GTX 680 Twin Frozr OC 2GB edition in a 2012 Mac Pro

[All Taken]

I've ordered my new card as per the title for delivery on Monday. Few questions, power I know is not a concern with this card. Is anyone running one in their Mac?

I currently run 2 5770's, what do I need to adjust driver wise to get a working 10.8?

Do I need to adjust anything for OpenCL etc?

Does it run at PCIe 2.0 speed or PCIe 1 on the Mac Pro 2010>? Windows and OS X?

Does the PCIe bay fan ramp up when the card is under load?

I run 3 screens, 2 monitors and a HDTV, I'll be using the HDMI on board for the TV and the 2 DVI ports with DVI-HDMI cables for the 2 monitors, any problems?

What is the state of EFI development for the 6XX series?

Any issues with the port selection on the card? HDMI issues, multiple displays in OS X etc?

I noticed this card doesn't have a 'base plate' to protect the board from contact, any issues? I ask as the clearance between the card and the Mac Pro chassis is mighty fine.

Thanks

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

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I noticed this card doesn't have a 'base plate' to protect the board from contact, any issues? I ask as the clearance between the card and the Mac Pro chassis is mighty fine.

Thanks

The MP has a plastic piece under the GPUs. So if the graphic card sags, it will not short with the traces on the back of the card.

 

[nigelbb]

Will this card actually work with three monitors & the Nvidia drivers? My GTX570 only works with two i.e. 2xDVI or 1xDVI & 1xHDMI not all three outputs together.

 

[Asgorath]

I've ordered my new card as per the title for delivery on Monday. Few questions, power I know is not a concern with this card. Is anyone running one in their Mac?

I currently run 2 5770's, what do I need to adjust driver wise to get a working 10.8?

Do I need to adjust anything for OpenCL etc?

Does it run at PCIe 2.0 speed or PCIe 1 on the Mac Pro 2010>? Windows and OS X?

Does the PCIe bay fan ramp up when the card is under load?

I run 3 screens, 2 monitors and a HDTV, I'll be using the HDMI on board for the TV and the 2 DVI ports with DVI-HDMI cables for the 2 monitors, any problems?

What is the state of EFI development for the 6XX series?

Any issues with the port selection on the card? HDMI issues, multiple displays in OS X etc?

I noticed this card doesn't have a 'base plate' to protect the board from contact, any issues? I ask as the clearance between the card and the Mac Pro chassis is mighty fine.

Thanks

FWIW I have an EVGA GTX 680.

- If you are running 10.8.2, the card will work. You should install the latest NVIDIA driver to get a few extra features.

- 2GB cards will just work with OpenCL, only hack is required for cards with more than 2GB of RAM.

- My fan ramps up a bit, but it's barely audible. Everything is working as expected as far as I can tell.

- 3 displays will work if you have the latest NVIDIA driver, I believe this isn't enabled in the stock Apple driver yet.

- Don't know that anyone has made progress on this, though given the fact there are 680-based iMacs out there MVC and netkas might be able to get started.

- None that I'm aware of.

- I'm running my card in the second 16x slot, there have been reports of cards not working well in the first one. My card has been rock solid.

Will this card actually work with three monitors & the Nvidia drivers? My GTX570 only works with two i.e. 2xDVI or 1xDVI & 1xHDMI not all three outputs together.

Yes, with the latest NVIDIA driver, you can get 3 monitors with the Kepler (6xx) cards. Fermi cards like the 570 only support 2 monitors, this is not a Mac restriction.

 

[All Taken]

FWIW I have an EVGA GTX 680......

Thank you very much. Any idea on the PCIe 1.0 speed under Windows? Could you check if you're not sure?

The GTX 680 supports 4 monitors or 3 stereoscopic 3D displays + 1 standard. Is it the Nvidia Mac drivers limitation that limits the GTX 680 to 3 outputs under OS X?

HDMI output with sound possible in OS X?

 

[Asgorath]

Thank you very much. Any idea on the PCIe 1.0 speed under Windows? Could you check if you're not sure?

