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Issues with Nvidia GTX 980 Ti on MacPro

Peter Grüner
Hi,

First of all: I have submitted a support case with Phase One.
Today I upgraded my MacPro 5.1 with a Nvidia GTX 980 Ti graphics cards and I am curious if anyone else is running a similar setup.
With hardware acceleration enabled I do get strange artefacts for the second image processed in Capture One Pro 9 and all following images.
This is how the first image look like:

http://www.gp-photography.de/foren/20160227_Diana_0213.jpg

Then it turns ugly:

http://www.gp-photography.de/foren/20160227_Diana_0216.jpg

The new graphics card runs extremely well together with my Eizo CG 24-8 4K monitor but I'd love to use all available options that the card offers for Capture One.

Peter
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Comments

51 comments

Date Votes
  • Christian Gruner
    Please create a support case with our Support Team, and make sure you also provide the raw-file, and a complete set of log files.
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  • Peter Grüner
    Hi Christian,

    a support case has already been opened but based on your suggestion I'll add the corresponding RAW files (instead of the edited TIFF/JPEG files) plus the log files for in depth troubleshooting.

    Thanks for your feedback,

    Peter
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  • Peter Grüner
    I just got the notification from the support team that there is not much that they could do as I am using a none Apple compatible graphic card with 3rd party drivers. I'll have to contact NVIDA support as most likely it is a driver issue.

    Seems like I will be running in a typical Catch 22 situation. A brilliant 4K monitor, a highly performing and recommended graphic card from several Mac specialists but not working with my software tools.

    I understand Phase One's point of view but really hoped for a more positive response.

    Peter
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  • Wesley
    I've been window shopping for MP 5.1 and those nice GTX's 😉
    Sad to know there are problems with it for CO9.
    Is the GPU flashed?
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  • Peter Grüner
    Hi Wesley,

    my card is not flashed but I do not think that this makes a difference. The flashed cards simply show the boot screen but still use the same drivers like the unflashed cards.

    Peter
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  • mark2721
    Hi Peter,

    Have you found a solution to your problem, as I have the same issue with the same card. Currently I have to turn off the open cl support to process images.

    Mark
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  • Christian Gruner
    [quote="Peter Gruener" wrote:
    Hi Wesley,

    my card is not flashed but I do not think that this makes a difference. The flashed cards simply show the boot screen but still use the same drivers like the unflashed cards.

    Peter


    Do you have a specific model number and vendor of your card? If we can get hold of a similar card, we can take a lot (but we can't promise a fix).
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  • dredlew
    Oh lovely, and I was looking forward to a GTX 1080 eGPU on my iMac. What a waste that would have been... 🙄
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  • Peter Grüner
    Hi,

    if Apple puts the GTX in your iMac as standard you should be fine. You will just encounter issues if there is no vendor support at all.
    To date I am only working with OpenCL turned off for processing and live with once in a while pink overlays in my edting process.
    @Christian: I will get you the model number when I am back home in the office.

    Peter
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  • Peter Grüner
    Hi Christian,

    as promised here's the information about my current graphics card that runs in my MacPro from late 2010:

    Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti
    Type: GPU
    Bus: PCIe
    Slot: Slot-1
    PCIe Lane Width: x16
    VRAM (Total): 6143 MB
    Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
    Device ID: 0x17c8
    Revision ID: 0x00a1
    ROM Revision: VBIOS 84.00.41.00.4a

    I am using the most recent drivers that NVIDIA provides. The best source to get straight to the download page is this resource:
    http://www.macvidcards.com/drivers.html
    http://create.pro/nvidia_drivers

    I hope that helps and if you need any additional information or help please let me know.

    Thanks,
    Peter
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  • Peter Gutbrod
    Count me in with the same issue. Delayed the update to El Capitan so far due to the ongoing USB issues in El Capitan but made the switch last week, when I've replaced my system drive.

    Have a MSI non-TI GTX 980 in a Mac Pro, that ran fine even with C1 on Yosemite but shows the pink "Highlight" artifacts on El Capitan, you've reported. I see a short pink blinking, when I have enabled OpenCL for display and I get the pink burnt into any export, when I have enabled OpenCL for processing.

    Sorry, but it is a poor argument from C1 support, they couldn't help because the GTX 980 is not officially supported by Apple. It is a shame, that Apple doesn't bundle the NVIDIA drivers with their OS. Thus Mac Pro users, who want do use a decent graphics card with their trusty machine are forced to use the NVIDIA web driver. And NVIDIA did a good job in developing the driver. Aside from Capture One the GTX 980 runs fine with everything even with good old Aperture, so it should be possible to fix this issue.

