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gtx 680 vs gtx 970 performance in mac?

ilikewhey

ilikewhey

macrumors 68040
Original poster
May 14, 2014
3,620
4,686
nyc upper east
i know the 970 totally dominates the 680 in a windows environment. but what about osx? since gtx 680 has a proper driver while the 970 uses nvidia's generic osx driver. or did i miss something? a guy i know is selling a 2gb mac gtx 680 and i'm not sure if i should get that or the new maxwell.
 
I started with an EFI Flashed 680.

FWIW, here's the 680's blender benchmarks:

CPU 2.24 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon x2 / 12 GB Ram
GPU NVidia GTX 680 (4 GB VRam, Mac Flashed)
OS X 10.9.5
Blender 2.73a

Time (CPU - Autothread (16)): 04:19:18
Time (GPU - Tiles 128x128) 02:13:06


Ok so it was roughly 2x faster than the stock CPUs.

However, despite it having an EFI rom, it had issues. I would get funky screen updates, color shifts, weird on screen corruptions while rendering and various other artifacts. I returned that.

Got a 970.

CPU 2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Xeon
GPU EVGA GTX 970 4GB (SC)

01:22.50 GPU 320 x 270

Big difference. Now down to 1/4 the render time. That worked so well I picked up another one, a 970SSC not knowing it had an 8 pin and a 6 pin. That didn't work, even with a cable adapter, so I returned it and picked up a EVGA 970 4GB FTW (they were out of the SC's).

CPU 2 x 3.46 Hex-Core Xeon
GPU EVGA GTX 970 4GB SC + GPU EVGA GTX 970 4GB FTW
OS: OSX Yosemite
Blender 2.74

Time: 02:01.97 (CPU Auto Thread)

The upgraded Xeon's helped a lot with the CPU Only score.
However, the big bang came from the 2nd 970:

0:40.93 (GPU’s 320x270)

Massive win. Far less $$ than any flavor of titan, and faster than one as well.

Running both cards just using splitter cables off the 2 6pins. Power draw well under the 75W limits, and it's been rendering more or less around the clock for weeks. I did have to go through some crap with the drivers, however, if you wait until Nvidia releases new drivers before updating to whatever current "omg the last OS patch had bugs so here's the fix to the bugs with some new bugs we'll find in a few days that will inspire another patch to fix those" release, you won't have that issue. Now I don't even use these cards for video so I have a stock GT120 in the 4th slot to drive the 2 1920x1200 displays and that works fine, and I get boot screens because it's a stock card. As a result I really could care less about the EFI bit, and I don't do windows so it's a non issue, at least for me. If I was a gamer and needed to run windows that would be a different story.

Short version:

The 970 kicks the 680's ass.
 
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lewnworxx said:
I started with an EFI Flashed 680.

FWIW, here's the 680's blender benchmarks:

CPU 2.24 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon x2 / 12 GB Ram
GPU NVidia GTX 680 (4 GB VRam, Mac Flashed)
OS X 10.9.5
Blender 2.73a

Time (CPU - Autothread (16)): 04:19:18
Time (GPU - Tiles 128x128) 02:13:06


Ok so it was roughly 2x faster than the stock CPUs.

However, despite it having an EFI rom, it had issues. I would get funky screen updates, color shifts, weird on screen corruptions while rendering and various other artifacts. I returned that.

Got a 970.

CPU 2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Xeon
GPU EVGA GTX 970 4GB (SC)

01:22.50 GPU 320 x 270

Big difference. Now down to 1/4 the render time. That worked so well I picked up another one, a 970SSC not knowing it had an 8 pin and a 6 pin. That didn't work, even with a cable adapter, so I returned it and picked up a EVGA 970 4GB FTW (they were out of the SC's).

CPU 2 x 3.46 Hex-Core Xeon
GPU EVGA GTX 970 4GB SC + GPU EVGA GTX 970 4GB FTW
OS: OSX Yosemite
Blender 2.74

Time: 02:01.97 (CPU Auto Thread)

The upgraded Xeon's helped a lot with the CPU Only score.
However, the big bang came from the 2nd 970:

0:40.93 (GPU’s 320x270)

Massive win. Far less $$ than any flavor of titan, and faster than one as well.

Running both cards just using splitter cables off the 2 6pins. Power draw well under the 75W limits, and it's been rendering more or less around the clock for weeks. I did have to go through some crap with the drivers, however, if you wait until Nvidia releases new drivers before updating to whatever current "omg the last OS patch had bugs so here's the fix to the bugs with some new bugs we'll find in a few days that will inspire another patch to fix those" release, you won't have that issue. Now I don't even use these cards for video so I have a stock GT120 in the 4th slot to drive the 2 1920x1200 displays and that works fine, and I get boot screens because it's a stock card. As a result I really could care less about the EFI bit, and I don't do windows so it's a non issue, at least for me. If I was a gamer and needed to run windows that would be a different story.

Short version:

The 970 kicks the 680's ass.
Click to expand...

I imagine you are running you're machine like this:

0YUvSlN.png
 
lewnworxx said:
I started with an EFI Flashed 680.

FWIW, here's the 680's blender benchmarks:

CPU 2.24 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon x2 / 12 GB Ram
GPU NVidia GTX 680 (4 GB VRam, Mac Flashed)
OS X 10.9.5
Blender 2.73a

Time (CPU - Autothread (16)): 04:19:18
Time (GPU - Tiles 128x128) 02:13:06


Ok so it was roughly 2x faster than the stock CPUs.

However, despite it having an EFI rom, it had issues. I would get funky screen updates, color shifts, weird on screen corruptions while rendering and various other artifacts. I returned that.

Got a 970.

CPU 2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Xeon
GPU EVGA GTX 970 4GB (SC)

01:22.50 GPU 320 x 270

Big difference. Now down to 1/4 the render time. That worked so well I picked up another one, a 970SSC not knowing it had an 8 pin and a 6 pin. That didn't work, even with a cable adapter, so I returned it and picked up a EVGA 970 4GB FTW (they were out of the SC's).

CPU 2 x 3.46 Hex-Core Xeon
GPU EVGA GTX 970 4GB SC + GPU EVGA GTX 970 4GB FTW
OS: OSX Yosemite
Blender 2.74

Time: 02:01.97 (CPU Auto Thread)

The upgraded Xeon's helped a lot with the CPU Only score.
However, the big bang came from the 2nd 970:

0:40.93 (GPU’s 320x270)

Massive win. Far less $$ than any flavor of titan, and faster than one as well.

Running both cards just using splitter cables off the 2 6pins. Power draw well under the 75W limits, and it's been rendering more or less around the clock for weeks. I did have to go through some crap with the drivers, however, if you wait until Nvidia releases new drivers before updating to whatever current "omg the last OS patch had bugs so here's the fix to the bugs with some new bugs we'll find in a few days that will inspire another patch to fix those" release, you won't have that issue. Now I don't even use these cards for video so I have a stock GT120 in the 4th slot to drive the 2 1920x1200 displays and that works fine, and I get boot screens because it's a stock card. As a result I really could care less about the EFI bit, and I don't do windows so it's a non issue, at least for me. If I was a gamer and needed to run windows that would be a different story.

Short version:

The 970 kicks the 680's ass.
Click to expand...

Wondering if the 970 works fine in Adobe Premiere with CUDA?

Thanks,

Alex
 
wow thanks for the reply, for some reason macrumor decided to tell me now that i got replies to this thread,

so is this only applied to cuda apps? my brother tends to use the computer for some light gaming, would i see some benefit from having a 970 over a 680 as well?
 
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