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Frequently Asked Questions About NVIDIA PC (non-EFI) Graphics Cards
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Cool .... good to know that the GTX 660 has already been installed by someone else ... heheheh
And the performance of Mac Pro? Improved? It was faster?
I have a Mac Pro 4.1 .... and I'm anxious to see the result!
Now I'm even more excited!! My mac pro has 2 GT 120 ... It will be a great upgrade!!
The availability of the GTX 680 Mac Edition is just the icing on the cake.
Looking at the barefeats benchmarks there is only one test, where the 570 beats the 680 by a tiny margin: Davinci Resolve (55.7 vs. 54.9 fps)
On all the other 11 benchmarks, the 680 was faster. Not only in all gaming benchmarks but as well in the Ocean and Motion 5 benchmark (and Luxmark, which wasn't part of this test suite) the 680 blows the 570 totally into the dust.
I don't see a real world app, whether gaming or non-gaming, where the 570 is significantly better than the 680 but I see a lot incl. non-gaming, where the 680 is significantly better.
So your recommendation to get an 570 for best GPGPU performance seems no more valid regardless of the release of a 680 Mac version.
Correct me, if I'm wrong.
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@Cecco - this has been discussed so many times in here it is almost a joke. I believe you are perfectly right (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1360927/), but (supposedly) the GTX680, even though it has many more Cuda cores, is inferior to the GTX570 in Cuda optimised applications (CS for instance). Something to do with the utilisation of the cores.
The GTX680 is much faster in games, and most tests and benchmarks show this.
The GTX680 is much faster in games, and most tests and benchmarks show this.
I didn't think barefeats had tested the Mac Edition 680? They are testing the 680MX which would be the mobile addition in the iMac.
What am I missing?
That fact remains true and has to do with the architecture of how they're built, but with the GTX 570 supply drying up, it's nice to have an officially supported GTX 680 option, even for those needing Adobe performance boost. It's still a major upgrade in terms of performance for the majority of people, regardless of usage. Really hoping Adobe starts adding these new cards to their recommended list with official support.
I just installed a EVGA GTX 570 in my Mac Pro. But then I realized how to get a boot option or if I need to reinstall the operating system. Is there a way to do that without switching video cards?
@linuxcooldude - with a PC graphics card in your Mac Pro you will NOT have a boot menu. You have a choice to put in a Mac card when you need it, or use the USB stick solution...
With a USB stick which has the OSX installation on it, or at least a Recovery Partition, you can boot into it, and from the Disk Utility there, set your boot drive.
With a USB stick which has the OSX installation on it, or at least a Recovery Partition, you can boot into it, and from the Disk Utility there, set your boot drive.
Great! Thanks, so pressing "C" on restart should automatically boot to the USB recovery disk?
Don't want to beat a dead horse but again look at the barefeats Premiere Pro test, which IMHO uses CUDA: The 680 is ahead of the 570.
The vast increase in cores gives the 680 a huge advantage in gaming performance but due the different architecture this doesn't scale the same in OpenCL/Cuda apps. Anyhow the 680 is still a tad bit faster in OpenCL/Cuda apps thus it is the better choice even for GPGPU usage.
If I'm wrong, point me to a resent benchmark, where the 570 is significantly ahead of the 680.
So I don't see a point to prefer the 570 over the 680 even for sole GPGPU usage other than for the probably lower price.
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He tested both, the 680MX inside an iMac and a PC GTX 680C in a Mac Pro. He didn't test the 680 Mac Edition.
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You are correct, and I will update the OP to reflect this based on the latest benchmark data from Barefeats. Seems like we were under-estimating the GPGPU capabilities of the Kepler family just a bit. Will be interesting to see how the GeForce Titan performs, assuming we get a driver that allows it to work soon.
Before everyone goes chucking their 570 into the bin, keep in mind a couple crucial facts.