    Currently I do as Peter Gruener suggested and run C1 with OpenCL disabled. But I'm neither willing to downgrade my Mac Pro just to make it compatible with C1, nor am I willing to stick with the slow CPU only rendering in the long run.

    With no fix in the near future, I'd likely switch to another editor, probably On1.

    Peter
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  • eseldorm
    Hello,

    I also have this problem… ! I am currently evaluating C1 to switch from LR.
    I am very pleased with everything but the export.

    In the main viewer, the image displays correctly.
    When I switch from one image to the other, it looks fine when the image is scaled to fit, but when zoomed, I have the same purple/pink overlay that appears for a second and then goes away.
    However, when exporting, I do see this overlay again.

    Also, I'd like to say I've been able to work on a few sessions with the exact same setup (read below) and everything was fine (both development and export)! And then, suddenly something changed and I had these purple/pink issues, both in the zoomed previews (details above) and in the exports.

    I noticed that this overlay was appearing areas where the luminance is high. However, it is broader than what the exposition warning would give.

    Exporting TIFF or JPG show this purple/pink overlay.

    My card is from EVGA, part number 04G-P4-2983-KR (http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.as ... P4-2983-KR)
    I am using the latest NVidia Web Drivers (346.03.06f01) on El Capitan 10.11.4
    Camera files are D800 12-bit NEF files with lossless compression enabled.
    C1 version 9.1.1.15 (056e79d) with OpenCL enabled for both display and processing.
    I don't have trouble with any other application using the graphic card.

    Here's what I get in the System Profiler application about my card:
    Chipset Model:NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
    Type:Processeur graphique (GPU)
    Bus:PCIe
    PCIe Lane Width:x16
    VRAM (Total):4095 Mo
    Vendor:NVIDIA (0x10de)
    Device ID:0x13c0
    Revision ID:0x00a1
    ROM Revision:VBIOS 84.04.84.00.80

    I do hope that you will be able to reproduce it on your end & provide a fix. I am really looking forward to using C1 in my workflow.

    Edit:
    I opened a driver bug ticket at NVidia: #160516-000188
    While I quickly described the basic issue (display/export flawed), I also pointed to this thread.
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  • eseldorm
    I updated to 10.11.5 and the latest NVidia Web Drivers (346.03.10f01) and I still see the problem ☹️
    The GTX 980 is supported under Windows (I guess with NVidia drivers).
    As the drivers for Mac OS are provided by the same company, it would be great if Phase One could get in touch with NVidia to align...

    In the release notes for the latest Web Drivers update, they state "Contains performance improvements and bug fixes for a wide range of applications". It would be good if C1 could be part of it 😊

    I updated my case at NVidia and provided images to show the problem.
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  • Peter Grüner
    Well, my support case with NVIDIA was not quite successful either:

    "Note that for MAC computers the graphic cards designed for a Windows based computers would not work because the motherboard / system architecture is different and only cards specifically developed and designed by Apple would work
    Hence in this case you would need to check with Apple directly for information on the type / model of graphics card compatible to your specific computer"

    "As we did mention in the previous update that the graphic cards for a MAC computer are custom designed by Apple and only graphic cards recommended by them as designed for a MAC architecture would work. Unfortunately graphic cards not designed for a MAC computer architecture would not work in a MAC computer

    Again I am sorry for any inconvenience that may have caused, please continue to post us for any further queries I would be glad to offer further assistance"


    My comment about why NVIDIA is yet providing drivers for Mac has not been answered at all.

    Peter
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  • RobiWan
    Peter,
    which OSX version do you have on you Mac? If El Capitan, Maybe I'm wrong, but I would try Yosemite.
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  • eseldorm
    Here's what I got from NVidia following my request on what is the status of the drivers:
    Thank you for your submission.

    I understand from your email that you are experiencing issues in using GTX 980 on your Mac.

    Unfortunately, there are no official MAC drivers available for GTX 980 from NVIDIA. So there is nothing much that can be done from our end.

    Kindly accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience you may have experienced.


    To which I replied it wasn't making any sense it was published on the NVidia website...
    And then they replied:
    This driver is from NVIDIA but not for GTX 980. Please click on the tab "SUPPORTED PRODUCTS" and check the list of the supported GPUs.


    "Supported products" lists GPUs that are dating back from 2009 (GTX 680, Quadro 4000, etc.)!!!
    I requested an update of the supported products list...
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  • eseldorm
    [quote="RobiWan" wrote:
    Peter,
    which OSX version do you have on you Mac? If El Capitan, Maybe I'm wrong, but I would try Yosemite.


