NVIDIA Web Drivers

Pomaikai

Will they solve all of your problems? No. I still have the sparkling lines where textures are woven together to form landscapes. Will you get higher FPS when playing? Yes. If you've got a Mac with an NVIDIA graphics card (Mid 2013 27" iMac here), then you really should give them a try. I think you'll like the results.

nvidia.com/content/DriverDownload-March2009/confirmation.php?url=/Mac/Quadro_Certified/346.03.05f02/WebDriver-346.03.05f02.pkg&lang=us&type=GeForce

Nestor

Pomaikai wrote: »

I still have the sparkling lines where textures are woven together to form landscapes. [/url]

Video card drivers will never make those go away. We have had them since Morrowind.

Delsskia

You realize that link is to a driver download from March of 2009, right?

Pomaikai

It's not. It was just updated this past week.

Did you download and try it?

Delsskia

No, but I did notice that there's an x86 update for the 780M, the card I have. I'm not convinced that I want to try to override the driver that my OS is expecting to see.

Pomaikai

That's fine. You can continue using the exact same old driver released with V1.0 of El Capitan until the next version of OSX is released in what? A year from now?

These are the drivers that NVIDIA updates for new game releases, as well as performance increases for existing games,like ESO.

KhajitFurTrader

Pomaikai wrote: »

These are the drivers that NVIDIA updates for new game releases, as well as performance increases for existing games,like ESO.

Uh, no, they're not.These are not dedicated gaming drivers. These are drivers that are certified to work with CAD/CAM, or DTP programs like, e.g. AutoCAD, or Adobe's Creative Suite. They are primarily meant for nVIDIA's QUADRO professional GPUs product line used in Mac Pros, while support for other Macs has beta status:

Release Notes Archive:
This driver update is for Mac Pro 5,1 (2010), Mac Pro 4,1 (2009) and Mac Pro 3,1 (2008) users.

BETA support is for iMac 14,2 / 14,3 (2013), iMac 13,1 / 13,2 (2012) and MacBook Pro 11,3 (2013), MacBook Pro 10,1 (2012), and MacBook Pro 9,1 (2012) users.

(source)

Game performance and/or adaption of new games is not nVIDIA's reason to maintain these drivers. On any other (supported) Mac than a Mac Pro, you use them at your own risk, without guarantees of any gains.

Pomaikai

I'll keep using them and enjoy the performance gains. You folks do what you want. I'll most certainly not make any further performance enhancement type posts in the future.

Pomaikai

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2015/08/31/mac-driver/

Beta support covers my Mid-2013 27" iMac btw.

Nor_the_Fallen

Sounds like you got your feelings hurt. We all appreciate any attempts to help boost performance on our Macs. Perhaps it would have been better to point out that it only works with 3 Mac Pro models, 2 iMac models (one being the model you have), and 3 Macbook Pro models. (as KhajitFur Trader noted above)

Pomaikai wrote: »

I'll keep using them and enjoy the performance gains. You folks do what you want. I'll most certainly not make any further performance enhancement type posts in the future.

Pomaikai

Feelings hurt? No. Frustrated that even the idea of the drivers was initially dismissed out of hand without even actually checking them out, and then dismissed as irrelevant for gaming even though NVIDIA themselves blogged about the gaming performance increases that they provide. On top of that they were just recently updated. And all of that dismissal by people who never even tried the drivers.

Cyrodiil PVP performance for me has been greatly enhanced. My FPS is way up, and I'm not seeing the family vacation slideshow effect in mass zero situations. I can actually PVP now without my frame rates dropping through the floor.

There are a lot of Mac users who use the models supported officially, and in Beta (me) by these drivers, and dismissing them out of hand without ever even testing them does a disservice to them all.

Kwivur

Wow!! Even the internet's behind in 3rd world countries..

KhajitFurTrader

Pomaikai wrote: »

There are a lot of Mac users who use the models supported officially, and in Beta (me) by these drivers, and dismissing them out of hand without ever even testing them does a disservice to them all.

