35 replies to this topic

[Rampage Dev]

No Crossfire or SLI in Mac regardless the card.

GT cards are still fermi.

[q64ceo]

GreenElf, on 07 February 2013 - 05:47 PM, said:

....And here I go again...   Thoughts on a Radeon 6870, workable without flashing in 10.8? and I'm sure I know the answer, but crossfire does not work with non-EFI cards?

Edit: Hrm... So some of these cards I see on NewEgg, e.g. an MSI GT620, list 96 cuda cores, but list it as a fermi card? I've done a lot of reading, but can't seem to find a definitive answer on what will work and what won't...  :/

Get at least a 650. Its cheap for its performance.

[bonestonne]

The GTX660TI is near identical performance with the GTX580 with much lower power usage, if that's of any concern to anyone. In testing with Adobe's Mercury Playback Engine, the difference between the two cards was 1 second.

Offhand, I'm not 100% sure what the Mac Pro power supply is (likely far more than it needs), but being cautious in terms of power usage is always wise.

[GreenElf]

bonestonne, on 10 February 2013 - 04:13 PM, said:

The GTX660TI is near identical performance with the GTX580 with much lower power usage, if that's of any concern to anyone. In testing with Adobe's Mercury Playback Engine, the difference between the two cards was 1 second.

Offhand, I'm not 100% sure what the Mac Pro power supply is (likely far more than it needs), but being cautious in terms of power usage is always wise.

The spec sheet says 300W  max

Rampage Dev, on 10 February 2013 - 05:27 AM, said:

No Crossfire or SLI in Mac regardless the card.

GT cards are still fermi.

I thought so about XFire. And is Fermi inherently bad, even if they state CUDA cores?

[bonestonne]

A standard Mac Pro has a 980W power supply, at least from the information I can muster up. The GTX660Ti has a max TDP of 150W. The rest of the Mac will use a fair amount of wattage, under full load, probably close to 400-450W. Given the source of many parts within the Mac Pro, I wouldn't want to put the PSU under a high load, as I wouldn't be surprised if the PSU failed under a 60% load or higher in prolonged situations.

The GTX580 by nVidia's website lists a TDP of 244W, significantly higher than the GTX660Ti.

If you're looking to use the card for Adobe hardware rendering with the Mercury Playback engine, despite the higher boost clock of the GTX580, the GTX660TI will be nearly identical in performance, but it will use a significantly lower amount of power. The GTX660Ti also has more CUDA cores, which the Mercury Playback Engine will be able to utilize better.

[Rampage Dev]

bonestonne, on 12 February 2013 - 02:17 AM, said:

A standard Mac Pro has a 980W power supply, at least from the information I can muster up. The GTX660Ti has a max TDP of 150W. The rest of the Mac will use a fair amount of wattage, under full load, probably close to 400-450W. Given the source of many parts within the Mac Pro, I wouldn't want to put the PSU under a high load, as I wouldn't be surprised if the PSU failed under a 60% load or higher in prolonged situations.

The GTX580 by nVidia's website lists a TDP of 244W, significantly higher than the GTX660Ti.

If you're looking to use the card for Adobe hardware rendering with the Mercury Playback engine, despite the higher boost clock of the GTX580, the GTX660TI will be nearly identical in performance, but it will use a significantly lower amount of power. The GTX660Ti also has more CUDA cores, which the Mercury Playback Engine will be able to utilize better.

You a misleading in your post.

The mac pro uses a lot more power then you stated. A lot more.

