topic NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility in Installation & update

NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

owen — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 00:26:17 GMT

The above card does not appear in the Video Card database. We are experiencing some strange selection bugs (see attached image) on both of our 2 new MacPro workstations with these cards (see sig for full system info). The problem occurs with any non-black pens, is not limited to grouped elements and is not file specific. However it does not occur on the new machines with a New>Use Default Project Settings file. As it does not occur with existing files on the old G5's, so I am starting to think there is something in the office template which these new video cards do not like.

Has anyone had an problems with these cards?

I hope to be moving us over to 10 shortly and so a new template from scratch may solve the problem but only for those projects in the early stages.

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 19:04:39 GMT

We are considering buying a couple of Mac Pros in a week or so. Has your office tried the Mac Pro with AC10 yet? Is the graphics card still an issue?

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

owen — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 05:53:40 GMT

the office finally bit the bullet yesterday and upgraded to AC10 but i haven't had the chance to install it yet. Should do Monday so will let you know when i do.

I am looking forward to see what all these rather expensive workstations we just bought can do with native software though

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

__archiben — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 01:32:20 GMT

owen wrote:
the office finally bit the bullet yesterday and upgraded to AC10 but i haven't had the chance to install it yet. Should do Monday so will let you know when i do.

I am looking forward to see what all these rather expensive workstations we just bought can do with native software though

owen - i would appreciate a quick review of the mac pro with the standard NVIDIA GeForce 7300 256MB card if that's what you have there . . ?

we are just about to invest in one of these machines (i would have preferred an ATI 512MB card, but i'm not paying the bills . . .) but i would appreciate a warning if indeed archicad is not fully compatible with those cards . . .

thanks!
ben

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

__archiben — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 02:01:02 GMT

ah ha!

this doesn't look good:
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=13896&highlight=

(although as far as i'm aware the compatibility test still uses an older AC9 file, so maybe the issue is only with legacy files?)

~/archiben

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

owen — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 23:32:33 GMT

I didn't realise the AUS PPC and Mactel versions still ship in separate boxes so I won't be able to check it until later this week. I am downloading the INT version now though so i will try it out - there shouldn't be any difference between the two that would affect graphics

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

owen — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 01:17:44 GMT

OK i just ran most of the tests in the AC9 test file with no problems, and the problem shown above in 9 does not occur when i open the file in AC10 1010INT.

I guess this discussion should move over to the other thread then

PS. Ben my first impression of AC10 on this spec MacPro is it smokes! No obvious problems but i will keep you posted as i get into a real project with it.

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 15:03:56 GMT

owen wrote:
The above card does not appear in the Video Card database.

Now it is. And the review is not the best...

owen wrote:
Has anyone had an problems with these cards?

I hope to be moving us over to 10 shortly and so a new template from scratch may solve the problem but only for those projects in the early stages.

I'm evaluating to go to take a MacPro, so I'm wondering if the extra x1900 will be a good investment, or not. Looking the unique review I found on 7300, I can think it's so, but I didn't have any review on x1900, and you seems not to be so much disappointed with your 7300. With a all new template from AC10, you didn't have any problem? If you can choose now to change your graphic card, adding the difference, do you think it would do so?
Or simply, between:
- MacPro/2.66 with 2Gb ram and ATI x1900
- MacPro/2.66 with 4Gb ram and GF7300GT
what would you rate?

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

owen — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 00:39:54 GMT

I only had a few days to play around with AC10 AUS before the holidays but i did not experience any problems with the 7300GT - with our v9 files, a new V10 file and the v9 graphics card test file. So to me it looks like a problem with AC9 and the MacPro w/ 7300GT.

I have not had any experience with the x1900 but my understanding is the graphics card will make little difference for AC ... RAM on the other hand makes a big difference so i would definately go with 4Gb rather than 2Gb. We have 5Gb on all our new machines and you really do notice it when you are running multiple apps (like 2 copies of AC)

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 13:38:48 GMT

So I'm got a MacPro 2.66 / 3Gb ram / 7300GT, but... In a day I had just the second KP, both in Archicad's OpenGL window. I hope it's not the normality! I had another bad experience with nvidia graphic card on a PowerMac G5 1.6 mono, and the solution was to use the machine as new Server for our office.
Did you (or anybody other) have any KP with your MacPros?

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 15:41:33 GMT

KP?

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 16:14:22 GMT

Matthew wrote:
KP?

Kernel Panic.
Sorry, I thought KP was a well know acronym (same as windows blue screen, for windows user).

