nVidia GTX285 Performance

[Xanieladas]

So I installed Snow Leopard 10.6 from a retail DVD as per the instructions in this thread.

 

Everything seemed to be working quite well. Then I noticed my video performance was just on the low side of terrible.

 

After doing a bit of reading, and learning what nvclock is, I discovered that my video card was not increasing its clock speed from its lowest power state, even when the card is under load as in games or while running Cinebench.

 

I read a number of posts about power management problems, unfortunately much of what I was reading was still over my head. There's quite the learning curve here!

 

Somewhere I saw it suggested that if I simply removed AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext my card would run at its highest power state constantly. I wouldn't have power management, it would burn more power, but at least I would have performance.

 

So I followed this suggestion. Much to my surprise, my card now clocks up and down with load. Performance is greatly improved, now being comparable to what I was getting in Windows 7.

 

Only one catch. The fan is stuck by default at a very low speed (778 rpm), and does not spin up with heat.

 

A simple "nvclock -f -F auto" command fixes this.

 

This all boils down to two questions:

 

1. What the heck is going on here. Removing a power management kernel extension and having that fix my power management problems seems counter-intuitive.

 

2. Given that this is working for now, is there some way to execute that nvclock command on startup, so I don't forget to and cook my card?

 

3. Should I even be looking for a better solution here, or just smile and call it a win?

 

Thanks,

Ryan