The Nvidia Fermi cards out perform the newer cards in all CUDA applications. Nvidia changed how they use CUDA cores:


GTX 580 has 512 CUDA cores, but it's not as straightforward. Kepler is a vastly different marchitecture to Fermi. Previously Nvidia's design philosophy was few high efficiency big shaders at high clocks (2 x core clocks). So, GTX 580's 512 shaders were 'hotclocked' at 1550 MHz. With Kepler Nvidia has adopted AMD's model - many small, dense not-as-efficient shaders at low clocks (AMD 7970 has 2048 shaders at 925 MHz). GTX 680 has 1536 shaders clocked at 1006 MHz. Kepler shaders are smaller and less complex, most notable FP64 has dropped to 1/24th rate versus 1/8th for Fermi. So, the numbers are not really comparable. However, what is up is FP32 and thus single precision FLOPS. Way up, at 90+%. FP16 texture fillrate is also up massively, though this has little relevance to CUDA. Memory bandwidth is identical, 192 GB/s, GTX 580 has a wider 384-bit memory bus. In more complex compute (CUDA/OpenCL/DirectCompute) applications GTX 580 is still faster. Perhaps Premiere Pro is not as complex, relying mostly on single precision brute force.

[GreenElf]

Thanks for the info Bone! To clarify, according to what I read, they suggest not to exceed 300W for the GPU itself on a MacPro 3.1 (Early 2008). From what I can tell, the Mercury Playback engine is mostly for video editing in Premiere, which I don't do, but it's also used somewhat in Photoshop CS6, again for video editing/rendering.

I'm largely looking for a gaming card that's better than what I have, which is an NVidia 8800GT 512, with the best bang for the very limited bucks I have to work with.

Edit: Ha! Damn you guys are smart! Great info Rampage! So Fermi is *better*?

[Rampage Dev]

GreenElf, on 12 February 2013 - 04:47 PM, said:

Thanks for the info Bone! To clarify, according to what I read, they suggest not to exceed 300W for the GPU itself on a MacPro 3.1 (Early 2008). From what I can tell, the Mercury Playback engine is mostly for video editing in Premiere, which I don't do, but it's also used somewhat in Photoshop CS6, again for video editing/rendering.

I'm largely looking for a gaming card that's better than what I have, which is an NVidia 8800GT 512, with the best bang for the very limited bucks I have to work with.

Edit: Ha! Damn you guys are smart! Great info Rampage! So Fermi is *better*?

For Video work, yes Fermi based cards are better. With the Nvidia Retail drivers you do not need EFI:

http://forums.macrum...d.php?t=1440150

[GreenElf]

Once again Rampage, you ROCK hardcore!!! Thanks for the link! (I swear I read that article too, but I'm on info overload sometimes! )

[bonestonne]

Rampage, I'd like to see someone plug their mac into a Kill A Watt, and actually watch the power usage. I'm pretty confident in my estimates.

[GreenElf]

Any thoughts on an Asus 2GB GT 520?

Edit: Meh... consumer reviews say its crap for games....

[Rampage Dev]

GreenElf, on 27 February 2013 - 07:39 PM, said:

Any thoughts on an Asus 2GB GT 520?

Edit: Meh... consumer reviews say its crap for games....

What about a Flashed AMD 6870? I have two that work great.

[q64ceo]

GreenElf, on 27 February 2013 - 07:39 PM, said:

Any thoughts on an Asus 2GB GT 520?

Edit: Meh... consumer reviews say its crap for games....

Pro-tip for nVidia cards

Anything between the range of X10 and X30 is complete crap. Avoid them like SARS.

IE The 610 is terrible; the 660ti is awesome

[GreenElf]

Rampage Dev, on 27 February 2013 - 08:49 PM, said:

What about a Flashed AMD 6870? I have two that work great.

I'll take a look into that! Thanks again Rampage, you've been a great help!

q64ceo, on 27 February 2013 - 11:47 PM, said:

Pro-tip for nVidia cards

Anything between the range of X10 and X30 is complete crap. Avoid them like SARS.

IE The 610 is terrible; the 660ti is awesome

OK, good to know, thanks!

[GreenElf]

I see more manufacturers are putting out Mac editions of their cards. This is great, but I don't have 500+ to shell out for a AMD 7950 or GTX680... What about the 2xx series of NVidia cards? I see GTX280/285s around. In your experience, will Apple's native/NVidia's retail drivers work on PC versions without issue? (There is a Mac edition of the 285, but again it's hefty in price)

[GreenElf]

Any thoughts about the NVidia Quadro series? I know some Mac used Quadro cards, but do non-EFI ones work with the ML or retail drivers?