D700 vs GTX 980 Ti - Disappointment

[sirio76]

You forgot to mention that there is no crossfire in OSX. So, for any OpenGl app in OS X , the D700 isn't even on the same playing field.

Wrong, there's not a single pro app capable of using SLI/crossfire for OpenGL tasks. Only games will benefit from that.

 

[Redneck1089]

Wrong, there's not a single pro app capable of using SLI/crossfire for OpenGL tasks. Only games will benefit from that.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but at least under OS X there are some multi-GPU aware apps, such as FCP X...right?

 

[sirio76]

There are many softwares that can make usage of multiple GPU for compute task, but for OpenGL tasks all the professional softwares that I know of* only use a single card.
*At least this is true for 3d packages, where OpenGL performance really matter.

 

[ActionableMango]

This may be what they want you to believe, but not true in my experience (Or from anything I've read from a non-biased source). But this "common wisdom" continues similar to the same thing some continue to say about Xeons.

AMD has claimed greater reliability in workstation GPUs. I don't know if that passes your bias test, but at least it's straight from the source and not just wishful thinking from workstation GPU users.

 

[Roykor]

It's certainly true comparing Apple products. A gaming card versus another workstation using a consumer GPU I don't think you'll face as many (or any) longevity/perf issues, unless you rely on the ECC RAM most workstation GPUs provide.

To a degree it's entirely true that for most people an i7 and a gaming card will get you almost as much or even better performance versus Xeons and workstation cards at a lower to significantly lower price point, but it's often about more than just stats—Xeons are almost certainly going to be the best binned chips, ECC RAM makes a difference, having more cores and more PCIe lanes matters, et al.

I think (my humble opinion) the Xeons only matters when you would like to use two cpu's in one system. Or, if you are crushing videos all day long. The GTX 980ti is maybe "just" a gaming card. Its the top of the line. And these cards are doing well, very well. I think that there is a good change that Apple is playing safe with slightly older hardware.

That said, i think and i whish, although it will never come.. that there is room for a configuration between the iMac and the MacPro. Face it, the iMac is an all-in-one. Not everyone is looking for this setup. The MacPro is an workstation with Xeon, ECC memory and dual GPU (very expensive). Where is the workhorse in between? An i7 6-core (5820k, 5930k) or i7 8-core (5960x) with an x99 chipset and an single monster GPU card. These CPU's are fast and you can buy it for a reasonable price.

For example, Photoshop is not working well with dual GPU. Adobe reports that it even can give you problems in performance. There are more professional software out there that doenst eat dual gpu setups. So, one of the cards in the Macpro wil run idle and you miss a lot of muscle power. Right!? Why would i go for an Macpro is the content creating software i work with, is not benefit the hardware?

With the a new Macpro maybe on his way, I am still interested. But i have to say that an PC configuration with W10 is an interesting option to do my daily workload without lag and beachballs.

 

[Mikael S]

My nMP with D700 is in OSX very similar to the 5k Retina imac in performance (I used to have one with M295x).
In Win10 when both cards are used it's actually quite much faster, although I agree the crossfire implementation sometimes presents some strange side effects..

Im curios to see what Metal adds to multi-cpu setups such as nMP.. Or Dx12 on Win10..

Right now in il Capitan Metal is not enabled on the Dxxx cards, as far as I am informed. Perhaps this will change with 10.11.2?