Mac pro 2013 gaming performance

[derbothaus]

I read the 8 core would be fastest as it's got the fasted turbo over two cores which most games utilise more than four cores.

Not according to what I see. Only AT 2 cores use which most games easily saturate and go beyond. Red is th eonly place it is faster. These are the numbers left to right in active cores. Underlined are 4-cores+. The 6-core and the 4-core at 4-core turbo are 200MHz faster. At 6-cores active the hex is 200MHz faster still.

4-Core: 3.9, 3.7, 3.7, 3.7
6-Core: 3.9, 3.7, 3.7, 3.7, 3.6, 3.6
8-Core: 3.9, 3.8, 3.7, 3.5, 3.4, 3.4, 3.4, 3.4

 

[MikaMac]

If you're running at a variable framerate, you can't make the claim that the gameplay is smooth and stutter-free. Anything which does not match your refresh rate stutters.

Look, I was comparing BF4 with and without the BF3 crossfire profile. The "default" crossfire behavior was a stuttery mess, with wild fluctuations in performance. By comparison, what I experienced after forcing it to use the BF3 config was far more smooth and stutter free. Was it mathematically perfect? No. Would the phrase "stutter-free" be more apt with vsync on? Yes. Personally, a game that fluctuates between 60-100fps on a 60hz monitor looks pretty smooth to me, sometimes you might see tearing but its usually minimal and not what I would describe as jarring or stuttery.

Now I'm going to try to steer this thread away from semantics and back towards actual information.

I tried out some more games today and got very solid results. It seems like any game that has an existing crossfire profile can expect to get full use out of both cards, but if there's no profile you might be hosed (the sole exception being the BF3/4 trickery so far). Whether these drivers are updated with crossfire configs for new games as they come along is anyone's guess, but at least with existing games the selection is pretty comprehensive. If anyone wants me to check for a profile for a specific game, let me know.

(edit: the short list - all blizzard games, skyrim, bf3/4. Nothing for any call of duty except MW3 though, strangely, but they're all the same engine so that profile might work for newer entries in the series)

 

[Sinx2oic]

Not according to what I see. Only AT 2 cores use which most games easily saturate and go beyond. Red is th eonly place it is faster. These are the numbers left to right in active cores. Underlined are 4-cores+. The 6-core and the 4-core at 4-core turbo are 200MHz faster. At 6-cores active the hex is 200MHz faster still.

4-Core: 3.9, 3.7, 3.7, 3.7
6-Core: 3.9, 3.7, 3.7, 3.7, 3.6, 3.6
8-Core: 3.9, 3.8, 3.7, 3.5, 3.4, 3.4, 3.4, 3.4

Yea as I said I didn't think many games used 4 cores, thought most used 2. I will do some research.

 

[MH01]

The Titan has been surpassed by the GTX 780Ti now, and will be replaced with the Titan Black Edition next month. (essentially a 780Ti with 6GB RAM)

But that's two cards against one. Crossfire may produce high framerate numbers, but due to frame pacing issues, it is not a smooth experience.

Actually Titan V 780Ti are game dependent.

If you have the cash, the Titan is still a better all purpose card.

Worst thing about video cards these days is the premium pricing.

And spot on about 2 cards v one. If people want to compare the Mac pro V titan, they best do it mac pro v 2xtitan, to really get an idea what the D700 v titan is.

 

[macines]

Actually Titan V 780Ti are game dependent.

If you have the cash, the Titan is still a better all purpose card.

Worst thing about video cards these days is the premium pricing.

And spot on about 2 cards v one. If people want to compare the Mac pro V titan, they best do it mac pro v 2xtitan, to really get an idea what the D700 v titan is.

agreed - the teraflop performance of one titan card is about 4,5 i think so comparing 7 tfs vs 4,5 doesnt seem very fair a comparison at all

best do that with sli vs crossfire

i am 100% sure that two of these titan cards will beat the d700s in every way

well ... who cares anyways, both configs seem pretty damn fast to me

 

[Anim]

(edit: the short list - all blizzard games, skyrim, bf3/4. Nothing for any call of duty except MW3 though, strangely, but they're all the same engine so that profile might work for newer entries in the series)

The ones I am interested in are (Mac or Windows)

Borderlands 2
Black Ops 1 and 2
COD 4
COD Ghosts
BF4
Assassins Creed
Tomb Raider
Crysis 3
Far Cry 3
Metro

Titanfall (when it comes out)

 

[Sinx2oic]

The ones I am interested in are (Mac or Windows)

Borderlands 2
Black Ops 1 and 2
COD 4
COD Ghosts
BF4
Assassins Creed
Tomb Raider
Crysis 3
Far Cry 3
Metro

Titanfall (when it comes out)

Yea I second that!! maybe add Arma 3 and grid 2.

I for one just hoped the D700's would be able to game at a reasonable level, never thought it would compete with a Titan. Most of us realise it will not battle with the very best gaming PC's or anywhere near. But then that's not the reason most of us bought this mac, the fact it can game quite well has me excited!

By the way do you think having windows on half the 1TB internal drive would speed games up. I'm thinking it might help with loading times but that's it. Guess this would be a waste of expensive space! (which I will save for work).

Thanks again for testing these games!!

 

[Anim]

By the way do you think having windows on half the 1TB internal drive would speed games up. I'm thinking it might help with loading times but that's it. Guess this would be a waste of expensive space! (which I will save for work).

Thanks again for testing these games!!

That is my dilemma too

With modern games "streaming object assets" as your play.

