GPU performance difference between MacOS and Windows

[CuamckuyKot]

Hi, there!

I'd been just upgraded my cMP 5,1 with flashed 7970 and have made a several benchmarks.

The question to authorities is in why performance of EFI-flashed card is different between Win and Mac?

Test | Mac 10.0.1 | Win7
================================
Cinebench R15 | 43fps | 73fps
Heaven | 774 points (7.4»71.1fps) | 989 points (7.6»92.9fps)
Valley | 1393 (18.6»60.6fps) | 1630 points (15.2»73.6fps)

Is it really all in drivers and nothing more?

 

[EdDuPlessis]

Better drivers and more mature OpenGL support. Remember, Windows NT dominated the workstation market in the late 90s when NT workstations such as those made by Integraph began stealing business from SGI. That and a new generation of hardware accelerated games meant 3D drivers on Windows cruised past every other platform. OS X has closed the gap in recent years and that gap should narrow now that we can use so many PC graphics cards....uh wait....Apple has taken away the PCIE slots from the Mac Pro. Oh well....Windows will always be far ahead. Grrr

 

[N19h7m4r3]

It's mostly drivers, but application is also important.

 

[Gav Mack]

I have CS 6 on Windows and OS X - with Windows running ahci with my SSD's both premiere and Photoshop are noticeably faster. On both my 4,1 with GTX 680 and my MBP 2011 with the AMD 6770. I don't do benchmarks I run a weekly Photoshop batch and transcode similar length and content videos monthly..

With OS X and primarly OpenCL powered apps it may be much closer or even the tables turned. But with bootcamp you get the best of both worlds.

 

[CuamckuyKot]

So you mean that we all must migrate to Windows

 

[Gav Mack]

That would be nuts and preposterous

 

[sirio76]

So you mean that we all must migrate to Windows

Always keep in mind that benchmarks are just benchmarks, results may vastly vary on user cases. I can't speck about gaming benchmarks(I do not play on my workstation) but recently I've tested a scene inside Cinema4d against an Nvidia 980 on an overclocked 5960x Windows machine. Despite that machine have the best OpenGL score ever seen on C4d( http://cbscores.com/index.php?sort=ogl&order=desc ) my nMP(which score just 90FPS, half of his 980) gives identical FPS performance in shaded viewport and 2-3x more FPS with antialiasing and shadows activated.
New OSX machines are very good at OpenGL in pro applications, here is a test of mine(because a PC guy was arguing that on OSX you can't work with heavy files..):
http://vimeo.com/106279415
Old machine have other issues, but that is another story.

 

[qunsuiday]

Better drivers and more mature OpenGL support. Remember, Windows NT dominated the workstation market in the late 90s when NT workstations such as those made by Integraph began stealing business from SGI.

 

[Zorn]

I've definitely noticed this as well. I have a GTX 980 running the nVidia web driver and while performance is okay, I notice lag when turning in WoW in a way that I would never have on Windows before. Things also just aren't quite as smooth as under Windows.