You sophisticated European types now have 2 ways to buy from an EU distributor. MacProUK has been around for awhile and now another gentleman in Poland who sells on Ebay using our name. They are legit and get their roms from us. I'll let them post links in the comments. They are welcome and encouraged to link to our drivers page. (Drivers are property of Nvidia)
If you buy from someone else who sells unlicensed copies or links to us without an agreement please help us publicly shame them. (If our EU guys send you a bad card let us know, they have agreed to uphold our high standards.) We go to a great deal of trouble to make roms for all varieties of Nvidia card supported in the drivers. I just looked on my spreadsheet, nearly 30 different GTX970/980 cards alone. The schmucks get ahold of one rom and flash it to 10 or 15 different cards. Some work, some crash. An easy way to know a poorly flashed card is a Maxwell or Pascal Dual Fan card that runs both fans all the time. This is the result of a single fan rom on a dual fan card. It will never run right. If you want a solid card that boots and runs, we are the one and only source. If you enjoy supporting the various EU revenue folks, but it from us and pay VAT and Customs and shipping. Or get it from them and hopefully keep some of that for yourself.
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Nvidia should have a driver out shortly. (within 24 hours)
We are otherwise engaged and won't be able to update the driver page right away but it will get done soon after Nvidia posts it. If you have clicked the "Update" button before having a cup of coffee and are now watching black lines run slowly up the screen as the EFI-only driver runs your very pricey Titan Xp, you have no one to blame but...Apple. OSX has contained drivers for GTX780 and the first Titan for years. Many years. Many, many years. Apple decided that was enough progress for them and stopped including newer Nvidia cards 2 generations ago. So we play their little "the future has not come...to Cupertino" game with each OS point and Security Update. For the desperate, the usual tricks should work. Digging thorough old blog posts shows the hex edit way. But there is a script put forward by a gent named Benjamin Dobell which should work well for this. It allows you to mix and match OS and driver with relative ease. You can also make a mess of your OS if you get a little loose with the terminal. So don't. First one to link to the Github page in the comments gets a gold star! (stop laughing, a gold star is redeemable for 5% off next MVC card !) The last few weeks have seen crazy increases in newer GPUs in the used and new markets.
Thios is due to Bitcoin and Nvidia milking their position as the best compute platform. As long as people keep setting up "mining" machines, the GPUs will keep going up. Most Maxwell/Pascal GPUs have gone up $100-200 each. The 1080Ti has been hardest hit. It was always the "poor man's Titan" but now it is only $100 less than a Titan, not $300-400 less. We were able to resist these price increase as we had stock purchased before the rise, but have now sadly had to raise prices to reflect the increased cost. If and when AMD rejoins the competitive marketplace we may see some relief. Or if Nvidia runs another batch of Pascal cores through, but since retail is now higher on a product that they already spent R & D on, why would they bother? Dream situation for them. MVC will lower prices again once we can secure the cards at former prices. 100% of staff here has been down with the rather nasty Flu that has been working it's way around LA.
Shipments have restarted, and we will be updating inventory in a few days. To get off to an easy start, first step is power. Here is a simple rule, IF YOUR CARD HAS 14 PINS FOR POWER, ALL 14 NEED TO BE CONNECTED ! If it has 12, then 12 need to be connected. These pins are not optional, nor are they mix & match. About once a month we get an email along the lines of "I hooked up one cable and I know it's enough because the fan lights up and spins so the card is defective" In point of fact, the fan will light up and spin with no cables connected, this is a simple failsafe to keep card from catching fire, even if it has troubles. There is another simple failsafe built in that doesn't let the card start up unless all the pins are connected. The second most common power issue we have is that people can't see that the cables we send can either work as a 6 pin or an 8 pin. The last 2 pins slide off, just have a look. Again, IF YOUR CARD HAS 14 PINS FOR POWER, ALL 14 NEED TO BE CONNECTED ! There are no optional pins, no "only if you feel like it" pins, they all have to be connected. Some cards will be damaged if you try running them with just one cable connected. Using a PC Dual 6 to 8 adapter with just one side connected will sometimes work, and sometimes not. Better to get the proper setup from us or whoever. Just get the right ones. High Sierra created some new driver issues. 