phin586 Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 Hey sort've new to the mac scene. Built up a hackentosh and put in a Nvidia 260 That i had extra and upon install everything seemed to work fine. I loaded up a few games and what i found was EXTREMELY poor video performance. Everything on the desktop seems fine. Full resolution, Some lowerend games work fine but some others are just extremely slow, no matter the resolution. I have GraphicEnabler checked but i'm honestly not to sure where to look to see if my card is actually running in full hardware mode. If it offers any help, the information from System Profiler is as such: GeForce GTX 260: Chipset Model: GeForce GTX 260 Type: GPU Bus: PCIe PCIe Lane Width: x16 VRAM (Total): 896 MB Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de) Device ID: 0x05e2 Revision ID: 0x00a1 Displays: HF229: Resolution: 1680 x 1050 @ 60 Hz Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888) Display Serial Number: 821UHM03A4456 Main Display: Yes Mirror: Off Online: Yes Rotation: Supported Television: Yes I'm just not sure where to really go from here. I'm running 10.7.2 Chamerleon with GraphicsEnabled = Yes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XLR Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 Install Nvidia drivers for Quadro 4000, make sure beforehand that your model name is set to MacPro3,1 in smbios.plist Btw, for gaming install Microsoft Windows 7 on a separate partition or hard-drive, you'll get significantly better performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phin586 Posted December 21, 2011 Author Share Posted December 21, 2011 If i were interested in that i would've stuck with my dual boot linux/windows setup. :-P Link to the driver? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phin586 Posted December 21, 2011 Author Share Posted December 21, 2011 These show they are only for SnowLeopard from the site. Will they work fine on lion? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gringo Vermelho Posted December 22, 2011 Share Posted December 22, 2011 You're right, the nvidia Quadro 4000 drivers are for Snow Leopard, do not install these drivers on Lion. I believe your problem is with video card power management. Forum search/google AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext or AGPM.kext. Or (unless you have a Nehalem architecture CPU) use a MacPro3,1 smbios.plist, AGPM.kext does not load at all when using the MacPro3,1 model identifier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phin586 Posted December 22, 2011 Author Share Posted December 22, 2011 Using the MacPro3,1 Identifier by default. Checking into the AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext right now. Newp, I cannot seem to find anything that could relate to that. Any other ideas I could try? I am running chameleon would running chimera maybe help? Like i previously stated, im a total newb at this mac stuff and its my first build. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gringo Vermelho Posted December 22, 2011 Share Posted December 22, 2011 Which boot loader you use should not make a difference, even less so with this type of issue. Besides, Chimera is just another version of Chameleon: http://forge.voodoop...ranches/Chimera You can verify under "extensions" in System Profiler (or type kextstat in Terminal.app) that AppleGraphicsblabla.kext really isn't loaded on your system. Nvidia gaming performance is not as good on OS X as it is on Windows, this is true on real Macs as well. Of course if the difference is huge then there is a problem somewhere. Install and run OpenGL Extensions Viewer. Post your scores here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phin586 Posted December 22, 2011 Author Share Posted December 22, 2011 It is most definitely not loaded. If it helps in anyway, this is what i used to install this particular setup. http://www.insanelym...howtopic=259068 the only difference is that i was unable to get onboard sound to work so i disabled it and put in the kxdriver kext for my audigy2zs. works great. I already tried removing the card to see if that was the culprit. Maybe this install has caused me to miss something? What results would you like? I did the test, it runs OpenGL 1.1-2.1 Fails at the rest. 1.1 - 3382 1.2 - 4852 1.3 - 4751 1.4 - 4705 1.5 - 4710 2.0 - 4672 2.1 - 4073 I've also seen some things about flashing the card to a 285 for possible better driver support? The main issue with the games is that it studders. No matter where i put the resolution or anything. Especially with large objects on the screen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gringo Vermelho Posted December 22, 2011 Share Posted December 22, 2011 Your scores look perfectly fine, hardware acceleration is working. It fails at the rest because there is no support for OpenGL 3, this is normal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phin586 Posted December 22, 2011 Author Share Posted December 22, 2011 Hmmm.. any tips or tricks to improve gaming? perhaps maybe i should look into an ati card as i hear they offer better mac performance? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gringo Vermelho Posted December 23, 2011 Share Posted December 23, 2011 I don't know, I have never had any gaming performance issues with my 9800 GTX+ or my GTX 460, so I never had to look for solutions. I don't know if there is some kind of driver incompatibility with your card or if your issues can be fixed by tweaking. Which games are running slow and what's your native resolution? Try running the game at 640x480 but at max detail and see if it runs smooth then. Then try the opposite, lowest graphical detail but highest supported resolution. There used to be an issue with World of Warcraft for example where if "sunshafts" were enabled the game would slow to a crawl even on powerful systems. Maybe it's down to a single setting in the game, try messing with the settings and see what happens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phin586 Posted December 23, 2011 Author Share Posted December 23, 2011 The only games so far have been Civ V which runs fairly well but i have to turn lots of stuff off and another game Shaft that slows to a crawl whenever there are large sprites on the screen. Ive tried different resolution settings without any luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gringo Vermelho Posted December 23, 2011 Share Posted December 23, 2011 Can you post a link to "Shaft" (the game developers website, no pirate linx plz) I can't find this game (unless it's this: http://thomas.guenze...de/?page_id=175 but I guess it isn't?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phin586 Posted December 23, 2011 Author Share Posted December 23, 2011 Super sorry about that. The name of the game is Shank. I received it during my most recent Humble Bundle purchase. The slow down happens when you get to the first boss stage. You can pick the game up for a buck if you really want to see for yourself. I tried the game under windows and linux and did not experience the same issues. http://www.humblebundle.com/ I am also waiting for an email back from the developer to see if it is a complaint they often get. Like i said though, there are a couple of other games where the performance just seems "off". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gringo Vermelho Posted December 23, 2011 Share Posted December 23, 2011 According to the website you linked to that's a known issue with the game: "Specifically on the first boss, there is a known issue right now where it runs slowly on many different Macs, and Ryan is looking into it. We have an update on the issues we’re looking into at http://www.shankgame.com." Heh, a Shaft game was too good to be true anyway. He's a baaaaaad mutha..shut yo mouth..I'm talkin' bout Shaft! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phin586 Posted December 23, 2011 Author Share Posted December 23, 2011 I actually JUST received an email back from the developer as well. That explains that, at least. STILL curious why things seem to just feel a tad slower in other games. Guess i'll further tweak a couple of things and go from that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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