10.6.4 Graphics / Video Performance Problems.

HI,

Your Mac is early 2010? Take it into an Apple store or Apple certified repair provider. If you don't have AppleCare, the one year limited warranty should still be active.







Carolyn 🙂

This is a verified "known issue" only to the extent that when run under OS 10.6.4 certain specific NVIDIA cards do not perform well with applications that use NVIDIA's CUDA architecture. This requires using a CUDA driver that comes from NVIDIA, not Apple. (It is not provided with the OS.)

Moreover, only certain cards are supported by the currently available driver. See http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-cuda-3.1-driver.html for more about this, particularly in the "Supported Products" tab.

Beyond that, Apple provides standard graphics/video drivers only for GPU's it provides as OEM parts (including built-to-order options). Aftermarket cards, including those designated for use with Macs, may require different drivers developed & provided by the card's maker. For aftermarket cards not specifically designated for use with Macs, no suitable product-specific drivers for OS X may have been developed. These cards may work with the Apple provided drivers but since they were not designed for them, performance may (& probably will) be less than the card is capable of providing.

This appears to be the case for the Geforce 250 GTS: when I search for drivers for it at http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx there are zero results for OS X drivers for it, although there are plenty for Windows.

Invest in some drives and start using SuperDuper and/or Carbon Copy Cloner. No reason for a Mac Pro to be without multiple backup sets you can boot from and test.

The problem with OpenGL also affects OpenGL with ATI Radeon 4870s.

I know that Nvidia posted driver patch for 10.6.4 and whether it is only for GTX 285 or applies to GT120 I haven't checked but it helps.... a little, or in some situations and apps but not all.

And while there may be issues with CUDA and there is a beta 3.1 I think it goes to the testing - and lack thereof. Adobe posted an update but is really waiting on a fix from Apple, the old "finger points in the other direction" -itis.

Upgrading without a backup is also... shocking.

The hatter wrote:
The problem with OpenGL also affects OpenGL with ATI Radeon 4870s.

What problem would that be?

I know that Nvidia posted driver patch for 10.6.4 and whether it is only for GTX 285 or applies to GT120 I haven't checked but it helps.... a little, or in some situations and apps but not all.

If you are referring to the NVIDIA 19.5.8f03 driver, it is only for the GTX 285 and only for Mac Pro 3,1 or later models, as the info on the page clearly mentions. The CUDA runtime driver is a separate download & is not listed as a beta.

Hi there,

I'm feeling that my MBP runs slow specially on video. I Ran cinebench for example and came our with only 11fps. I don't know if its a normal perf but I'd like to see the results with an MBP with 10.6.3 instead of 10.6.4.
anyone here can help me? is that normal ? if not is there any way to improve?

regards