6 replies to this topic

[Ed]

It's been almost two years since the Mac Pro got an update. And they're at their most expensive ever, with the base 4-core tower unit clocking in at $2,499… all that for a machine made in 2010 that still supports only 3GB/s transfer rates and outdated graphics cards!?

Whether or not the Mac Pro goes the way of the Xserve and gets phased out, awesome benchmarking site BareFeats (one of my personal favorite sites) wanted to see how the latest graphics card from AMD, the Radeon HD 7970 fared.

Here's one of the graphs plotted, showing frames per second in Starcraft 2:



Head on over to the full report over at BareFeats to get the full low down and analysis.

Let us know if you've built yourself a Mac Pro, or why not even submit your own Mac mod in our MacMod of the month competition.

Click here to view the article

[RobinSchouten]

Nice! I think this motivates people to customize their Mac, which is a good thing.

Possibly, Apple realizes that there is a much higher demand for Macbooks and iMacs than there is for Mac Pros. Too bad, because those are the most interesting for us since they often have similar hardware as our hackintoshes!

[TH3L4UGH1NGM4N]

Is it me or does the older Fermi gtx 58O still beat out a current gen 797O.

[eep357]

i

TH3L4UGH1NGM4N, on 13 May 2012 - 01:13 AM, said:

Is it me or does the older Fermi gtx 58O still beat out a current gen 797O.

On Star Craft 2 Roundabout War---Yes
The bechmarks were run in windows using bootcamp, so are not a reflection of how any of the cards referenced perform in OSX, but 7970 did beat out the 580 in the other 2 benches ran and was only edged out by 580 on the starcraft bench, could be particular code is better optimized for Nvidia vs AMD and/or early version of AMD drivers may still have some qwerks, or.....other Windowzy/Star-Crafty stuff.

From same article, <Luxmark 2.0 "Room" gpu only: HD 7970=1003 samples/sec; GTX 580=649 samples/sec>, <Wow Narache Run 25x14 High (FPS): HD 7970=201; GTX 580=178>

Conclusion: If you primarily use your MacPro (or similar) to run Windows in Bootcamp and render scenes of rooms all day long, the HD 7970 is definitely the card you'll want. For me, I'll need to see the HD 7970 benched in OSX with full HW acceleration before deciding what I think about it. GTX 680 should beat it in all the above, but at a bit higher cost, and you gotta find one first. If performance and price both put it between the 580 and 680, no reason not to be happy with any of them.

[TH3L4UGH1NGM4N]

Oh they are bootcamp based benches no wonder.  Luxmark I'd of course assume the 797O would beat out the 58O but with real world situations and gaming the 58O seems to hold it's weight.  In my opinion eep, I'd say hold on for the 68O support in OS X as it's at that sweet 5OO price mark and if you recall the 797O was more expensive than the 68O but we all know why the price dropped.  

For price to performance ratio not to mention power consumption I believe nVidia for once has crushed out AMD this round of gpus.  Only thing holding me off is the availability of the 68O as it literally flies off shelves once hit retailers.  With the multimonitor support of the 68O I'd be all over it like

[eep357]

Agreed, AMD has been playing catch-up ever since they released the 6000 series without all the next gen silicone they had orig planned for, due to longer R&D times than expected. But can't make money without new cards! So what should have been more like the 7000 series is now, became the 6000 series and has since put them a half generation behind you know who. As for real world benches, Star Craft 2 and WoW are what all the cool kids will be playing next year, so you can't get any more real world than that

[TH3L4UGH1NGM4N]

I've always saw the 6xxx as a half gen and not a full one because the 68xx didn't fare so well against the last gen 58xx.  We both know that AMD is a money making company nonetheless so if it's to fabricate some half ass silicon as a next gen they'll most certainly do it for the $$$.  I'll be content with my 687O until a 68O from the girls in green joins it in my rig.

The cool kids will of course be happy with the 7xxx cards because it will run their games they want in their fantasy worlds but for us grown up nerds we'll happily accept the CUDA cores for real gaming  and nerdgasm on ourselves like so