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

owen — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 23:02:46 GMT

Ah you mean this one (see attached)

No i have not had a single one of those on any of our Mactel machines yet. At my old office we had several G5's that would crash to that screen increasingly frequently. Eventually every one of them suffered a complete meltdown and needed to be sent off to Apple for repair. I don't know if they were nVidia, ATI or a mix but i'm pretty sure they turned out to be hard drive problems. We had 30 odd G5's of varying models though so 3 machines over a two year period isn't to bad imo.

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

Anonymous — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 09:18:29 GMT

borgo1971 wrote:
Matthew wrote:
KP?

Kernel Panic.
Sorry, I thought KP was a well know acronym (same as windows blue screen, for windows user).

I guess I've seen it so rarely (and not at all so far in my experience with Mactel machines) that the meaning didn't occur to me. I have (of course) seen plenty of the Blue Screen of Death, but I haven't seen it abbreviated. (BSD, BSoD?)

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:03:47 GMT

borgo1971 wrote:
So I'm got a MacPro 2.66 / 3Gb ram / 7300GT, but... In a day I had just the second KP, both in Archicad's OpenGL window. I hope it's not the normality! I had another bad experience with nvidia graphic card on a PowerMac G5 1.6 mono, and the solution was to use the machine as new Server for our office.
Did you (or anybody other) have any KP with your MacPros?

I have heard of this problem with 3GB of RAM and the NVIDIA GeForce 7300. Taking out the 2 512 sticks apparently solved the panic problem but of course you are left with 2GB instead of 3GB.

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 11:12:24 GMT

sam66 wrote:
I have heard of this problem with 3GB of RAM and the NVIDIA GeForce 7300. Taking out the 2 512 sticks apparently solved the panic problem but of course you are left with 2GB instead of 3GB.

Very strange... Is this a know problem related to MacPros? Where did you hear about this? Are you sure there was not more simply a buggy module in the 512 sticks?

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 13:05:26 GMT

The 512 sticks came with the computer and work fine. 2Gb was added and the problems started. The mac reseller performed tests and it was found that 3Gb of RAM caused the problem. It might be the combination of RAM sticks, I'm not sure.

If you go to the MacPro section of Apple discussions and search for kernel panic (and kernal panic) you will find a lot of people having memory related panic issues.

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

__archiben — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 23:18:19 GMT

i'm currently testing a 2x 2.66GHz dual-core xeon mac pro. 5GB RAM and the 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics card. all the RAM came from the mac dealer out of the box.

i've had 3 kernel panics in a little over 24 hours. haven't had one since about 10.1 on an old Ti powerbook . . .

something's up . . .

~/archiben

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 14:03:48 GMT

~/archiben wrote:
i've had 3 kernel panics in a little over 24 hours. haven't had one since about 10.1 on an old Ti powerbook . . .

something's up . . .

~/archiben

At last I've returned my new MacPro and Crucial Memories with RMA...
I can't be sure the issue was memory related, they was too random and I had too less time (I can't cause one on purpose), but I didn't have any without the Crucial memory mounted. On the other side, the kernel panic logs made me think more at graphic card or drivers fault.
Now I'm working with my MacBook (1st week), that with it's GMA950 didn't give me any problem of this kind... I'll try again with next model of MacPro (MacBook is not exactly a workstation, even I prefer work with it then with the MacPro I owned)

Re: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256Mb Compatibility

__archiben — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 21:00:03 GMT

borgo1971 wrote:
I can't be sure the issue was memory related, they was too random and I had too less time (I can't cause one on purpose), but I didn't have any without the Crucial memory mounted. On the other side, the kernel panic logs made me think more at graphic card or drivers fault.
Now I'm working with my MacBook (1st week), that with it's GMA950 didn't give me any problem of this kind... I'll try again with next model of MacPro (MacBook is not exactly a workstation, even I prefer work with it then with the MacPro I owned)

i heard back from GS - it's not the memory - it's an apple issue with that graphics card combined with more than 2GB RAM. they sent me a couple of links which sort of describe the problem...

http://lists.apple.com/archives/darwin-drivers/2006/Oct/msg00006.html
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=27883585&sid=1

the solutions are to take out the extra-over RAM (or temporarily limit the amount of used RAM to 2GB using the terminal/command line), get a better graphics card, or wait for apple to fix it.

my thoughts are to wait for apple - 10.4.9 is rumoured to be released pretty soon. and that'll be the round-up of all outstanding major bugs in tiger before they move on to leopard . . .

~/archiben