10.13 and the 10.13.1 update were especially tricky. A classic sign of the High Sierra trouble is a solid white dock, instead of translucent. This is a partially working driver that will drive you bonkers. This is frequently caused by a partially failed install due to Library install issues. SIP needs to be enabled when you install the drivers. In the last 2 weeks I have emailed back and forth with three disgruntled customers all convinced their cards were bad. All 3 returned cards are perfectly functional when tested here. This is a massive waste of customer's time and ours. All Nvidia cards after the GTX 680/780 and Original Titan have required the Web Driver. This is Apple's fault. People fall into a trap thinking this is some giant puzzle. It isn't. In "About This Mac" you will see "Version Number" click on this and it will show your "Build Number". So, as an example, 10.13.2 has more than one Build Number. Apple makes a subtle update and doesn't feel like bumping the main number up so they change just the Build Number. The Web Driver has a simple check in it that compares Build Number. This makes it IMPOSSIBLE to install the wrong driver. ONLY THE RIGHT DRIVER WILL INSTALL OR LOAD. Here is the tricky part to understand for many people. BOTH DRIVERS ARE INSTALLED. One kext loaded at boot looks to see if you have the Web Driver turned on or off. If it is on, it loads the Web Driver. It is is off, it loads the one Apple sent out as OSX Default. So when Apple issues a Security Update that changes the Build Number from 17C88 to 17C89 the next boot will switch back to the OSX Default Driver. No big deal if you have a GT120 or 8800GT or GTX780 but a completely different story with GTX980Ti or GTX1070, etc. Anything not covered by OSX Default driver will only work via our EFI on next boot. Typically only one display will work, and the screen redraws will be very choppy, with bands of horizontal black lines coursing up the screen. It is also possible if someone else uses your machine and does a PRAM reset they will "turn off" the Web Driver. It just needs to be turned back on. Super easy way to check is to click on that Nvidia Icon in top Menu Bar. It will show which driver is being used. On the driver page.
Let us know how it works for you. As we all know, Apple wishes you'd chuck those old "Cheesegraters" in the recycling heap and buy something soldered and glued together.
They have thus been making life difficult for upgraders. High Sierra requires that SIP be ENABLED during Web Driver Install. If you need it disabled for some reason, you can do that once the drivers are installed and running. How to tell if it is ENABLED? Open terminal and type "csrutil status" and it will tell you. If it is disabled you can either enable it by booting to recovery or just do a PRAM reset. If someone needs the procedure for enabling/disabling from Recovery and Google has failed you I can type it up. Before you upgrade from 10.13 build 405 to 10.13.1 you would be best served to have driver 121 installed. This will avoid the dreaded "boot loop" problem. If you update and see a white dock, look in "Security" center to see if there is a notification that the Nvidia driver has been blocked, obviously you need to "allow" it. I got 10.13.1 running last night. How about everyone else? So I continue to get emails and blog posts about issues with the High Sierra Web Drivers. I tried to log on yesterday and tell you that you were imagining things but after I installed my 121 update, I had same trouble !!!
I'm still not sure what the issue is, I have noticed that when I have the "white dock" problem it isn't that the drivers aren't loaded. I see them as loaded and I can run 2 displays at once and I can even run Uningine Valley. HOWEVER, a dead giveaway that there are issues is that moving windows results in redraws that don't include everything inside. Also, the Valley scores are about 1/2 of what they should be. Also, everything is clunky. (not very scientific, I know) But the solid white dock is the most obvious thing. Anyhow, I tried re-installing the 117, 120, and 121 drivers. No help. I re-installed HS and tried 114, still white dock. I did PRAM reset and ran Supplemental update. No love. Only after I did this twice have I gotten the 117 driver to work correctly again. At first it wasn't, but when I opened the Preference Pane for "Security and Privacy" there was a notice that it had blocked something from Nvidia from loading. A quick "let it load" and restart and I was off to the races. And I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm too frightened to run 120 or 121 again. I don't have 1/2 a day to track this down. I sent a note to Nvidia tech guys, hopefully the culprit is found. Hey everyone,
After years of testing and finessing, we think it's about time. We have a wonderful new product that will open up many options for owners of the "Cylinder" nMP 6,1. First up will be public benchmarks on a well known site. Both OSX High Sierra and Windows 10 running Titan Xp. These are both feats not accomplished by any other source on the internet. As in NOBODY ELSE has gotten eGPU to work in either scenario. MVC is the undisputed leader in Mac EFI GPUs. And we are about to spread into the eGPU world. More news soon. The Netkas/MVC team just posted another first !
So far Nvidia cards have been impossible to get working as eGPU in High Sierra. The self proclaimed "experts" have claimed it's some sort of conspiracy and started a petition ! Some of them are on the "flat earth society" board as well. Turns out it was a conspiracy of ignorance. First screen shots on Netkas' board, more info coming here Done on a nMP 6,1, can boot in OS X or Windows 10. I've offered a test setup to Barefeats if anyone is interested in seeing 3rd party do some testing. |
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