I didn't dismiss them out of hand, I provided crucial information to those without Mac Pros, so that they don't run into a beta trap, potentially leaving them with more problems than these drivers allegedly solve. Besides, a corporate blog is hardly a source for official news, and aside from mentioning improvements to two games, these drivers still aren't sold as dedicated gaming drivers, as you made them up to be.

That being said, I have known and used nVIDIA drivers for a very long time in Windows, across several of their GPU generations. Frankly, I don't care about recreating a "Windows experience" with GPU drivers in OS X. Sometimes, games break down completely after installing a new, officially approved non-beta WHQL version, as has happened again just recently. Apple, on the other hand, may be slow to update them, but their drivers are developed and tested in-house, and guaranteed to work, no matter what model is used. They get an update with each patch to the OS every so often. They are hassle-free, which is one of the major selling points of OS X when compared to Windows. And after having used DOS and Windows for the better part of 30 years, hassle-free is what I want and deserve.

Pomaikai

Beta Trap? Good Lord, but we play one of those each and every day! It's called ESO...

Having been a PC user for decades I've used NVIDIA and AMD beta drivers constantly, because they were continuously updated and tweaked to provide better gaming performance in between official releases which rolled all those fixes, tweaks, and updates into one larger release. If you didn't game, you waited for official releases.

However, those official releases still occurred regularly, unlike Mac official releases which happen exactly once per year, roughly, when Apple updates OSX. Until these new Web Drivers, Mac gamers had to suck it up and suffer through old and dated graphics drivers which didn't keep up with current games. It's one of the reasons gaming has usually suffered and sucked on a Mac.

WEB browse away on the staid once a year Apple drivers all you want, but if you game on your Mac, you should always be looking for ways to eek out that last bit of performance from your machine. These Web Drivers offer one of the few performance gains that Mac users can avail themselves of.

Again, and I cannot emphasize this enough, prior to installing these Web Drivers on my Mid-2013 27" iMac, PVP on any scale larger than a few actual players other than myself was horrible. My FPS was so low I only saw a few frames per second. In a large battle, 3-12 FPS with zone reloads and disconnects were all I ever got. PVP was unplayable. 1v1 in a delve could lag so bad I'd die unable to do anything. Now? I can actually play and kill other players! PVP is fun for the very first time.

If your Mac is on the list of supported models, even if it's officially only beta support at this time, you'll see higher FPS when playing ESO. If having the game smoother and more responsive is important to you, then try them out. If you don't like them, then download the current drivers from Apple and revert back.

And seriously, all this sturm unt drang about seamless use from the person who advocated a mini hack of the launcher earlier this year? Really?

KhajitFurTrader

Pomaikai wrote: »

Beta Trap? Good Lord, but we play one of those each and every day! It's called ESO...
[...]
And seriously, all this sturm unt drang about seamless use from the person who advocated a mini hack of the launcher earlier this year? Really?

You do not seem to grasp the difference between a userspace application and system-level drivers.

Pomaikai

Quite frankly, at this level of development, I don't care. Because of Apple's miserly release schedule, those drivers will always be beta. They'll be beta until they become the release drivers, and they'll be beta again the day after when NVIDIA rolls out the next set of improvements. It's just too danged easy to revert to the release drivers not to try them.

Again, you're still arguing against something you refuse to even test. It's silly.

KhajitFurTrader

You can try to spin this as you want, but those who are inclined to try out these drivers for whatever reason should be (made) aware of what they're doing; that unforeseen problems may arise after installing them on any other Mac model than a Mac Pro w/ a Quadro GPU, due to their beta status on these machines, and that keeping these drivers up to date is their own responsibility from then on. With every new patch to the current OS X version, they may be invalidated (kernel extension signing) and become in-operational.