    I'd be interested to know as well!
    If it is working under Yosemite, it could point towards either a bug in the newest drivers or bug in Apple's OpenCL implementation.
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  • eseldorm
    And here's the latest answer from NVidia...

    NVIDIA does not design any 900 series cards to be used on MAC. The list of GPUs that is under "SUPPORTED PRODUCTS" are the only cards supported with MAC for the driver version 346.03.10f01


    Like magically they enabled hardware acceleration with drivers that are 5 years old.

    I'm really wondering where they stand when they are publishing drivers for the mac platform...
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  • Wesley
    cMP and modern GPU is an afterthought 😭
    Pretty much like a hackintosh user, you're on your own.

    Also wondering about the current state of the nMP and what Apple will do. They don't seem to care much. Middle child syndrome.
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  • Peter Gutbrod
    A few comments to this discussion:

    The bug is in the RAW processor of C1. If I edit JPEGs and export them, there is no pink artifact even not on pictures, that are extremely overexposed. Maybe some overflow in the calculations of the RAW converter.

    I'm almost sure, that switching back to Yosemite is a "solution". I expected to freeze my system at some time in the future, because Aperture is still my DAM and pictures are only temporarily send to Capture One for editing via apHUB. But I expected this won't happen before 10.12 maybe even not before 10.13, when Aperture will stop working but NOT due to Capture One not working in current 10.11 !!!

    Yes "officially" the GTX 980 is not working on Mac and there is no "official" Mac driver for the GTX 980. But the NVIDIA web driver is working nicely in Yosemite and El Capitan. The reason NVIDIA doesn't call it official is probably legal reasons with Apple, who refuses to add the driver to OS X. Head over to forum.netkas.org in case you want to read about this in more detail.

    @ C1 Support: Customers cannot request, that you support every exotic PC graphics card in a cMP. But the GTX980 is currently the de facto standard as the most powerful plug & play graphics card you can put into a cMP to date. And the cMP is still a decent machine for your customer base, professional photographers and advanced amateurs. Show me another Mac with 6 CPU cores, internal 24 TB HD storage, 2 TB of SSD storage running at 5900 MB/s and the power of the GTX 980. IMO it doesn’t make sense to make sure, C1 is working on an "officially supported" but dead slow Intel integrated GPU but refuse to make it work on the GTX980 in a cMP beast unless you want to go for the average iPhone snapper.

    And I repeat my statement: I didn't find a single application on El Capitan, that doesn't work with the GTX 980, except Capture One. Even Aperture works and runs blazing fast with this GPU.

    Peter
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  • eseldorm
    [quote="NNN635125278290404489" wrote:

    The bug is in the RAW processor of C1. If I edit JPEGs and export them, there is no pink artifact even not on pictures, that are extremely overexposed. Maybe some overflow in the calculations of the RAW converter.


    I see the artifacts on TIFF, but JPGs as well!
    I also see the artifacts when, let's say at 100% I change to the next photo with the -> key.
    Otherwise, changing exposure (for example) at 'size to fit' doesn't cause any trouble.


    I'm almost sure, that switching back to Yosemite is a "solution". I expected to freeze my system at some time in the future, because Aperture is still my DAM and pictures are only temporarily send to Capture One for editing via apHUB. But I expected this won't happen before 10.12 maybe even not before 10.13, when Aperture will stop working but NOT due to Capture One not working in current 10.11 !!!


    Going back to Yosemite means that two variables are changing: the OpenCL implementation and the NVIDIA Web Driver version (for which one version is 'attached' to a Mac OS system update).

    Yes "officially" the GTX 980 is not working on Mac and there is no "official" Mac driver for the GTX 980. But the NVIDIA web driver is working nicely in Yosemite and El Capitan. The reason NVIDIA doesn't call it official is probably legal reasons with Apple, who refuses to add the driver to OS X. Head over to forum.netkas.org in case you want to read about this in more detail.


    On a Mac Pro, isn't this officially supported, just like adding another card (audio, video processing, etc.) or changing hard drives in a MacBook Pro? As far as I know, from end to end, there is no tweak on the Apple system either.

