Tests saw massive boosts on a lot of newer nvidia hardware, mostly stuff you’d only find in mac pros and hackintosh. However, nvidia has also enabled (for first time) web driver to install on imacs and macbook pros without needing to modify installer. Also, these drivers safely do NOT touch built in and out of date driver in OS X, they install along side it, with a control panel that lets you switch between the current web driver, and the grossly out of date stock drivers. You definitely want to be using the web driver
The driver is for ANY nvidia GPU, even if it’s not listed on the driver download page.
Performance gains will be seen across almost all nvidia hardware over macOS stock driver for older OpenGL applications.
Metal application performance difference is less drastic but you can at least count on latest Metal features/bugfixes in web driver over stock.
This driver also enables use of Maxwell and Pascal based GPUs (9x0 series and 10x0 series GPUs)
if you use AMD based graphics don’t bother installing these drivers. However, if you do have a nvidia gpu in your machine running macOS, you should definitely install this
In the actions speak louder than words department – in the oft-quoted nVidia developer thread on the nVidia developer board there is a link looking for a Senior Systems Software Engineer that will be tasked with the following: “Drive and Develop MAC/OS Display Drivers”.
Posted near the beginning of the month. For doing nothing they sure are looking to do something. Of course, this could be also to replace someone that’s leaving/left.
I seem to have read some posts that say or at least imply that nvidia has the mojave drivers done, but can’t release them until the fruit says they can. Is there any truth to this? If not, then it’s kinda squarely in nvidia’s court.
Drivers need to be certified by Apple or else they conflict with SIP, or something like that, right?
It’s difficult to fathom why nVidia would purposefully delay the release of the working and certified driver, as they seem to be the ones with more to lose, but it does seem more reasonable that Apple would stonewall.
It has to do with library validation. Drivers not certified by Apple will have no access to library validation, and any app that uses LV will either have problems or just flat out not work at all if the drivers loaded don’t have proper library validation. As such, Apple gets the final say.
The longer Apple stonewalls though, the more likely they become the target of an anti-trust suit, which would have a high likelyhood of succeeding since nVidia’s drivers worked just fine in 10.13.6, but were blocked in 10.14, presumably in favor of AMD. And given Apple has been known to be anti-competitive, and the case would be brought in California and under the 9th circuit at that, it could go very badly for Apple in the end. Especially if end users who want better hardware see what’s going on and ditch Apple for other brands because Apple refuses to use good hardware anymore.
But until something like that starts happening, we’re all stuck up a stinky creek without a paddle.
Hubris goeth before the fall… take note that the once invincible wormy fruit is no longer the best valued company in the world… old nemesis M$ has overtaken them in valuation! I DO love my iPad and my cheesegrater and will hold onto them as long as I can… but a new desktop from Cupertino won’t happen (and I bet in a few years, hackintoshes will be toast as well).
Sad because I got on board in May 1984, and by that fall had a 512K RAM, 10MB internal drive "FAT"Mac with a Hyperdrive (here’s some nostalgia for ya, the company that made that drive, GCC, got its funding because one of the owners was one of the co-creators of Ms PacMan).
Well, I screwed up again. Did the update because I saw that 108 was up and forgot to look at the build number… My system version after doing the security update is 17G4015 aaaaaand… that’s not working, yet. I used the Benjamin Dobell script and while it shows that I now have 108 loaded and using that driver, I’m clearly…um…not. So, seems I once again… will be waiting for an update. I’ve gone from network engineer to slobbering computer novice… /sadness. I realize no one knows, but anyone have a reasonable guess when the latest 10.3.6 or Mojave build (cuz I’ll gladly update if the drivers work) will have a working driver???
Thinking a bit outside the box. Has anyone tried the latest nvidia driver on 10.14.2? Hacked of course for the build number (18C54). I know this failed miserably on 10.14.0.
The reason I ask is that typically the 10.x.1 release fixes the issues that are burning down the house from Apple’s point of view, and 10.x.2 fixes issues that are critical to major third parties. So if a bug in Mojave was preventing the drivers from working there’s a good chance it’s fixed in 10.14.2.
Probably wishful thinking, but heck, might try it myself if I get the time later today – about time I installed Mojave anyway.
Edit: I actually tried it and nothing blew up. See below.
The first part is obvious but I’m not so sure about the second – we’ll see. However, it was possible to run the Sierra driver on High Sierra. So I tried putting the High Sierra driver onto Mojave. It sorta worked.
As noted elsewhere you could do this under 10.14.0, but you’d get a lot of errors in the logs and no hardware acceleration.
On 10.14.2 the errors are mostly gone, but still no hardware acceleration. As has been noted elsewhere the window server migrated from OpenGL to Metal, so this is going to have to be changed in the driver.
My guess is Apple did fix some issues in 10.14.2, but nVidia is going to have some work to do to. I’m not holding my breath.
At least I now have Mojave installed and the EFI update worked flawlessly.
i was on sierra as of yesterday, and i have to say the performance was definitely better overall, with the OS and WoW performance. But 8.1 had reached the limit of the OS support run and was going to be phased out i assume, so i had to upgrade to Mojave, i was having other Kernel_Task issues which forced me to upgrade, so hopefully Kernel_Task issues are fix, and hopefully a Nvidia driver comes out soon
