Asus Stix Gtx 970 in Mac Pro Has Low Fps in Many Games and in Cinebench

[Ibrahim Elsharkawy]

Hi,
I recently got a new Graphics card for my Mac Pro 3,1 it is a Asus Stix Gtx 970 OC 4 gb. I'm on The latest Yosemite Version 10.10.4 and I installed the latest Nvidia (346.02.02f03 or 10.5.2) and Cuda Drivers (7.0.61) for Mac , But in cinabench I get an average fps of 37 and in games like cs:go I get 80 Fps on Low settings while people with the same card get in the 100s in cinabench and 200-300 fps in cs:go with my settings.Why is this? and is there a way to fix it?
Please Help ASAP
Thank You

 

[bladerunner2000]

CPUs are the bottleneck. You need a new machine to take advantage of the GPU. You're better off getting something like a GTX 650 Ti as its much cheaper and will yield more or less the same results.

 

[Ibrahim Elsharkawy]

CPUs are the bottleneck. You need a new machine to take advantage of the GPU. You're better off getting something like a GTX 650 Ti as its much cheaper and will yield more or less the same results.

I did a test to see if that was the case but it wasn't. I have 2 x 2.8 quad core xeons . But I did notice my ram was always at 100% usage does that affect anything?

 

[Asgorath]

I did a test to see if that was the case but it wasn't.

How, exactly? Put it this way: you're pairing a system from 2008 using CPU technology from 1-2 years earlier than that with a GPU from 2015. One of these will not be able to keep up with the other.

 

[h9826790]

But I did notice my ram was always at 100% usage does that affect anything?

100% RAM usage is good, unless the memory pressure is red, there is nothing to worry about it. Yosemite is very good at fully utilise all the RAM to speed up the system.

 

[MacVidCards]

3,1 has a fast and hard speed wall from CPU/FSB

No GPU I have can best 35fps in Uningine Valley Extreme HD preset, up to that speed, many cards score lower but 7970 and above all get 35 fps because CPU/FSB stops them.

Put same cards in 4,1/5,1 and they line up in layers to 55 fps

Don't get me started on Cinebench

 

[Fl0r!an]

Cinebench is as meaningful as asking my grandma about GPU performance.
For other benchmarks, compare with the benchmarks I made a few days ago: R9 280 in MacPro 3,1
Your card should normally easily outperform mine. However, your CS:GO score hints at a large CPU overhead in Nvidia drivers. Take this benchmark for best comparability.

 

[Ibrahim Elsharkawy]

Cinebench is as meaningful as asking my grandma about GPU performance.
For other benchmarks, compare with the benchmarks I made a few days ago: R9 280 in MacPro 3,1
Your card should normally easily outperform mine. However, your CS:GO score hints at a large CPU overhead in Nvidia drivers. Take this benchmark for best comparability.

I took the test and i got these results:

7487 Frames 86.468 seconds 86.59 fps (11.55 ms/f) 18.448 Fps Variability

 

[pastrychef]

3,1 has a fast and hard speed wall from CPU/FSB

No GPU I have can best 35fps in Uningine Valley Extreme HD preset, up to that speed, many cards score lower but 7970 and above all get 35 fps because CPU/FSB stops them.

I wonder how much longer it will be before the 4,1s and 5,1s hit this barrier and it would no longer be feasible to continue upgrading.

 

[MacVidCards]

I wonder how much longer it will be before the 4,1s and 5,1s hit this barrier and it would no longer be feasible to continue upgrading.

I would be lying if I said that this hasn't occurred to me.

Not yet, though.

Fortunately Apple set the bar really low in the 6,1 so pretty easy to outdo the AMD space heaters in current one.

 

[Fl0r!an]

7487 Frames 86.468 seconds 86.59 fps (11.55 ms/f) 18.448 Fps Variability

Looks a little low to me. I don't have a better explaination than huge CPU overhead of the driver. Can you do some other benchmarks from my linked post?

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Cinebench doesn't run properly on GTX980 OSX. Gets lower scores than 680.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

I wonder how much longer it will be before the 4,1s and 5,1s hit this barrier and it would no longer be feasible to continue upgrading.

In a couple of years you will feel the bottlenecks in 'real world scenarios' But you will still be able to play modern games with it at highest quality...just lower the resolution. Right now there's very little difference in 3D graphics performance with an equivalent PC.

Compute performance won't be hampered much. You could use a cMP for that as long as the machine lives.

Storage wise, if x8 lane or SATA 3.2 cards come out that work with the x16 slot then you can have lots of speed.

Windows will support these machines longer than OSX.