Tut: Making CUDA drivers work on your MAC and render much faster with GPU

ggrancharov

Hi, I thought I might share this since a lot of people still think Mac's cannot use their GPU to render and I wasted almost two days finding a workable solution to make it work.

To check if your GPU is enabled click on "Render Settings", choose "NVIDIA Iray" and then click on hardware. If you see only "CPU" there and you have a Mac [with an Nvidia card] then this tutorial is for you. The trick is to force the graphics card to use the Nvidia drivers, rather than the Apple drivers, which will make Daz3D recognize your graphics card. 

I am running this on a  iMac 27' late 2013 with the Geforce GTX 775M 2GB oin macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 

1. If you ever installed CUDA it's time to remove all references of it. To do so navigate to those folders and delete all contents:

- /System/Library/Extensions/CUDA.kext
- /Library/Frameworks/CUDA.framework
- /Library/LaunchAgents/com.nvidia.CUDASoftwareUpdate.plist
- /Library/PreferencePanes/CUDA/Preferences.prefPane
- /System/Library/StartupItems/CUDA/
- /Developer/NVIDIA/CUDA-5.0
- /usr/local/cuda

After that do a finder search for "Cuda" and if there are any other references delete them. 

2. Restart your computer and check in "System Preferences" if the CUDA icon disappeared. If yes, continue to step 3. 

3. Install the Nvidia Webdriver, if you're running macOS 10.13.3 it can be found here:
http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/130460/en-us
It is very important to check the name which should be "QUADRO & GEFORE MACOS DRIVER RELEASE" 

4. After you installed the driver, do a restart. You should now see a Nvidia icon in your status bar right next to the Wifi icon. 

5. Go to "System Preferences" and at the bottom you should see "NVIDIA Driver Manager". Click on it, and make sure that "Nvidia Web Driver" is selected in the first window. After that, navigate to "Updates" and check if there is a newer version. If yes, download it and restart again before moving to step 6. 

6. Now it's time to install the right CUDA drivers, so we can use our GPU for rendering with Daz3D. 
Go to http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-cuda-387.128-driver.html  and download the driver. Install it and restart your computer manually after the installation is complete. 

7. After the restart is complete, go to "System Preferences" again and you should see now two Nvidia related icons - one being the "Nvidia Driver Manager" and another called "CUDA". That means everything was successful and you can treat yourself a glass of scotch. 

8. Open Daz3D, go to "Render Settings" --> "Hardware" and you should see now your graphics card under the CPU checkbox in "Photoreal Devices". Uncheck "CPU" and leave only your graphics card checked. 

Congrats, you can now enjoy a much better rendering speed on your Mac ;) 

Cheers,
George

 

FAQ: 

Q: I have an older OS version, what should I do
A: Update to 10.13.3 manually, but do not update to Mojave yet, I tried and failed to make the drivers work on that. 

Q: Will this work on every Mac?
A: As long as you have a Nvidia graphics card and it is listed on the following link, yes:
https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus

 

 

 

 

 

Cris Palomino

It should be noted that Apple only allows you to update drivers through their OS software updates if you are on a laptop, according to them. So that will be something to consider if you are under Apple Care.