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News Archive for Tuesday June 22, 2010     Goto Current News Page

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Nvidia posts Updated GTX-285 Drivers for OS X 10.6.4
(FYI: On August 17th, 2010 Apple posted a Snow Leopard Graphics Update for 10.6.4 with even later drivers included.)
(original post from June 22nd follows)
Etienne sent a note that Nvidia has posted Geforce Mac OS X Driver Release 19.5.8 (v19.5.8f03) for Mac OSX 10.6.4. Supported products tab lists only the GTX-285, but previously IIRC they posted the same same drivers for the (expensive) Quadro card on a different download page. (And the same driver is used by other cards like the GT120 and perhaps others, but there used to be an installer check in the GTX285 driver download. I think I once got around that simply by opening the installer package (right click/show pkg contents) and then running each pkg installer inside separately.)
Here's a clip from the release notes:

" CUDA Application Support:
In order to run MAC OS Applications that leverage the CUDA architecture of the NVIDIA GPU, including Adobe Premier Pro CS5, you will need to download a runtime CUDA driver. To run CUDA applications with Mac OS X v10.6.x Snow Leopard please download and install the CUDA 3.0 driver for MAC located here.

New in Release 19.5.8f03:

  • Improved OpenGL performance for Geforce GTX 285 under certain conditions
  • Improved compatibility with recent Mac OS X Software Updates."
  • I haven't installed them yet but if any readers have and see any pros or cons, let me know the details. Thanks!
    (FYI - I installed the update OK but haven't used it enough to notice any differences yet. I sent an EVGA contact a note/screenshot regarding verify permissions check after the update. CB 11.5 GL test still only 24.xx fps - no improvement over last run w/10.6.3.
    An 8800GTX (flashed) owner said he installed the update (bypassing install check) but later reverted back as he saw no significant benefit and said it disabled GPU pwr mgmt on his card.)

    BTW: The first posting of this driver update included support for Nvidia Fermi cards (i.e. GTX 480, 470 etc), but they have replaced the download/updater now with that support removed. I take that as a sign we finally may be seeing a Mac Fermi card soon. (Still waiting for new Mac Pros and I assume new graphics cards included when they're launched. Also hoping for an ATI 58xx card (or better) as well... only time will tell.)

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    More notes on OS X 10.6.4 Bugs and Fixes
    Another report/reply on the subject of 10.6.4. (See below for earlier posts on 10.6.4/Gaming and Maya)

    "Mac OS X 10.6.4 fixes and new bugs
    ...The Apple documentation for 10.6.4 does not mention at least one major fix.
    10.6.4 fixes an OpenGL problem introduced in 10.6.3 which in my case appeared when playing Dungeon Siege on two different model iMacs with ATI Radeon GPU's, every triangle had a gray border around it (so my home machines run 10.6.2 since my children like Dungeon Siege). This problem probably affected other programs and is documented at http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/archives/apr10/040710.html (April 7th, 2010 news page post "Notes on some OS X 10.6.3 graphics driver issues (7300GT AA issue, some ATI GPU issues w/PPC Games under Rosetta)")
    The OpenGL fix note was dropped from Apple's final documentation for 10.6.4.
    (Apple's (public) docs on changes/fixes in 10.6.4 and security fixes in 10.6.4 were linked in the June 15th (release day) news page. Anti-malware changes also that were not listed in the official docs.)

    Meanwhile 10.6.4 introduced a new OpenGL and/or general graphics performance problem(s) affecting both NVidia and ATI GPUs. People testing native-Intel OpenGL programs documented performance drops. Documentation regarding NVidia GPUs has appeared on xlr8yourmac as well. (Yesterday's post on Nvidia and ATI GPU gaming issues - Valve warned about Nvidia GPU issues, but ATI GPU owners also have reported some specific problems.)
    In my case I documented major performance losses in Star Trek Voyager Elite Force 1 & 2 (which my children like) compared to 10.6.3, 10.6.2, 10.5.8, again on my two different model iMac's with ATI GPU's. Note that STVEF uses a widely licensed game engine so what I saw affects a lot of people.

    On top of that Safari 5 which is included in 10.6.4 breaks DoD smart card (CAC) access on my work machine for me, I've done a clean install of 10.6.3 (build 10D575) which works then installing Safari 5 and my DoD CAC stops working.

    Not a good record.

    On top of that, the version of OpenSSL included is 0.9.8l where as we're required to run 0.9.8o in the DoD, but installing from open source and replacing the Apple supplied libraries completely broke my system, which did not happen under 10.4 & 10.5 when I last did the same operation (to upgrade to 0.9.8k when Apple was way behind as usual, then I build it for all four-10.4/10.5/Intel/PPC, and not a single machine crashed among the ~20 machines that it was installed on).
    (He later wrote) First attempt at OpenSSL 0.9.8o on OS X 10.6.4 failed, but I have a working version now, still testing.

    For reference:
    Bugs listed in CVE-2009-3555 were fixed by SecUpd 2010-001, this gave us OpenSSL 0.9.8l in 10.6.2
    Bugs listed in CVE-2009-3245 were fixed in OpenSSL 0.9.8m, but Apple has neither updated nor documented any backports to fix these bugs
    Bugs listed in CVE-2010-0740 & CVE-2010-0433 were fixed in OpenSSL 0.9.8n, same null response from Apple
    Bugs listed in CVE-2010-0742 were fixed in OpenSSL 0.9.8o, again no response
    Bugs listed in CVE-2010-1633 only apply to the OpenSSL 1.0.0 series

    Another side issue is ntpd, Apple ships 4.2.4p4, but we're required to have 4.2.4p7 or 4.2.5p74 or later, because of bugs listed in CVE-2009-1252.

    The unhandled CVE's become an issue because we can't pass security scans without fixing them and if the massive work of compiling and building installers for all three OS X's (10.6.4, 10.5.8/Intel&PPC) fails then we have a real problem. *At this point I don't even care anymore about the security issues in these bugs, I just want them fixed enough to pass the security scans.

    Others that Apple has ignored: CVE-2008-2476 (no word on OS X, only fixed in Airports), CVE-2009-2948 (Samba/smbd), and one relating to telnetd.
    Michael K."

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