so apple can make more money if they include AMD on their Macs instead of Nvidia cards, why you guysthink that AMD card work extremely good on Mac OS, is notbevause they are better than Nvidia cards, is just that apple optimize tbe kext drivers for AMD cards, even old kepler cards can run metal but since there are no Macs with newer cards apple is not obligated to support those new Nvidia cards, on top of that, apple diesn’t make any money from Nvidia’s sales so is just obvious that apple is cutting nvidia’s throat so they “apple and AMD” can make money on card sales, if you go to any other forums, many usets are falling in their trap, selling their nvidia cards and buying AMD cards, i sold my 1080 and bought a 2080 and i’m not goi g to sell my card or replace it for an AMD card, i simply don’t like AMD, i don’t like their design which i consider them to be very ugly and i also don’t lime the fact tbat tney are cheap, i don’t want people to think that i can’t afford a good nvidia graphic card, i have mojave installed, of course without graphic acceleration, i use windows every once in a while but most of the time only for gaming, apple isjust trying to take out the biggest competitor out the way, pushing AMD so they can make money, if you look at the ridicous price for apple AMD eGPU, anybody knows that you can get a better nvidia card for that anount of money but since there are no web drivers many people don’t have any other choice, there are 3 choices, 1 wait for wait drivers, maybe we will have to wait untill10.15 but we will have metal compatible web drivers that will smoke those crappy AMD cards, 2 use windows while you wait, yes i know it sucks but if you don’t want to wait then you can switch to AMD, the only problem with option #3 is that you might end up regreting your decision once those web drivers are out, while option #3 might be the best decision right now so the person can use Mojave, it might end up back firing when those web drivers come iut with support for turing cards, i will not switch no matter what, but no one else has to he like be or do what i do, tes is a big sacrifice, but i simply can’t install a AMD card on my system, not even as a tempirary solution, i tried and didn’t like it, for that just get a cheap 650 that is supported OOTB, sorry for my bad english and for the long message, cheers

[Madgemade]

Yes, the situation is not a fair one because Apple choose what they want and not the user. There is no reason to belive this will change and Nvidia is likely to only get worse on Mac in future for this reason. It might be better if you formatted your post with paragraphs, people don't like walls of text like that.

[Gogeta Blue]

if i use paragraphs then it will look even bigger and people will complain about the long message 

 

if i try to make it smaller then i’m putting everything together and people will still

complaint

 

sorry but i can’t make everyone happy as much as i will like to

 

sometimes is just inevitable and complicated topics where a few point has to be mention, the message is going to be long, it doesn’t matter how hard you try to make it short

 

unless you left some of the important info out

 

i think what is important beside the first grade grammar school teacher is the message itself

 

so to make a small resume

 

you just talked about pci-e slots and forgot all about egpu

 

so is not just about macs pro pci-e slots

because egpu are external and does not require any pci-e slot and it can be use in almost any machine besides just the mac pro like you mentioned

[Madgemade]

Hopefully the new Mac Pro workstation will have the option for PCI-e expansion. That would be good for everyone as Apple would need to put better driver support in place on MacOS which could be used by people with eGPUs as well.

[Gogeta Blue]

yes that is one rumor but nobody knows for sure, another important point is the limit in pci-e lanes on CPU’s , so it doesn’t matter if apple put a pci-e expansion inside the mac pro, if the person doesn’t buy a CPU with enough PCI-e lanes, intel finally decided to stop the 28 lanes madness on the CPU’s at least on the last gen of CPU’s. also running video cards at 8x is not so bad but there are devices that need full 16x bandwith to run at full speed unless the person doesn’t care about the hit on performance, i own 2 ssd7102 with 8 samsung 970 pro, 4 in each card and i run those at 16x each, i have a i9 7960x , if i run any of those at 8x i will get half of the speed, so is not like video cards that only looses a few franes if you run them at 8x

[Madgemade]

I don't expect Apple to use anything except Xeons and those will have decent numbers of lanes. Probably dual Xeons so lanes shouldn't be a problem unless Apple fit intentionally gimped CPUs or limit thunderbolt artificially.