You're arguing against the most common sense in IT: never change a running system. Some necessary changes are feasible, e.g., OS updates that are relevant to security, which have had several developer previews and public betas until their release. Using third-party beta drivers or other software components which are crucial to overall system stability is an easily avoidable risk. This may seem silly to you, but in the end you cannot argue against the informed decision of others.

Pomaikai

Except we're not in an IT department of a business. We're gamers trying to get the best possible performance out of our game.

Stop playing games at work.

KhajitFurTrader

Well, resorting to unfounded assumptions won't help making your point more valid either.

Pomaikai

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

Well, resorting to unfounded assumptions won't help making your point more valid either.

Ah, but that's exactly what you did!

The complaints started off with it being a very old driver, until that was countered. Then it was just for improving performance in graphic design programs until I linked the NVIDIA blog that was just about it improving your FPS in games. Finally we get to it being dangerous to install.

Mate, you've got a lot of weight in this particular forum and have helped a lot of Mac users. That's much appreciated. However all you've done here is attempt to use FUD; Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt to dissuade Mac users from even trying it.

Warning people that there might be issues if they try them is one thing, but it should be done as a pro and con argument, and quite frankly you should have tested their stability yourself before you "reviewed" them as the resident Mac expert.

KhajitFurTrader

I never claimed in any way that I "reviewed" them. Nor did I need to. All I did was to remind people that when using software that's officially in beta status, especially if said software comprises of low-level system drivers, they should take care and be mindful of what they're doing, because effects (doesn't matter whether for good or for bad) will influence more than just one game, it might put their whole system integrity at risk. That's only prudent, and it doesn't even matter whether or not they use their Macs exclusively for gaming.

You, on the other hand, seem to be personally peeved by the fact that your suggestion wasn't generally acclaimed from the get go, despite the fact that concerns were voiced for very valid reasons -- even after some of them could be dismissed. As it stands, your suggestion might be be a solution for a very small subset of users with applicable machines, who are prepared to willingly accept the caveat emptor coming with it, if they feel they have a problem which might be addressed by it in the first place.

I have laid out my personal opinion on it, and no amount of "arguing" will change it.

smacx250

"Funny" story - not long after reading about this driver (in a different thread) I gave it a try. It seemed to work fine and I did see a small performance boost in ESO, so I kept running it.

Fast forward to this past Friday - was a "guest lecturer" in our 3rd grade classes for a lab on forces, motion, and magnetism. I developed the collateral for the lab, with animations, etc, to be displayed on the classroom "smart board" (for me, basically a projection display with a VGA connector to the computer) as the class went through the lab. Went to start the first class, and plugged the VGA into my Mac (mini display port to VGA adapter that I had used previously without issues), and CRASH - Mac goes down! Force restart, won't even come up! No time to deal with it so do the lab "manually". In the 30 minute break before the next class my Mac comes back up fine (no longer plugged into the smart board), and when class starts, same thing when I plug in the VGA - CRASH! I just closed the lid and did the remaining labs of the day "manually" (it worked out ok regardless).

When I got home and opened up my Mac, the "report" screen was open, so I selected "ok" and looked at the crash report. There it was - Nvidia web driver had crashed! So if you do use this driver, be aware that it truly may not be as robust as that shipped with the OS. I'm fine running it for games, but the next time I need high availability I'll be sure to switch back to the native driver, just in case! This on a Macbook Pro, BTW.

KhajitFurTrader

Thank you for the insightful feedback, @smacx250.

Pomaikai

Have you checked to see if there a new drivers out for the Smartboard as well?

Thanks for the heads up though. Appreciated.

wubsylol

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

I have laid out my personal opinion on it, and no amount of "arguing" will change it.

The insinuation that the nVidia drivers included with OS X are perfectly functioning and bug free and thus should never be updated is absolutely ridiculous and, quite honestly, ignorant.

The OS X drivers are over two years old and have long-standing issues still yet to be addressed.