The GTX 680 supports 4 monitors or 3 stereoscopic 3D displays + 1 standard. Is it the Nvidia Mac drivers limitation that limits the GTX 680 to 3 outputs under OS X?

HDMI output with sound possible in OS X?

Still PCIe 1.0 under Windows, 2.0 is only enabled in the NVIDIA Mac driver for now. I thought all 4 displays were supported under OS X, pretty sure I saw a report from someone that said it was working for them. I'll check my system later today, I only have one monitor but I think there's information about the supported displays in the System Profiler somewhere.

Regarding HDMI audio, some guy posted a kext that apparently enables it. I'm not sure what the deal is with that, haven't needed it myself. If you search these forums for "NVIDIA HDMI audio" you'll probably find the thread.

 

[All Taken]

Still PCIe 1.0 under Windows, 2.0 is only enabled in the NVIDIA Mac driver for now. I thought all 4 displays were supported under OS X, pretty sure I saw a report from someone that said it was working for them. I'll check my system later today, I only have one monitor but I think there's information about the supported displays in the System Profiler somewhere.

Regarding HDMI audio, some guy posted a kext that apparently enables it. I'm not sure what the deal is with that, haven't needed it myself. If you search these forums for "NVIDIA HDMI audio" you'll probably find the thread.

Thanks, whats the performance hit like on PCIe 1.0 with these cards?

EDIT: Seems a PCIE 16x slot will not bottleneck a card like a 7970 or GTX 680, good news, last upgrade I can achieve with this generation of Mac unfortunately but should suffice for a couple more years.

 

[Asgorath]

Thanks, whats the performance hit like on PCIe 1.0 with these cards?

I didn't even notice when I was using my GTX 560 Ti earlier in the year until MacVidCards pointed it out a few months ago. For games, it's low single digits, if that. For directed CUDA/OpenCL DMA benchmarks it'll obviously show up as a large difference. How much that translates to actual real-world cases, I'm not sure. IMHO it's certainly not a deal breaker by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[All Taken]

Anyone reading this thread and considering a GTX 670/680 for use in Windows then here's a usefull link, it appears that non-efi cards in a mac pro default to PCIE 1.1 speeds at 16x. This link shows what performance hit you'll take. For the GTX 680 it's 5% on average dependant on resolution. A figure I can frankly live with.

OS X is unaffected by this information, it runs the card at 2.0 with the latest Nvidia drivers (Thanks Asgorath)

"Our testing confirms that modern graphics cards work just fine at slower bus speed, yet performance degrades the slower the bus speed is. Everything down to x16 1.1 and its equivalents (x8 2.0, x4 3.0) provides sufficient gaming performance even with the latest graphics hardware, losing only 5% average in worst-case. Only at even lower speeds we see drastic framerate losses, which would warrant action."

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridge_PCI-Express_Scaling/23.html

What this means to Mac Pro users is that even non-efi cards of this generation that can start to fully saturate a 16x 1.1 PCIE connection only take a 5% hit on performance.

Given that the Mac Pro uses a 2.0 PCIE bus it is capable of 16x PCIE 2.0 which would remove the block and allow the next generation of cards from Nvidia and AMD to run (2013/2014 models) without performance bottleneck.

Yes, we would need EFI cards to take advantage of the 2.0 link in Windows but I'm hopeful that after the GTX 680 does its time in my machine I'll be able to take advantage of an Apple branded card for the new 2013 Mac Pro or a higher spec card with EFI from the same family Apple will use for the new Mac.

 

[Asgorath]

To be clear, that only applies to Windows on the Mac Pro, under OS X with the latest NVIDIA driver for 10.8.2 the cards run at full PCIe 2.0 speeds.

 

[All Taken]

To be clear, that only applies to Windows on the Mac Pro, under OS X with the latest NVIDIA driver for 10.8.2 the cards run at full PCIe 2.0 speeds.

Good point to add. If gaming in Windows is your primary use it's nothing to worry about which is a huge plus, I was really worried that the card would be crippled at 16x 1.1.