Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
GeForce GTX 480 on a Mac PRO. Possible?
- Thread starter rasert
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
>40% faster on Monte Carlo
I ran another test on the 480 vs the 285. MonteCarloMultiGPU comes up with about 118000 options per second on the 480 against 83000 on the 285, or just over 40% faster. So this is OK but so far it is only on double precision stuff that we are seeing a real hike (x2). Early days on drivers, compilers is my guess. Found no problems with it under Bootcamp - seems very stable.
Cannot find out much about internals - Nibitor does not recognize the card
I ran another test on the 480 vs the 285. MonteCarloMultiGPU comes up with about 118000 options per second on the 480 against 83000 on the 285, or just over 40% faster. So this is OK but so far it is only on double precision stuff that we are seeing a real hike (x2). Early days on drivers, compilers is my guess. Found no problems with it under Bootcamp - seems very stable.
Cannot find out much about internals - Nibitor does not recognize the card
480 now pushing out > 700Gflops
I should correct my earlier observation about the 480 vs 285. Things are now rather better regarding the 480 perf. If in CUDA you vary the number of bodies in the nbody simulation you find that above about 100000 bodies the 480 easily punches through 700 Gflops compared to about 500 for the 285. Moreover you can do bigger problems - try 200000 on a 285 and it dies, but the 480 pumps it out. I am more impressed the more I play!
I should correct my earlier observation about the 480 vs 285. Things are now rather better regarding the 480 perf. If in CUDA you vary the number of bodies in the nbody simulation you find that above about 100000 bodies the 480 easily punches through 700 Gflops compared to about 500 for the 285. Moreover you can do bigger problems - try 200000 on a 285 and it dies, but the 480 pumps it out. I am more impressed the more I play!
Are you crazy? You want massive 3rd degree burns on your body? Do you have a nuclear reactor to power your Mac Pro?
I love you...
Attachments
WOW, fanboy alert!! 
Just wanted to say, in the UK, using Scan.co.uk, the price difference between the cheapest 480 and 5970 is £76.22 or $113.48. So they are hardly in the same price range in my country.
The ATI does run faster however people have already noted that the 480 is smoother and doesn't glitch as much. Also quickly read a review in PC Pro today and they concluded the 480 'smokes' the 5870 in all tests. They also said the Cuda cores are a big advantage for OpenCL etc.
If it was my money, I really don't know which I would get to be honest. Most likely the 480, cheaper then the 5970, faster with more features then the 5870. But apparently there's a rumoured 5890 coming out?
As for the Mac, I think Nvidia cards have had more chance of being made to work then ATI ones have they not? I would be happy with either a 5870 or 480 or 5970 working in OSX, especially for Steam.
Just wanted to say, in the UK, using Scan.co.uk, the price difference between the cheapest 480 and 5970 is £76.22 or $113.48. So they are hardly in the same price range in my country.
The ATI does run faster however people have already noted that the 480 is smoother and doesn't glitch as much. Also quickly read a review in PC Pro today and they concluded the 480 'smokes' the 5870 in all tests. They also said the Cuda cores are a big advantage for OpenCL etc.
If it was my money, I really don't know which I would get to be honest. Most likely the 480, cheaper then the 5970, faster with more features then the 5870. But apparently there's a rumoured 5890 coming out?
As for the Mac, I think Nvidia cards have had more chance of being made to work then ATI ones have they not? I would be happy with either a 5870 or 480 or 5970 working in OSX, especially for Steam.
That rumor is based upon close inspection of the 5870's power supply ports (two 6-pins).
The PCB shows clear sign of an extra VRM and MosFET that can be added, as well as one of the 6-pins has an extra 2 dots that would accommodate an 8-pin adapter instead. This will deliver 75W from the 6-pin and 150W from the new 8-pin plus 75W from the PCIe port, meaning this new card could be more power hungry card, but the trade off should be a 5870 GPU on steroids, in other words a 5890.
And no, I am not a fanboy, I used nVidia during the 8800 card series, but their recent GPU offering is a big JOKE, and I will not stand by it. It gets hot enough to boil water and cook eggs.
