Nvidia releases macOS beta driver with support for Pascal GPUs

Nvidia has released a beta driver for macOS that supports video cards with a Pascal GPU. The new Titan Xp video card is also supported. Among other things, the driver offers possibilities for makers of hackintosh systems.

Nvidia put the beta driver with type number 378.05.05.05f01 online on Tuesday. The description does not state that there is support for Pascal GPUs, but the file contains drivers for all video cards based on those GPUs.

Apple itself does not offer systems with recent Nvidia video cards, but the old Mac Pro systems, before the cylindrical version, can be upgraded by users with a PCIe video card of their choice. Now that there are macOS drivers for the Nvidia cards with Pascal GPUs, those systems can be equipped with video cards like the GTX 1080, 1070, 1060 and 1050, or the Titan X and Titan Xp.

It is also possible to put a video card in an external housing and connect it via thunderbolt. With the new driver, this also works with GTX 10 cards. For example, a user of the egpu forum shows that he has a GTX 1060 video card working in an external housing that is linked to a MacBook Pro from 2014. Also iMacs can be provided with more graphical computing power in this way.

Users who build their own system and want to install macOS on it, can now also use video cards with Pascal GPUs. Such hackintosh systems could previously only be equipped with GPUs of the Maxwell generation.

The arrival of a macOS beta driver with support for Pascal GPUs could indicate new devices from Apple that use new video cards from Nvidia. However, that need not be the case. Nvidia previously released macOS drivers for GPUs of the Maxwell generation, while Apple has never used those GPUs in its systems.