Flash a PC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 to the Mac Edition

Oh the irony, since the new MacPro will leave out the awesome NVIDIA graphics cards completely. Check out the article at FCP.CO, which actually says it is to speed up FCPX and Motion, though is actually more about the upgrade and flashing the card.

He even used a PC model like my 670 (though I did a 670 because of possible power issues with a 680, so though the Mac Version would be safer), though he was able to flash it into the Mac version so he gets the boot screen.

And honestly this is better for Adobe software as you get great CUDA support with it.

The Edit Doctor on NVIDIA Quadro Performance speeds with Premiere CC and my worries on new MacPro

The EditDoctor has an interesting article on how recent NVIDIA drivers have literally doubled the performance of Quadro’s for Premiere Pro.

And this is why I worry about the new MacPro. OpenCL acceleration is not nearly as fast as CUDA on the PC, and the Mac has always had a far inferior OpenCL installation. Multi GPU’s are incredibly hard to code for and only give moderate performance enhancements on even the most mutli-GPU aware games on the PC, so they are only for the most hard core of gamers. The only exception to this is a Maximus configuration from NVIDIA which is a Quadro with a TESTLA card (the non-consumer version of a Titan), which has incredible power and speed and really can use both processors. This all leaves the new MacPro in the code. Most software won’t be coded for multiple AMD GPU’s and even if they are the performance increases are usually pretty modest, and OpenCL can’t touch CUDA! So why made a new “pro” machine without the option for CUDA? The only argument I can see if form over function, and that seems to be what the new MacPro is all about!

After Effects CC would not activate my GTX 670 4GB on my MacPro

Premiere Pro did it fine, but After Effects CC would not do it, and strangely the 670 isn’t listed in supported GPU’s but I got it to work.

First i booted as root, and was still having the same problem, so I decided to manually hack After Effects CC.

VidMuze has instructions for CS6 which worked for me in CS6, so i did them in CC or at least added the card name from CS6 and put it into the CC file. http://www.vidmuze.com/how-to-enable-gpu-cuda-in-adobe-cs6-for-mac/

Now my video card works in After Effects CC for Ray Trace.

Now it’s time to re-install my plug-ins and hope they all work. Red Giant as already updated their installers to work with CC.

Beware of NVIDIA web driver 313.01.01! Took my machine down for a day!

NVIDIAWeb

Yesterday I saw that NVIDIA had released a new web driver , 313.01.01, and was hoping it would help my Geforce GTX 670, but instead it caused a cascade of failures and kept me down for a whole day!

Installation went fine. bit on restart the computer would not come up. Eventually I had to put my old Geforce GTX 275 back into my Mac so I could use option and boot into my edrive or the emergency partition (both of which I had to use). First off even with the GTX 275 the computer would not boot at all, not in single user mode or even safe mode (well I honestly stopped Safe Mode after about 2 hours, it was still moving, but going so slow I didn’t think it would boot.

And even emergency mode was trouble, because my external OWC 3TB backup drive, no longer mounted, so I couldn’t do a restore from my Time Machine partition! And I didn’t want to try and re-install the system over the old system, just in case, so I had to go to Best buy and get a new Hard Drive.

DId you know that the new Seagate Barracuda drives in fact don’t say Barracuda anywhere on the box? It just stays Desktop, though the drive still says Barracuda! WTF?!?!?!??!

So I got that drive home and re-installed a fresh install of OS X on it, and then had it take my old user and settings from the old drive, which after about 5 hours worked just fine (though I had to move the drive internally as it wasn’t working from my external USB housing for some reason).

After everything was in place (including my slow finder) i reinstalled my GTX 670 and the machine rebooted just fine, and even stranger now has the NVIDIA control panel installed, but not the new driver.

I could immediately see the menu bar item for the new control panel.

NVIDIAMenu

And when I opened the control panel it informed me that yes that driver is incompatible with my system! YES NO KIDDING! So what systems is it for?
NVIDIACOntrolPanel

I just wished it realized the Web Driver was not compatible before it installed it before, as it took down my whole system! And I had to buy a new hard drive to get it up and running again!