Very funny but totally OTT. The thing is sitting there right next to a Mac 285 and it is NOT powered off a "nuclear reactor" but an external Toughpower 1kW supply, as recommended by several people who do CUDA work. OK, it DOES get a but warm but as it is pushing 720Gflops in single precision it is to be expected. It is TWICE as fast as the 285 on double precision and the sums suggest the corresponding Tesla 2050/70 may be 3x faster again. I think we should pay attention to the numbers.
Very funny but totally OTT. The thing is sitting there right next to a Mac 285 and it is NOT powered off a "nuclear reactor" but an external Toughpower 1kW supply, as recommended by several people who do CUDA work. OK, it DOES get a but warm but as it is pushing 720Gflops in single precision it is to be expected. It is TWICE as fast as the 285 on double precision and the sums suggest the corresponding Tesla 2050/70 may be 3x faster again. I think we should pay attention to the numbers.
You need an external power adapter?!
Oh sweet Jesus i lol'd!
Nvidia status:
[] not told
[x] told
thanks uguu~
Attachments
This is not news. The Mac Pro has a whopper of a PSU but in the Apple Pro design it is not configured with a raft of PCI power outputs for many 6- and 8-pin cards. The motherboard supports 2x6-pin and it is easy to get a third 6-pin from the DVD power line. I think Cindori has a post somewhere for how to get 4x6-pin but I was already playing safe with a daughter PSU to power two 285s that need 4x6-pin. A config of a 285 and a 480 needs 3 6-pin and 1 8-pin so rather than do some more rerouting I stuck with daughter PSU. This is actually an **advantage** as I power it up for Windows but do not for some flavours of OS X that crash (for now) when I have injectors trying to load a 480, due to drivers not being here.
So a supplementary PSU is for now exactly the right way to manage a 480 in a Mac, until Apple/Nvidia release drivers and Apple sort out the power routing to support more high end PCI cards, hopefully in a 2010 Pro....
2009 Pro owners with a 120, requiring no PCI connectors, ought to be able to stick in a 470 (2x6?) and run off the motherboard connectors and close the case, and a suspect with some simple wiring a 120+480 is also possible with no other PSU. But this would be fine for Windows, but any injectors would need to be removed.
There are also small supplemental PSU's that fit in an optical bay (5.25" GPU PSU example). IIRC, they've been used successfully in MP's by other MR members.
I forgot out the internal PSU options - thanks nanofrog. FYI here is how I have powered my rig. The Mac 285 is on the bottom and is taken its 2x6-pin power from the motherboard connectors at the top right. The 480 is on top and is being fed a 6- and 8-pin feed from the PSU (not shown) sitting on top of the case, via the big black and yellow cables. Hasn't melted yet.
Attachments
WOW, fanboy alert!!
Just wanted to say, in the UK, using Scan.co.uk, the price difference between the cheapest 480 and 5970 is £76.22 or $113.48. So they are hardly in the same price range in my country.
The ATI does run faster however people have already noted that the 480 is smoother and doesn't glitch as much. Also quickly read a review in PC Pro today and they concluded the 480 'smokes' the 5870 in all tests. They also said the Cuda cores are a big advantage for OpenCL etc.
If it was my money, I really don't know which I would get to be honest. Most likely the 480, cheaper then the 5970, faster with more features then the 5870. But apparently there's a rumoured 5890 coming out?
As for the Mac, I think Nvidia cards have had more chance of being made to work then ATI ones have they not? I would be happy with either a 5870 or 480 or 5970 working in OSX, especially for Steam.
Ohgod! Not this fanboy again! The guy who vigorously defended the 330m being put in the MBP over a 5650! LOL. I've been reading up on the performance between the three cards in question. In tessellation games, the 480 beats the 5870 by about 20%, but on most other games is equalled or beaten (BFBC2 the 480 is outperformed). The 5970 however (I have one btw, I speak from personal experience) has no stuttering @ all, and the quote "bugs" that you refer to were fixed within a couple of months of it being released. Way to dig up old data and compare it with new data, fanboy! This card crushes the 480 even in tessellation heavy games, and in my opinion is worth the extra 15% capital to get an extra 50 - 60% performance.