The "680C" in those tests is in fact:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...E16814130801&gclid=CIfKoN-Bt7YCFW3ZQgodZzUAmA
Which is the high end of 680s and requires 2 @ 8 pins. Even the adventurous types would not install such a card without external power.
The actual Mac Edition is going to fall much below that, especially at lower clocks and half the RAM.
Also keep in mind that a 570 can be used in 10.7.5 while a 680 can not.
So the GTX5xx cards will be end of the road for 1,1 and 2,1 machines unless they get adventurous and use Chameleon to load ML.
The 570 supply is extremely tight and we found it difficult to even source Rob a single 2.5 to test. In the 680s favor I would also point out that a GTX570 in the more garden variety of 1.3 GB isn't especially useful in Resolve as the limited RAM makes it unattractive.
The MAJOR PLUS to these new 6xx cards is the ability to run 4 displays. I have an EFI680 running now and watching 4 displays fire up is something. The grey boot screen starts on one then when it hits desktop, all four displays fire up.
For those who participated in the GTX6xx Beta driver testing (he, he) we will be offering an EFI upgrade service in the next few weeks. A new EEPROM with custom EFI rom will enable full function on 670 2 & 4 GB and 680 2 & 4 GB. We will start with walk ins from LA area, then expand to mail in as we work out the bugs and details.
Still working on Titan, the new EFI may or may not support it. 10.8.4 Beta driver supports it but OpenCl broken.
Not sure about you, but GTX 680 in Lion 10.7.5 looks fine to me
Actually...here is GTX 680 in Snow Leopard 10.6.8, too.
As you can see, still not there though. No acceleration, no proper VRAM, but basic display works.
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Well, this basically makes the card useless. Sure, it might be able to drive the display, but what's the point if it's completely unaccelerated?
Asked before, but not answered;
According to LuxMark my EVGA GTX680 "only" has 8 compute units in 10.8.3, and I think that was higher in 10.8.2. Also my LuxMark score is abysmal.
Is this a driver issue, and we're just waiting for the NVIDIA driver, or do I have a faulty setup?
According to LuxMark my EVGA GTX680 "only" has 8 compute units in 10.8.3, and I think that was higher in 10.8.2. Also my LuxMark score is abysmal.
Is this a driver issue, and we're just waiting for the NVIDIA driver, or do I have a faulty setup?
Thank you for the kind words of support.
The point is that because no one else made any progress on it before, I think it is a noteworthy achievement.
Since Snow Leopard was the last good OS Apple ever made, it only makes sense to continue developing for it, as there are tons of people still using it.
The only thing really lacking in Snow Leopard is support for new graphics cards. Otherwise the OS is fast and responsive, stable, and has a generally low memory footprint.
Not to mention it does not chew up and spit out SSDs like 10.8.3 did to many people (including myself) just recently.
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The number of compute units before was 32, which was wrong. 10.8.3 correctly reports that now.
What was your score in LuxMark (what scene?)
Huh, that's really bad. My GTX 570 scores around 1150.
Average score for the 680 in the Luxmark database is 1418, although it ranges from 1191 to 2011.
Maybe other 680 owners can post their scores, so we might get a better feeling what the "right" value is.
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Didn't realize, Rob used an overclocked card in his benchmark and he didn't mention it. IMHO doesn't make sense to add a card to the mix, that you can drive only with an external PSU. Who is really willing to do that.
So the question, whether the 570 is the card of choice for GPGPU usage, is open again. Hopefully we will see more benchmarks with non-overclocked 680 cards (2 or 4 GB) to answer it.
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In the first screen shot I posted you can see I ran the Sala test (medium scene) and got 1211. That was in Lion 10.7.5 with a PNY GTX 680 4GB and default clock.
I just ran the test in Mountain Lion and the score was 732. The drivers in the system are default 10.8.3 ones 304.10.65f03.
Not sure what to think of this. I already know that Mountain Lion, as well as Lion, are steaming pieces of turd when it comes to Operating Systems so I'm not surprised at all at the lousy scores.
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