Multiple Displays Problem - 3rd display shows pointer arrow only

Yeah, those pesky fan-boys are always annoying, better to tinker and hack to try and get things to work with sub-par performance.

Well, I'm glad I found this thread, but it's not helped much on this end.

I've got a 2009 Mac Pro with three GT120 cards in it, each driving a different monitor (I know... more cards than I need, but it made the cabling easier... long story). After playing around with the tips in this thread, I can get one monitor to consistently work rotated, even across reboots, but seems only if it's the monitor connected to the card in slot 0. Any rotated monitor connected to any other card gets the black screen where only the cursor shows up. I've tried the hot-swapping, tried the updated nvidia drivers, same problem.

I'm on 10.8.2 now... What version of MacOS would I need to roll back to in order to fix this? And is there a procedure for doing this someplace? I've got a Snow Leopard disk around here somehwere...

This whole fiasco has been pretty irritating and I really hope somebody at Apple is paying attention. I've probably got three or four hours into monitor cable gymnastics at this point trying to figure a solution.

I'm at 10.7.4 with no issues. 10.7.5 introduces the problem on Lion...

Thanks Milo... That makes sense... I updated to 10.7.5 and that's when this problem bit me. I did the 10.8 upgrade specifically so I could install the new NVidia drivers, but that was a dead end.

Any suggestions for getting from 10.8.2 back to 10.7.4?

At this point, I'm half considering just ordering one of the ATI cards and hoping that fixes the problem...

Can't "backgrade" OS X unfortunately.

I run 3 screens on an GTX 670 with latest Nvidia drivers, works like a charm.

I'd recommend that over ATI if you want optimal performance, and since the iMAC's run the 6XX series it will be supported in the future.

The problem occurred immediately for me when I upgraded to 10.7(.5) from Snow Leopard, so I had made a full clone of my boot disk before the upgrade.

So, I ended up rolling back to 10.6, and reupgrading to 10.7, disabling auto updates, and manually installing the 10.7.4 combo.

You might be able to reinstall 10.7 and use a Time Machine from 10.8, but I don't know for sure.

Good luck.

Thanks Milo... Sounds like I may be a little screwed there. I should have made a full backup before I did the OS upgrade. Getting too casual.

Tmikaeld, thanks for the advice. I'll research the 670. I've got a weird situation because I've got three 5 meter long mini-DP cables pulled through a floor conduit from the machine to the monitors... The three GT 120's made connecting them easy, but if I go with a single card I'm doing DVI-to-DP gymnastics somewhere (no way to pull a DVI cable through that pipe.) The ATI 5570 was attractive from the standpoint of having two mini DP connections and I'd only have to screw around with one to get the third monitor working, or maybe leaving one of the GT120s active if I could get that frankenstein mix working.

As it stands, still pretty ticked this whole issue came up...

Does anybody know if you can put multiple GTX670s or ATI 5570's into a 2009 Mac Pro?

jscheller: You are in luck, DP is compatible with DVI adapters are they are cheap. Even mini-DP to DP adapter is cheap (have one myself). Check online and local stores and i'm sure you will find them.

That may be the easiest route to go then... Thanks.

Hm, for some reason i cannot find DP to DVI adapter online at all. Maybe i mixed it up with HDMI to DVI 😐. And unfortunately 670 only have 1 DP output.

Apparently, Apple is tracking the issue with BUG ID: 11344582.

They don't seem to track participation here, so everyone who has this issue should open a bug report at https://bugreport.apple.com . It probably won't hurt to reference bug id 11344582 in the text. The more associated bug reports, the higher the priority to get a fix.

Could this be related???

Pixelmator Apologizes for NVIDIA GeForce Graphics Issues

http://www.maclife.com/article/news/pixelmator_apologizes_nvidia_geforce_graphic s_issues

Hi All,

Just to clarify my hardware and confuration:

Model Name: Mac Pro

Model Identifier: MacPro3,1

Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon

Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz

Number of Processors: 2

Total Number of Cores: 8

L2 Cache (per Processor): 12 MB

Memory: 8 GB

Bus Speed: 1.6 GHz

Boot ROM Version: MP31.006C.B05

SMC Version (system): 1.25f4

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT:

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT

Type: GPU

Bus: PCIe

Slot: Slot-1

PCIe Lane Width: x16

VRAM (Total): 512 MB

Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)

Device ID: 0x0611

Revision ID: 0x00a2

ROM Revision: 3233

Displays:

SMS24A450:

Resolution: 1920 x 1200 @ 60 Hz

Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)

Display Serial Number: H4MC103824

Main Display: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Rotation: Supported

Television: Yes

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT:

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT

Type: GPU

Bus: PCIe

Slot: Slot-2

PCIe Lane Width: x16

VRAM (Total): 512 MB

Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)

Device ID: 0x0611

Revision ID: 0x00a2

ROM Revision: 3233

Displays:

SMS24A450:

Resolution: 1200 x 1920 @ 60 Hz

Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)

Display Serial Number: H4MC105323

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Rotation: 90

Television: Yes

--------------------------------------------

Whenever I restart, the displays do not restore to their previons settings and rotated displays are either blanked out or they appear with no rotation applied. The blanked out displays show a mouse cursor but no video.

I can't see how this can be a Graphics driver problem, this configuration had worked fine prior to Mac OS X 10.7 (I'm now on the latest version of 10.8.

Anyway, just wanted to clarify the video cards that I have and see if anyone has the same hardware and if they have found a way of getting around the problem?

Cheers

Dave

Anyone know if 10.8.3 (12d78) fixes this? I am having visual anomalies or a blank screen with multiple displays in portrait orientation.