There's almost as much hot air coming out the the back of the 480 as there is in some of the posts in this thread, so my guess is it's being cooled OK. If you think I am mad, Google 4x SLI 480 and see some piccies of 4 of the blighters jammed together.
As for the Ati vs Nvidia war that has spilled over here - programming the Ati cards with OpenCL is still in its infancy and I have heard terrible reports of performance. Getting double the DP flops going from 285 to 480 under CUDA is by contrast, a winner by a mile (and that is ignoring the fact that the Tesla's now have 3x the DP cores as the 480).
I did not 'vigourously' defend the 330, I stated it was better because of the automatic switching which it is, ATI don't do that. The funny thing is, if you joined this forum in January, December and you bothered to read the decent proper waiting for Arrandale thread which had good normal discussions without silly pictures and flaming you would see me saying I was hoping for an ATI card. But as you obviously haven't then go ahead and put words in my mouth and make assumptions about me that are false. I couldn't care less.
Oh and this video pretty much proves the GTX480 is the same temperature as the 5970, one video of a series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa_QAgMetG0
So please stop talking crap people. I'm also pretty sure he has one very good PSU. Not a nuclear power plant!!
Well you see, the GTX 480 is still a fire hazard because the thermal envelop of the HD5970 is of a dual GPU card on 1 PCB, versus a 1 GPU card that gets similarly hot and noisy.
That's a sign of a one pretty bad card. Imagine, you pay $499 for a single GPU card that creates heat and noise and consumes same power as a dual GPU. BAD BAD BAD is written all over the place.
Also as for GPU switching on the laptop level, true ATI doesn't do that, but neither does nVidia. Apple programmed it to do so (this isn't Optimus or whatever its called, which by the way is another steaming pile of crap). Also, everyone, please do not compare the 5970 to the 480, it's plain wrong. If anything the 480 should be compared to the 5870. Which performs a bit slower but drastically consumes less power, has drastic lower temperatures and noise levels. The GTX 480 is better than the 5870 by only a 6% margin tops in real world usage.
More information on this can be found on Anandtech.
I see your point on the heat. True, I can see the inefficiency. And you got me on the switching, Apple are geniuses. I'm just very happy to be able to switch without logging out.
And also agree on the comparison, the guy in the video did it because the Australian prices were closer with those models.
But lets face it, you would WANT to have a 5970 in your Mac Pro more right? But would the drivers be better? In Mac OSX that is. Would it give you that dual GPU power on one card?
No, in OS's current form (no Crossfire support). Its the same way for the 4870X2 (one core works, the other doesn't, unless it's fired up under Windows).
So for now, it's a waste under OS X for a dual GPU card. But if you need it for Windows, it might be worth it to you, depending on your specific needs.
How long until it does? I would predict it in the next OSX? Or is it hardware driven from the chipset too?
Nvidia has attepted to play this off as a
"feature"
"The chip is designed to run at high temperature so there is no effect on quality or longevity. We think the tradeoff is right."
Nvidia status:
[] told
[] not told
[x] melted
Apple's used ATI for a good while now, yet they still haven't introduced Crossfire support. It's theoretically possible to do so, but I wouldn't bet on it, let alone in the next revision. And in the case of Crossfire, it's in the drivers, not the chipset (which is the case with nVidia's products, and OS X doesn't support SLI either).
I wish it were more optimistic, but it is what it is.
As I stated in the GT330m thread, Apple developed the GPU switching independently of NVidia Optimus, so it would've made no difference which brand they went with; ATI or NVidia.
Also, GTX 480 same temperature as the 5970? I think not.
Well, the Nvidia GPU's have some hardware changes to allow them to use the auto switching, so I still don't think the ATI's could do it otherwise they would.
And I shall just post some video proof of that guy above testing both the cards and the same software stating the temperatures:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQLRP24rKhk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eras9dtIuUE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqBjfbHRCXw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIj_Ob_qlsI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa_QAgMetG0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii90EQF6CmA
So I'll believe all of that thanks.