Strange behavior on Mac Pro + Nvidia 7300GT

The 7600GT is a great card, so as long as the problem isn't strictly in the drivers, it should work fine. I actually just ordered a 7600GT for my XP box. I'm curious to hear how it works out for you on OS X.

Update: The 7600GT works great for SL in my Windows machine.


NOTE for 10.4.8 Upgraders: For those of you who don't already know this....

If you're going to upgrade to 10.4.8, you'll find your chance of success to be much higher if you do the following when upgrading:

1) Go to Apple's Support Download site and download the "Mac OS X 10.4.8 Combo Update" for your platform (Intel or PowerPC) and do NOT run the 10.4.8 update from the Software Update Panel. The Combo update contains all updates made so far since Tiger was released. The update that appears in your Software Update Panel is a "Delta" update, that only contains the fixes released since your last update. Despite what you may think, the COMBO updater is preferable.

2) Restart your machine and hold down the Apple key and the "S" key until your machine boots into a command line. You'll see a bunch of text on a black screen. If you've never seen this before, don't be frightened. This is called Single User mode. Tread Lightly and do only what these instructions say if you don't know what you're doing here.

3) After everythign finishes loading and you see a command prompt and some text with a "#" next to a solid white cursor, type the following:

fsck -fy

...then press Return. This runs a file system check and repairs any errors found. We don't want to upgrade with file system errors in the way. Note that just a few lines above, you are instructed to run this exact same command. It's not a bad thing. I'm not trying to trick you into doing anything bad.

4) Once fsck finishes running and indicates that the volume appears to be OK, type the following:

exit

...then press Return.

5) Log into your machine as you normally would, then find the Disk Utility application inside the Applications/Utilities folder and launch Disk Utility.

6) Select the Top Level Hard Drive Icon for the drive that contains the disk name for your start-up disk and click on the "Repair Disk Permissions" button.

7) Once you've repaired permissions, find the combo update you downloaded earlier and run it.

The combo update will likely do one or both of the following:

a) May make your machine take quite a bit longer than normal to shutdown and/or restart the first time. Just be patient.

b) May make your machine restart TWICE. This is also normal. Don't be alarmed.

9) Once your machine has finished restarting (once or twice, slowly or not), you should repeat steps 5 and 6, then you're done!

This will add a few minutes to your update time, but this few minutes of preventitive maintenance may save you lots of headaches compared to running just a delta updater on a disk with file system errors and/or permissions errors!

For additional info and/or to verify I'm not full of hot air, refer to the 10.4.8 Reader Reports page on Macintouch.

I just gave the new patch a try without profiler and it was worse for me. Usually the texture corruption starts a little while into it, this time the corruption was there right from the get-go.

Oh well, back to profiler....

Wow, this makes absolutely no sense. We're running the same software, yet it works for me and not for you?

Something's fishy. Are you sure the update went through? Are you on 10.4.8 now? I've been running SL without the profiler since Friday with nary a problem.

-Z

I just updated to 10.4.8 and forgot to try it again without the profiler. As soon as the grid is back up, I'll give it a try.

And a reminder, I'm on different hardware. It's just that I was having the same problem and your workaround fixed it.

I just got my iMac 24" with the NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT. Quickly had a go on SL, not long, becos i am at work, and all worked very well.... i though maybe i had crashed as everything froze for a minute, but then i realised it was lag induced by shit net connection.

Cant wait to get home and put SL through its pace and see wether i get the same problems as you guys, but perhaps the problems are only localised around the GeForce 7300 GT.

Will return with my findinga later today......

Is this ever going to get fixed? I'm so gutted I've spent £1600 on a computer that according to the games requirements should run SL amazingly well, and it doesnt

Remember to get up to 10.4.8 first. Pretty much all my problems (except mediocre performance in busy areas... the 7300GT *is* an underpowered card, like it or not-- I intend to get a 1900XT at some point) disappeared when I moved to 10.4.8.

-Z

Okay. I was able to give SL a good go last night without the profiler and with the OS updated to 10.4.8. Medium and far avatar textures are still corrupting like mad but world textures were great. I would say this is a great improvement except for the fact that I had full crash/lockup just like always (after 20-40 minutes). With the profiler I have no corruption and (almost) no crashes whatsoever.

I know I'm on an underpowered card (GeForce 5200 fx) but I'm waiting for some more 512mb options to come out before upgrading.

Thanks again for the workaround!

I just wanted to throw my voice into the discussion. I have a Mac Pro 2.66 with 3gb and a 7300GT. The system is just buttery smooth compared to my old Mac, and that includes performance in Second Life, with the notable exception of it tending to throw out Kernel Panics at random, usually moments after I have really gotten interested in something.

The issue only manifests itself in SL, no other program has caused the smallest bit of trouble (I updated to the latest version of Parallels before I ran it, so I avoided that pitfall). I have installed The EFI firmware update 1.0, as well as System 10.4.8 update. I have not yet installed the SMC firmware update 1.0, but seeing as it seems to only regulate the cooling fans, I'm not sure if it would have any bearing on this problem.

I tried Zorin's trick with the OpenGL profiler, and got a bit more stability out of SL, but it eventually fell back into a kernel panic after about 30 minutes. Given, it was after I had paid a visit to Galaxy and loaded up a bunch of textures. I expect I would see similar performance (30 minutes of fun followed by a crash) were I to pop into Luskwood for a while.

Please ohhh please let us find out why this is happening soon. I'm getting too much work done on this shiny new machine!

Grr. I just tried the new update without the profiler. My avatar was rock solid - yaay! But other avatars had corrupted textures, as did structures, water, land, etc. And then the inevitable crash. Oh well. Tomorrow I'm going to try the above suggestions and see if they help.

Zorin, I also wanted to add that although I use a PC to run SL now (as my iMac just couldnt deal with the texture glitches that I had constantly) for the last 4 days or so, I have seen EXACTLY the same graphics errors as you posted a link to. ( see no3 above)
I have 1Gb Ram on a Packard Bell brand new computer, it's running with a GeForce 6200LE card .. and up until now Sl has been running very well, but NOW! Urgh.. i have to relog, constantly to stop that messy look all over the screen, Its a nightmare. and yes, it seems to oocur mainly when I use the camera to zoom in on objects. Im going to post also on the general tech issues, but yours was the first pic I have seen so far that shows EXACTLY what I am seeing on a completely different card and computer system.

I have the exact same issue with a new iMac 24" with 2GB RAM and 7600 card. Stutter behaviour, and the occasional crash. I've sent crash reports for some of them.

it is very frustrating because when it works, it's smooth as silk and fast.

please fix, I can't build at all like this.

Zorbin I do too, when i can afford another £300, after forking out £1600 for the Mac Pro.

Why can't Lindens just fix it already. or at least provide some feedback or information? Is it because it's only effecting a small amount of users? Are Mac users at the bottom of the priority list?

Hey Zorin,

Any chance of updating the custom1 OpenGL to include ripple water effects?