    @ C1 Support: Customers cannot request, that you support every exotic PC graphics card in a cMP. But the GTX980 is currently the de facto standard as the most powerful plug & play graphics card you can put into a cMP to date. And the cMP is still a decent machine for your customer base, professional photographers and advanced amateurs. Show me another Mac with 6 CPU cores, internal 24 TB HD storage, 2 TB of SSD storage running at 5900 MB/s and the power of the GTX 980. IMO it doesn’t make sense to make sure, C1 is working on an "officially supported" but dead slow Intel integrated GPU but refuse to make it work on the GTX980 in a cMP beast unless you want to go for the average iPhone snapper.


    Ah! That's a nice statement, better than what I wanted to do! Thanks.

    And I repeat my statement: I didn't find a single application on El Capitan, that doesn't work with the GTX 980, except Capture One. Even Aperture works and runs blazing fast with this GPU.


    And Aperture and blazing fast in the same sentence says everything about the GTX 980 :p

    To conclude (until I get something better from NVIDIA), the official statement from NVIDIA is "as it is not written on the page, it is not official". The fact that the cards listed are 5y+ old doesn't matter to them. I asked for an escalation + a review but the answer was also no.

    Yet, the legal topic you mentioned seems odd, it is a Mac, not an iPhone, and you are free to install. And the drivers are signed by NVIDIA (= Apple accepts that it gets on the platform).
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  • Christian Gruner
    Macvidcards seems to out of stock on all cards. Do You guys know of other trustworthy, ready-to-ship shops for these type of cards?
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  • eseldorm
    Hello Christian,

    I have a standard EVGA GTX 980 (P/N: 04G-P4-2983-KR). AFAIK, the MacVidCards version is only about getting the boot screen.

    Ok, now the good news is: I have made contact at NVIDIA with someone requesting information on this issue!

    Can you please give me more information about the OpenCL bug, including system specs, error messages, log files if available and reproduction steps?


    Christian: is it possible to get meaningful information on what C1 is doing when exporting that could benefit NVIDIA? A flag, a script from your side, anything?

    Note that I claimed it to be a possible OpenCL bug since when you turn OpenCL off, the problem goes away.

    RobiWan, Peter Gruener, NNN635125278290404489, could you please add data from your side as well if possible (PM possible) so NVIDIA has more data point?
    Ok, no private messages are allowed here… if you want to help, could you please send me a message with some/all of the information NVIDIA has requested at: seldorm.e+gtx980@gmail.com ?
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  • Peter Grüner
    Hi Christian,

    You do not have to buy necessarily from MacVidCards or Create.Pro. MacVidCards flashes the cards simply to provide a boot screen and some other minor enhancements. Nonetheless, the drivers they are providing or linking are exactly the same like any other graphics card.
    By the way I am running El Capitan 10.11.4.
    @eseldorm: I will send you a few additional information through email.

    Peter

    PS: Christian: We do have the same last name with "ü" - maybe we should check whether we have some common relatives a few decades back 😊
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  • Peter Gutbrod
    First, I changed that silly user name to my real name. 😉

    I still don't see the pink artifacts in TIFFs or JPEGs, only in RAWs.

    To shed a bit more light into this mistery, I've created a picture with 4 gradients, 100% red, green, blue, white to black. I had to convert this to a RAW file and the only way I found to accomplish this task with the apps available on my Mac was with Vuescan. I saved the file as a DNG and loaded the DNG into Capture One. Unfortunately the whole process brightened the midtones and highlights, so the gradients were no more linear. I used curves to bring back the gradients to a more linear result. Not perfect as I did this visually but good enough for my test.

    I exported the picture in C1 to JPEGs with and without OpenCL acceleration.

    Here the result without OpenCL, which is pretty much what I see in the editor and is very close to the original picture I've created in Affinity:

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2269645/Capture%20One%20OpenCL%20Bug/CPU.jpg

    And here the result with OpenCL enabled:

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2269645/Capture%20One%20OpenCL%20Bug/OpenCL.jpg

    It is pretty obvious, that the issue is only in the green channel and only above 50% of the maximum, e.g. above 127 in 8 Bit RGB values.

    For me that looks like a programmer accidentally used a signed inter instead of an unsigned (treating values 128 to 255 as -1 to -127, which would actually remove any green, i.e. render white as pink ).The faint red in the upper half of the green gradient is probably a result of my levels adjustment and in a truly linear gradient you might see pure black. I doubt the NVIDIA driver knows about whether the numbers it computes belong to a red, blue oder green channel in the final picture. I suspect, the bug is in the C1 RAW processor and that Yosemity's OpenCL implementation somehow fixes the illegal type on the fly and in El Capitan Apple removed that "fix" for some reason. In that case the ball would be back at Phase One.

    Hope this helps in fixing the bug.

