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Gpu 2012 mp

Sure, but I'm not sure that matters. It supports OpenCL, so it supports OpenCL cards.

24Frames said:
It's going to be interesting to see what we get.

If Apple went down the AMD 7000 series route with no NVidia options I will be looking very seriously at the Dell Precision T5600 series.

Dell only supply the Precision workstations with NVidia Quadro or AMD FirePro GPUs. That speaks volumes. If Apple want to make more sales they need to make the Mac Pro more desirable in the 3D Graphics / VFX market, which is a strong growth area, and that means Pro GPUs not gaming GPUs.
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I'm not sure what the deal is here. Even the 5870 has more stream cores and better OpenCL (and in theory CUDA) performance than most Quadro and FireGL cards.

There are some reasons to go with Quadro and FireGL cards. CUDA/OpenCL performance is not one of them.
 
goMac said:
...Adobe started actually using OpenCL instead of CUDA.
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I was only mentioning an observation from the linked page in reference to the underlined text above, not attaching that observation to the ATI / NVidia GPU portion of this thread. Just thought it would be helpful to mention what Adobe has stated about Premiere CS6 supporting both OpenCL and CUDA because the underlined text above seemed to suggest that AP CS6 only supports OpenCL. :)
 
goMac said:
I'm not sure what the deal is here. Even the 5870 has more stream cores and better OpenCL (and in theory CUDA) performance than most Quadro and FireGL cards.
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It is probably more so a support/certification issue.

The major problem with the Quadro & FireGL cards is the cost which means the volume will be relatively low.

Apple is in no way chasing the gamer market. But they also aren't necessarily going to bow-and-scrape to the $4K per seat software market either. Neither one of those is where they make their core money on Mac Pros.


P.S. the other problem with the "Pro" cards is that they trail the more mainstream cards by almost a year. Apple is barely getting access to PCI-e v3.0 card in the mainstream now . Are the Pro equivalents even going to show up in 2012 ???
 
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macuser453787 said:
Those statements read to me like CS6 supports both CUDA and OpenCL. So according to what Adobe wrote, it seems that it's not "instead of", but "in addition to".
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For now. When they get to the point where there is largely parity between OpenCL code coverage and CUDA, then Adobe is likely to go OpenCL. That will probably take at least another major version iteration ( not 6.5 but 7.0 ).

There is no big motivation to throw away working CUDA code. But it is unclear there is much motivation to write much new proprietary code either. It took several years to put it in. It will probably several years to replace it.
 
MacVidCards said:
Keep in mind that in the past, they announced 5870 but they weren't available for many weeks after. And getting one as a separate purchase took months as I recall. So we may only be able to get our hands on the entry level cards for awhile.
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Were aftermarket 5870s up and running before the official mac version was available?

This will be my first Mac Pro, and I do happen to already own two TB Displays. Are you suggesting that there might be a custom Nvidia/AMD GPU that hooks up to a TB header on the logic board and uses the ports on the video card as TB ports?

If Xeons had integrated graphics, I'd suspect the TB port would be on the logic board and the video signal would be copied from the discrete graphics card's framebuffer over to the integrated's frambuffer, but that's clearly not the case w/ Xeons. It does seem like a conundrum, but I suppose that's what they pay engineers to deal w/.

I have two of these damn displays, for better or worse, and am eager to use them w/ a high end graphics card. Part of me would love to waltz out of the store release day w/ whatever they have rather than wait weeks upon weeks, but ultimately I'll want the highest end card available.
 
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With pcie 3.0 speeds they can just place tb controller on vga cards now.
 
goMac said:
I'm not sure what the deal is here. Even the 5870 has more stream cores and better OpenCL (and in theory CUDA) performance than most Quadro and FireGL cards.

There are some reasons to go with Quadro and FireGL cards. CUDA/OpenCL performance is not one of them.
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It is not really about performance. Much more, as deconstruct60 says, about support and for larger software vendors, certification.

From Side Effects Software Houdini System Requirements:
"Non-workstation cards, such as GeForce, Radeon, and Intel integrated graphics can be used at your own risk. They may be used for learning and personal use but are not supported: you may experience display problems, slow performance, and the software may exit unexpectedly."

