“Buried in their announcement of the NVIDIA Titan Xp, NVIDIA has also made a rather surprising revelation: that they will be releasing macOS drivers for their Pascal architecture GPUs,” Ryan Smith reports for Ars Technica. “This comes despite the fact that Apple hasn’t sold a Mac Pro that can officially accept a PCIe video card in almost half a decade.”
“NVIDIA owns the bulk of the discrete video card market, and at the same time, Apple hasn’t integrated an NVIDIA GPU in some time now; the last NVIDIA-equipped Mac was the 2014 MacBook Pro, which included an NVIDIA Kepler GPU,” Smith reports. “As a result, NVIDIA has been locked out of the Mac video card market entirely for the last couple of years, and consequently makes NVIDIA’s announcement so surprising.”
“So why is NVIDIA releasing a Mac driver to a market that, officially speaking, is essentially dead?” Smith reports. “At best, the official market is the remaining handful of Mac Pro Tower owners… Instead it’s the off-label use that makes this announcement interesting, and indeed gives NVIDIA any reason whatsoever to make a Pascal driver release. Within the Mac community there are small but none the less vocal user groups based around both unsupported external GPUs and not-even-Apple-hardware Hackintoshes.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s ironic that Apple hates Hackintoshes, but it’s the company’s own missteps, hubris, and laziness that fuels the Hackintosh community.
Now, are these NVIDIA Mac drivers going to suck, too?
SEE ALSO:
Laggard, trailing Apple needs to catch up HP’s workstation designs – April 7, 2017
Why Apple’s promise of a new ‘modular’ Mac Pro matters so much – April 6, 2017
Apple’s cheese grater Mac Pro was flexible, expandable, and powerful – imagine that – April 6, 2017
More about Apple’s Mac Pro – April 6, 2017
Apple’s desperate Mac Pro damage control message hints at a confused, divided company – April 6, 2017
Who has taken over at Apple? – April 5, 2017
Apple’s embarrassing Mac Pro mea culpa – April 4, 2017
Who’s going to buy a Mac Pro now? – April 4, 2017
Mac Pro: Why did it take Apple so long to wake up? – April 4, 2017
Apple sorry for what happened with the Mac Pro over the last 3+ years – namely, nothing – April 4, 2017
Apple to unveil ‘iMac Pro’ later this year; rethought, modular Mac Pro and Apple pro displays in the pipeline – April 4, 2017
Apple’s apparent antipathy towards the Mac prompts calls for macOS licensing – March 27, 2017
Why Apple’s new Mac Pro might never arrive – March 10, 2017
Dare we hold out hope for the Mac Pro? – March 1, 2017
Apple CEO Cook pledges support to pro users, says ‘we don’t like politics’ at Apple’s annual shareholders meeting – February 28, 2017
Yes, I just bought a ‘new’ Mac Pro (released on December 19, 2013 and never updated) – January 4, 2017
Attention, Tim Cook! Apple isn’t firing on all cylinders and you need to fix it – January 4, 2017
No, Apple, do not simplify, get better – December 23, 2016
Rare video shows Steve Jobs warning Apple to focus less on profits and more on great products – December 23, 2016
Marco Arment: Apple’s Mac Pro is ‘very likely dead’ – December 20, 2016
How Tim Cook’s Apple alienated Mac loyalists – December 20, 2016
Apple’s not very good, really quite poor 2016 – December 19, 2016
Apple’s software has been anything but ‘magical’ lately – December 19, 2016
Lazy Apple. It’s not hard to imagine Steve Jobs asking, ‘What have you been doing for the last four years?’ – December 9, 2016
Rush Limbaugh: Is Apple losing their edge? – December 9, 2016
AirPods: MIA for the holidays; delayed product damages Apple’s credibility, stokes customer frustration – December 9, 2016
Apple may have finally gotten too big for its unusual corporate structure – November 28, 2016
Apple has no idea what they’re doing in the TV space, and it’s embarrassing – November 3, 2016
Apple’s disgracefully outdated, utterly mismanaged Mac lineup is killing sales – October 13, 2016
Apple takes its eye off the ball: Why users are complaining about Apple’s software – February 9, 2016
Open letter to Tim Cook: Apple needs to do better – January 5, 2015
Since Apple has messed up the pro community so bad, hackintoshes are really the only way to go at this point if you need serious working power.
You can already see the hackintosb community growing by leaps and bounds. Do a google search on the various websites and watch how much they are growing especially in the recent months.
turbo pascal was my jam in elementary school.
I’ve been using the predecessor drivers with a 970-based card in my 5,1 Mac Pro for about 8 months. They support everything the card does, including all acceleration, CUDA, and G-Sync. If the Pascal drivers are similar, they should provide for a great upgrade path for us die-hards and Hackintosh owners.
The only downside, and one I wish could be addressed somehow, is that you cannot upgrade MacOS versions until a new driver is released, but you can’t upgrade the driver using the built-in control panel until you’ve upgraded your MacOS. This essentially means that you still need an official Apple card in your computer to switch to while upgrading. It can be a cheap GEforce 120, but still needs to work with Apple’s default drivers.
I hope Apple does recreate something similar to these AL Mac Pro’s. I’ve upgraded mine to a 6-core 3.46 GHz Xeon and a ton of ram, plus the 970 and SSD’s and it’ll run rings around the current Mac Pro at a fraction of the price, plus I can continue to upgrade it (at least for the foreseeable future).
The other day we were reading:
«http://macdailynews.com/2017/04/05/why-apples-ditching-of-imagination-is-critical-for-the-future-of-the-iphone-and-maybe-even-the-mac/»
Methinks, we could be heading for a total rethink on how graphics is done in macOS and iOS.
Always wondered why GPU processing couldn’t be done directly by the display.
Is NVIDIA addressing the market for video cards housed in external PCIe to Thunderbolt enclosures perhaps?
People at barefeats.com are Mac reviewers waiting for this and actively asking Nvidia to develop Pascal drivers.
They always review new Macs and compare them to 2012 MP. So I guess the 2012 MP owners are the most immediate market for new Nvidia cards. Surely Hackintosh builders will welcome this and finally those with TB 2.0 Macs with decent CPUs wanting to add maybe a 1050-1070 to their Macs using an external box and display.