    Peter

    @eseldorm: Maybe I'm wrong and the issue is in the NVIDA driver. Please send this info to your contact person at NVIDIA.
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  • eseldorm
    Hello Peter,

    Could you share your DNG?

    I want to reproduce it on my MacBook Pro with El Capitan: no GTX 980, no NVIDIA drivers, only C1 and El Capitan.
    I would assume that since C1 is not exporting with regards to a specific cards, this issue should also appear there (AMD 6750). All cards should be affected by this problem when using El Capitan + OpenCL + C1 v9!

    But maybe Christian will be faster as Phase One has more test machine combinations than I do :p

    Also, for the display, since OpenCL is set to auto, and I am sometimes seeing the purple overlay as a flash when zoomed in but not in 100%-> OpenCL usage is changing during these steps? The previews are not affected by this issue btw.

    P.S: when I talked about JPGs and TIFFs, it is the export format, not the input format.

    @Peter: I will send this to NVIDIA for sure. I also want them to give what is exactly the status of these web drivers wrt. the GTX 980: official drivers or just a side job to satisfy users.
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  • Peter Gutbrod
    You can download the DNG from here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/226 ... aw0001.dng

    and here is the C1 adjustments file with my curves adjustment to bring the gradient back to almost linearity:
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/226 ... 01.dng.cos

    Put it in the Settings91 folder of your C1 session before opening the DNG.

    Peter
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  • Peter Gutbrod
    [quote="eseldorm" wrote:
    I want to reproduce it on my MacBook Pro with El Capitan: no GTX 980, no NVIDIA drivers, only C1 and El Capitan.
    I would assume that since C1 is not exporting with regards to a specific cards, this issue should also appear there (AMD 6750). All cards should be affected by this problem when using El Capitan + OpenCL + C1 v9!


    While my speculation could point in that direction, I doubt all El Capitan + OpenCL + C1 v9 systems are affected, simply because the forum would have been flooded with bug reports and Phase One would likely be out of business already. 😉

    The fact, that only the green channel is affected could as well be because there are twice as much green pixels on a Bayer sensor as red and blue pixels. Although OpenCL might not know about reds, greens and blues, the computation for green likely is different than that for red and blue and that might lead to some kind of overflow in the computation. And that overflow could happen within the NVIDIA driver.

    All we can do is supply both NVIDIA and Phase One with as much information as possible to help the one or other to fix the bug.

    Peter
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  • Christian Gruner
    [quote="eseldorm" wrote:
    I want to reproduce it on my MacBook Pro with El Capitan: no GTX 980, no NVIDIA drivers, only C1 and El Capitan.
    I would assume that since C1 is not exporting with regards to a specific cards, this issue should also appear there (AMD 6750). All cards should be affected by this problem when using El Capitan + OpenCL + C1 v9!


    You have to include to the Drivers in your equation as well. And the drivers are the link between CO and the hardware.
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  • eseldorm
    [quote="Christian Gruner" wrote:
    [quote="eseldorm" wrote:
    I want to reproduce it on my MacBook Pro with El Capitan: no GTX 980, no NVIDIA drivers, only C1 and El Capitan.
    I would assume that since C1 is not exporting with regards to a specific cards, this issue should also appear there (AMD 6750). All cards should be affected by this problem when using El Capitan + OpenCL + C1 v9!


    You have to include to the Drivers in your equation as well. And the drivers are the link between CO and the hardware.


    Correct. I meant, the NVIDIA Web Drivers (for the GTX 980) are not in the equation if it would also happen on my MacBook Pro.

    Did you have any success on getting your hands on a GTX 980?
    Since I have a contact at NVIDIA, shoud I hook you up in the conversation? I feel that it is almost out of my reach now.
    Since NVIDIA asks for details, I think Phase One should take over this topic.
    If you have any flag that could dump more information, I could communicate that to you. I guess Peter & Peter could also run it, it could help having different systems feedback.

    The only think I could get yesterday is a log file element from C1 when the picture is exported. However, this line is identical with and without OpenCL enabled. Lines before and after are not related to the issue (codb autosave, etc.).

    What I have now:
    - a walk-through to 100% reproduce the issue on a specific configuration (El Capitan/GTX 980/NVIDIA Web Drivers/C1 v9)
    - the test case from Peter Gutbrod about the green channel
    - a file that C1 creates with the status of the computer and its OpenCL capabilities
    - a hint that something's tied to the drivers of the 980 when using OpenCL on El Capitan, but not able to prove where it is coming from!

    I will write the email to NVIDIA in my evening.
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