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=415&Itemid=269

It is all very well having say 100% better GPU performance, but it is of no use if the resulting visualisation is full of display problems!

For applications like Houdini I can work around the limitations of OS X 10.7 by using Windows 7 or Linux, BUT, only if the Mac Pro has a workstation Graphics Card.

Dell and other Windows / Linux workstation vendors recognise this, Apple, to date, hasn't.
 
24Frames said:
For applications like Houdini I can work around the limitations of OS X 10.7 by using Windows 7 or Linux, BUT, only if the Mac Pro has a workstation Graphics Card.

Dell and other Windows / Linux workstation vendors recognize this, Apple, to date, hasn't.
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Not quite true.

Mac G5 (2005) http://support.apple.com/kb/SP37 [ NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 ]
Mac Pro ( 2006 ) http://support.apple.com/kb/SP30 [ NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 512MB ]
2007 is covered by same spec sheet above.
Mac Pro (2008 ) http://support.apple.com/kb/SP11 [ NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 1.5GB ]

Nvidia stepped in around 2009 quad non CTO 3rd party vendor Quadro 4800 :
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/04/nvidia-to-give-mac-pro-owners-some-gpu-love/

Of course part of the problem with that was (from the ars article immediately above )

" ... The Quadro FX 4800 Mac Edition should be available in May for a whopping $1,800 ... "

The upside was that wasn't as high as the 4800 initially was in the general PC market ( $1,900). But it is clearly "if you have to ask you can't afford it" kind of high. It actually only an easy buy if need it to run a software package that costs 2-4 times as much.


Apple tried Quadro from about 2005-2009 (2010 if they were tracking the 4800 sales through the online store). It is highly likely over that almost 4 year period that Apple sales tracking system developed a highly accurate picture of just how many of these they sold.

Those vendors may have Apple's attention again after some "thousands per seat" vendors have cut prices ( e.g., Smoke. ). I'd bet that Apple is willing to go with the "we'll sell it, but not as a CTO option" route if AMD and Nvidia are wiling to write the drivers. If that sees a reasonable rate throughput at the Apple store, then next iteration it would be a CTO. I doubt though that customers or GPU vendor claims of "oh, it is going to sell like hotcakes" is going to get much traction from them. They bought that 'line' back in 2003-4. It doesn't look like it panned out.

Windows and Linux workstation vendors are only too happy to sell very low volume, very high mark-up products if it helps boost their PC business profit margins from 4% to 6% . Apple, PC business at around 25-30%, really isn't pressed about that issue.

P.S. If the new Mac Pro came with embedded graphics ( like iMac or iGPU) to support TB then the "do it yourself" CTO would be to buy a Mac Pro with no PCI-e graphics card in it. Then add to the same order a non-CTO Quadro/Fire card from the Apple store. When the two separate boxes arrive plug in the workstation card. Done. Apple doesn't have to add it to the official CTO and small number of customers have niche configuration they want.
 
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650M in the MBP is good news for Mac Pro.

Means that even if MP gets AMD cards, as soon as those MBPs ship we will likely have drivers for 670 and 680.

Or maybe there will be a GTX680 MP after all.

So, unless those MBP pix are fakes, we should have GTX6xx series cards running in MP within 30 days.

Keep in mind that Nvidia has hobbled the GPGPU part of GTX6xx so we won't have any big jumps in CUDA or OpenCl over the GTX5xx cards until the Kepler Pro cards appear.
 
24Frames said:
Apple won't use the GTX690 or AMD 7970 due to cost and thermal considerations.
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Just wan't to point out that the gtx 690 tends to run at about the same temp as the gtx 680. It would be awesome if it was an option but, I agree with you that we won't get it.
 
OpenCL on Premiere CS6 is absolutely atrocious at the moment. Just buggy. I've been waiting for this day for 2 months, at least money piled up during those 2 months so I can blast it on a new Mac Pro. I want CUDA!

If no Nvidia cards announced today I will reach out to the MACVidGuy.
 
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