There are clear performance gains from using the web driver. nVidia's own blog reports massive gains in 3D applications and literally everybody using the updated driver is reporting performance increases.

They are updated frequently, so it's incredibly likely whatever issue smacx250 was experiencing has already been fixed.

They are not 'beta' drivers, my gosh don't be ridiculous. These drivers are the only available drivers to run a Maxwell GPU (like the 980, not a Quadro) on a Mac Pro.

Every Mac able to run ESO with an nVidia GPU will benefit from these drivers, they are compatible with Maxwell, Kepler and Tesla-based GPUs

nVidia are bringing the same driver optimisation afforded to Windows users years ago over to OS X.

There is absolutely no way this is not a good thing. Honestly, pull your head in. You're being ridiculous.

KhajitFurTrader

wubsylol wrote: »

They are not 'beta' drivers, my gosh don't be ridiculous. These drivers are the only available drivers to run a Maxwell GPU (like the 980, not a Quadro) on a Mac Pro.

I want to debunk the first part of the statement given, which is clearly false:

• Includes BETA support for iMac and MacBook Pro systems with NVIDIA graphics

Release Notes Archive:
This driver update is for Mac Pro 5,1 (2010), Mac Pro 4,1 (2009) and Mac Pro 3,1 (2008) users.

BETA support is for iMac 14,2 / 14,3 (2013), iMac 13,1 / 13,2 (2012) and MacBook Pro 11,3 (2013), MacBook Pro 10,1 (2012), and MacBook Pro 9,1 (2012) users.

This is from the driver's latest release version, dated 5/27/2016. It can't be more clear that these drivers are in beta state for anything but the Mac Pro -- the part that they are not in beta for the Mac Pro itself has never been disputed by anyone, btw.

And not to further ride a dead horse here: your personal attacks against me as a person doesn't help your argument in any way. You can of course talk about your personal experience that you've made with these drivers, and I invite you to provide benchmarks/FPS comparisons (preferably being relevant to ESO) to back up your propositions.

I have laid out extensively in several posts above the reasons why I wouldn't want to use them, and why I feel that anyone who does want to use them should be aware of potential problems, i.e. should make an informed decision. Calling this "ridiculous", repeatedly, just tells me that you really don't seem to have to say something substantial.

Edit: I also suggest that you inform yourself about Apple's graphics driver practices before making unfounded statements like "they are over two years old". They do get (minor) updates with every sub-version update of OS X, i.e. the most recent one came with 10.11.5 just last month. El Capitan itself, which brought the last major update, is less than a year old. Here's a good read for starters.

wubsylol

The drivers will either support all Kelper and Tesla cards, or they will support none. It is simply not possible for them to to have varying levels of support for different cards of the same family.

nVidia call them beta drivers, sure, but fact that you keep returning to this point demonstrates your own ignorance on this topic.

Furthermore, It seems your understanding of how drivers function has been caught in the Apple reality distortion field.

Apple do not, as the stackexchange post seems to imply, make their own display drivers. The current Apple nVidia drivers are based on the 310-series drivers, which is code from 2013. Bugs which existed in the Windows release of these drivers in 2013, and were subsequently fixed, still exist on the OS X release and will likely remain.

A crash bug, for example, in Diablo 3, which was fixed by a driver updated in 2013, however required the developer to waste time and resources working around the bug on OS X.

Apple display drivers do not receive minor updates every OS release, that is absolutely false and easily demonstrable by the fact that version number and date on the kext have not changed.

What is updated, albeit not every point release, are the various APIs, with the exception of their OpenGL framework. Because it has been deprecated and Apple are closing all OpenGL-related bug tickets.

I called your opinion ridiculous and ignorant because it is. I'm not sure how this equates to a personal attack either. Is your opinion so precious that it cannot be challenged?

The low-level performance increases are there, this is not anecdotal or opinion. Whether this manifests into a pure fps increase, or something else, obviously depends on the task, but people wanting to play games on OS X should be running these drivers.