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GTX 1070 or RX 580 in cMP?
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honestly the Nvidia GPU Mac EFI business is a rip off. You probably can get 5GT/sec just by modding the Nvidia firmware without adding the Mac EFI. There is a post saying that the softstrap on Nvidia firmware is located in 0h0058~0h0077. https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-5-0gt-s-on-ati-card-and-nvidia-card.1547340/
I agree 100%.
Plus there's not a big speed difference, certainly not what most think, you got fooled by the marketing.
The doubled bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 x16, compared to PCIe 2.0, doesn't seem to make much of a difference yet. AnandTech's Ryan Smith tested two Nvidia GeForce GTX Titans, the current fastest single-GPU cards, in SLI on both PCIe 3.0 and 2.0, and found, at best, a seven percent performance improvement at 5760 x 1200.
Plus there's not a big speed difference, certainly not what most think, you got fooled by the marketing.
The doubled bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 x16, compared to PCIe 2.0, doesn't seem to make much of a difference yet. AnandTech's Ryan Smith tested two Nvidia GeForce GTX Titans, the current fastest single-GPU cards, in SLI on both PCIe 3.0 and 2.0, and found, at best, a seven percent performance improvement at 5760 x 1200.
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For fun I opened a GTX 960 rom in a hex editor. There are hex to x86 converters on the web. Unfortunately I'm a noob when it comes to x86 assembly code. Does anyone know what the db instruction does ?
The first few lines of the rom look like a stack is being created.
dec esi ; DATA XREF=sub_4fa3+162
00001001 push esi
00001002 inc edi
00001003 dec ecx
00001004 stosb byte [edi], al
00001005 add dword [eax], edx
00001007 sub al, 0x6
0000100a add byte [eax+0x368f1458], al
00001010 or dl, ah
00001012 add byte [eax], al
00001014 add byte [eax], cl
00001016 add byte [eax], al
00001018 add dl, byte [eax]
0000101a adc byte [edx+0x7fffffff], al
00001020 add byte [eax], al
00001022 add byte [eax-0x7defeff2], al
after that most of the instructions are db instructions
The first few lines of the rom look like a stack is being created.
dec esi ; DATA XREF=sub_4fa3+162
00001001 push esi
00001002 inc edi
00001003 dec ecx
00001004 stosb byte [edi], al
00001005 add dword [eax], edx
00001007 sub al, 0x6
0000100a add byte [eax+0x368f1458], al
00001010 or dl, ah
00001012 add byte [eax], al
00001014 add byte [eax], cl
00001016 add byte [eax], al
00001018 add dl, byte [eax]
0000101a adc byte [edx+0x7fffffff], al
00001020 add byte [eax], al
00001022 add byte [eax-0x7defeff2], al
after that most of the instructions are db instructions
Didn't use assembly for 20 years. From memory, db is define byte. Which means something like write a value to a byte. A very straight forward command.
[doublepost=1500006465][/doublepost]
Only true for Nvidia card, AMD card even flashed with Mac EFI, still won't negotiate at PCIe 2.0 speed.
People keep mentioning AMD cards now being supported (besides what is available in current macs). Can someone show me something official with information regarding that, when I say official I mean genuine official information from either AMD or Apple.
Only thing that is 'official' at the moment is that Apple are selling an External Graphics Development Kit, to developers, that contains an RX 580.
Yeah which is great, but I would love to know what that means for those of us who want to run internal gpu's
I think that as we get closer to the release of High Sierra that we'll learn more. Regrettably, for now, all we have is the information that is being shared by developers/beta testers with regard to native support for certain cards in the new OS.
Other than the link I posted there have been no other 'official' statements from Apple, Nvidia or AMD.
I don't want to interrupt the original posters thread, but I would also love if more information was out there regarding workstation grade cards with mac os, both AMD and Nvidia. It is a little selfish on my part as I only want that info due to the fact that those are the cards I want to use, where as most people are using and perfectly happy with gaming cards.
The reason we know which resistor to remove on the 7950, 7970 , or 280X is because they are basically the same cards and there is a 7950 Mac edition. By comparing the 7950 Mac edition to the 7950 Pc edition someone found out which resistor to remove, simply because it was missing on the 7950 Mac Edition card. TBH, the 7950 was designed that way but from what I understand nothing guarantees that the RX 480 or RX 580 has a resistor that can be removed without damaging the card and that would provide 5.0GT/sec on a MAC, in fact it's actually very unlikely. Since AMD APPLE authentic cards were more expensive than their PC counterparts, AMD probably used that resistor as a cheap way to differentiate a PC Card from an APPLE card.
There's two on CEX. The cards will be much cheaper by the time HR is out, but I already have mine.Time to hunt a RX580
Prices are coming down and availability is going up, nice timing!Time to hunt a RX580
Now that 10.12.6 is out I'm looking at putting a pre-order in for a RX580 Pulse to get a better price - don't mind a wait.
From what I have seen in a review however there is no power adaptor cable included with the pulse version and surprisingly dual 6 pin to 8 pin cables don't so as common via the usual places (strangely 6 to 8 and 6 to dual 8 seem more readily available which you would think are a bad idea....)
I have however seen some "Genuine Asus Dual 6pin to 8Pin PCI-E Express Nvidia GTX Video Card Power Cable" from Hong Kong so assume one of these should do the job on a cMP.
Sounds like the lack of boot screen shouldn't matter whilst I'm MacOS only and upgrading to High Sierra on my 4.1 flashed to 5.1 with it in should be possible although I guess it is a good idea to keep my EFI flashed GTX680 just in case.
If I do put Windows on the machine at some point it should still be possible to boot from an iso burnt to DVD and install it that way without needing an EFT card?
From what I have seen in a review however there is no power adaptor cable included with the pulse version and surprisingly dual 6 pin to 8 pin cables don't so as common via the usual places (strangely 6 to 8 and 6 to dual 8 seem more readily available which you would think are a bad idea....)
I have however seen some "Genuine Asus Dual 6pin to 8Pin PCI-E Express Nvidia GTX Video Card Power Cable" from Hong Kong so assume one of these should do the job on a cMP.
Sounds like the lack of boot screen shouldn't matter whilst I'm MacOS only and upgrading to High Sierra on my 4.1 flashed to 5.1 with it in should be possible although I guess it is a good idea to keep my EFI flashed GTX680 just in case.
If I do put Windows on the machine at some point it should still be possible to boot from an iso burnt to DVD and install it that way without needing an EFT card?
Windows can init a GPU and show video even in software mode (Microsoft Display Driver). However, it's been a while since I installed Windows on cMP so others can confirm.
Yes, I recently installed Windows with my GTX 1060 in place. Windows doesn't require the Mac EFI and you'll be able to view the entire installation process.