macOS High Sierra drivers for Nvidia PCI-E video cards now available for Mac Pro, eGPU

After skipping the assorted High Sierra betas, Nvidia has rolled out drivers for its line of PCI-E graphics cards, all suitable for use in the 5,1 Mac Pro, and in a Thunderbolt 3 external graphics card enclosure.

The drivers were made available on Wednesday, with the release first noted by xlr8yourmac. Version 378.10.10.10.15.114 is specific to the current High Sierra build, and will need to be updated and re-released for every incremental upgrade of the operating system that follows.

Nvidia notes that the macOS Security & Privacy Preferences may open during the installation process, necessitating the user to allow the installation prior to completion.

The driver contains unspecified performance improvements and bug fixes. Additionally, the driver package that includes a new CUDA download that includes the new 9.0 version of the toolkit, plus beta support for iMac and MacBook Pro systems with Nvidia graphics.

Specific MacBook Pro and iMac models include those produced between 2012 and 2013 that are compatible with High Sierra.

Brief testing of the new driver with an external GPU and Nvidia GeForce 980ti showed compatibility of the combo restored under the 10.13.0 beta release of High Sierra. Further AppleInsider comparative testing on Nvidia versus AMD cards in Thunderbolt 3 enclosures will resume as a result of the release.

The new Quadro and GeForce macOS Driver release is a 62MB download. The updated CUDA driver is 26.6MB and supports macOS 10.12 Sierra and up.

46 Comments

welshdog 1898 comments · 22 Years

About 7 years ago

This seems like good news.

macxpress 5913 comments · 16 Years

I just used these today. Upgraded my 2012 Mac Pro tower to High Sierra. I have a non-Mac supported NVIDIA GeForce 970 in my MacPro so I always have to wait for these drivers to come out, then put the original ATI 5770 in it so I can upgrade (including dot dot releases), then install the updated driver and then put the NVIDIA card back in. Pain in the ass yes, but I only have to do it every once in a while (whenever Apple releases any kind of macOS update). I'm glad NVIDIA is typically on the ball with updating the driver.

Mike Wuerthele 6906 comments · 8 Years

macxpress said:

I just used these today. Upgraded my 2012 Mac Pro tower to High Sierra. I have a non-Mac supported NVIDIA GeForce 970 in my MacPro so I always have to wait for these drivers to come out, then put the original ATI 5770 in it so I can upgrade (including dot dot releases), then install the updated driver and then put the NVIDIA card back in. Pain in the ass yes, but I only have to do it every once in a while (whenever Apple releases any kind of macOS update). I'm glad NVIDIA is typically on the ball with updating the driver.

It's generally been within a few days of a shipping OS version, which is nice. While I've got the RX580 in my eGPU for most of the work here, I've got a 980ti in my 5,1.

lorin schultz 2744 comments · 10 Years

So remind me please Mike (I lose track of what does and doesn't work), with a 2016 MacBook Pro (USB-C/TB-3), can an e-GPU be used to accelerate the built-in display, or will it only work with an external monitor?

lorin schultz said:

So remind me please Mike (I lose track of what does and doesn't work), with a 2016 MacBook Pro (USB-C/TB-3), can an e-GPU be used to accelerate the built-in display, or will it only work with an external monitor?

It'll work in High Sierra with a minor hack, but it's rough on bandwidth, to the tune of about a 50% hit on max speed of the card if it was connected to an external display. There's just not enough speed in TB3 to feed both the card at full speed, and loop it back at full resolution.

I don't recommend it.