With a 512GB SSD I don't want to install big bloated Windows Apps on it. Ghosts alone is 45GB lol. I did see one 12 core benchmark running BF4 and it was slightly choppy which the reviewer put down to "running windows on an external" but then it was shown here that running a BF3 profile sorts that out so could be that instead.

I tested my windows gaming machine internal hard disk speed then looked at what speeds people are getting with USB3/Thunderbolt enclosures and their results are much faster than my internal PC hard drive so I have my fingers crossed it won't be a factor, in fact it could be quicker than what I am used to now.

 

[Beta Particle]

Actually Titan V 780Ti are game dependent.

You are confusing the 780Ti with the regular GTX 780.
The GTX 780 and the Titan are roughly on par with each other - especially the factory overclocked 780's.

The 780 Ti is faster than a Titan in every way except compute performance, where it is artificially restricted.
It has more CUDA cores, is clocked higher, and uses faster RAM than the Titan.
Nvidia will be releasing the Titan Black Edition in February to replace the Titan, which will essentially be a 780 Ti with 6GB RAM and unlocked compute performance.
Virtually nothing gaming related will come close to using the 3GB RAM on a 780 Ti though, so the Titan having double the RAM doesn't matter there.
There will also be a GTX 790 released around March, which will be two 780's on a single card.

You might get some slow down in FPS (e.g. half your refresh rate) with VSync on and a too demanding graphic quality. What is more common is frame tearing when your FPS exceed your refresh rate.

This is why I suggest anyone buying a system for gaming goes with Nvidia - they're far more focused on gaming performance/features than AMD are.

Nvidia have a number of technologies to solve, or at least reduce these problems.

1. G-Sync. This runs the game at an unlocked framerate, and controls the display's refresh rate to match. You get the low latency and unlocked performance of running a game without v-sync, but do not get the screen tearing or stuttering that would normally result in.
2. Adaptive V-Sync This mode will enable V-Sync when the framerate exceeds your refresh rate (preventing tearing) but disables it when the framerate is below that. This prevents the game from dropping from 60 to 30 (or 144 to 72 to 48 to 36 etc.) though it will tear when that happens.
3. Half (or third) framerate Adaptive V-Sync. This would let you have all the benefits of adaptive v-sync on your 144Hz monitor, treating it as if it were a 72Hz display. So the framerate would be capped at 72fps, and V-Sync would be enabled at or above this, and it would be disabled below it.

So I guess I must be in the sweet spot on my system with 144Hz I would drop to 72fps if I have VSync on and if I can't quite get to 144fps. Which I never have turned on but 72fps would not cause a visual loss in smoothness either.

72fps at 144Hz would avoid screen tearing, but would stutter as a result of repeating every frame.

Try setting the display to 72Hz if it is supported, or something in-between 72-144Hz. (I think most will support 100Hz)

Maybe it drops to 120fps because the monitor also supports 120Hz?

Only if you're actually running at 120fps. With the exception of the new G-Sync displays, refresh rate is not dynamically adjusted during gameplay.

On the flip side, If I exceed 144fps that would introduce tearing but at 144fps you would hardly see it happen, it's just too fast a frame rate and the exact experience I have, I don't get frame halving or tearing on my system.

Screen tearing happens when the framerate is not synced to the refresh rate. It happens whether you are above or below the refresh rate.

When you are below the refresh rate, there will be a single tear, and when you are above it, there will be multiple tears.

Triple-buffering allows for an unlocked framerate without tearing, but it will add an additional frame of latency, and is not supported by all games. While it fixes tearing, it does not fix stuttering.

And stuttering would be totally unacceptable for any game I play, I simply wouldn't play it.

If your framerate does not match your refresh rate, the game is stuttering.

Whether you notice it or not is another matter. It's very obvious to me.

 

[wildmac]

(edit: the short list - all blizzard games, skyrim, bf3/4. Nothing for any call of duty except MW3 though, strangely, but they're all the same engine so that profile might work for newer entries in the series)

If I still played Diablo, I'd be all over this, but for WoW, unless there are big changes with the expac, OSX on the nMP should still be fine.

http://www.barefeats.com/tube07.html

Although it does sound like they are going to up the graphics requirements with the WoD expac.

 

[derbothaus]

Yea as I said I didn't think many games used 4 cores, thought most used 2. I will do some research.

Sorry man. I must have read you wrong. I thought you were saying since most games DO use roughly 4-cores. I had fun typing the grid Ymmv but 100MHz wont be felt in game anyway and definitely not to justify the price hike if you are not crunching serious math.

 

[MikaMac]

The ones I am interested in are (Mac or Windows)

Borderlands 2
Black Ops 1 and 2
COD 4
COD Ghosts
BF4
Assassins Creed
Tomb Raider
Crysis 3
Far Cry 3
Metro

Titanfall (when it comes out)

There are profiles for all of those games except titanfall of course, and the call of duty series (modern warfare 3 is the only one in the list, but I have a hunch it might work with the more recent entries). No arma 3 or grid 2. Keep in mind that even without crossfire you may be just fine with some games. Simpler games like league of legends don't really need more than one D700, I was getting 140+ fps in that one with no crossfire. I've played some Payday 2 as well which also blows way past my monitor's refresh rate without the need for both gpus.

 

[kfscoll]

The boot camp drivers supplied by apple. I'll certainly play around with other options.

I'm not seeing a "gaming" tab within the FirePro Control Panel that my system is running. You must have the Radeon Catalyst Control Panel installed for some reason. I'm using the latest AMD drivers downloaded directly from their website and they automatically install the FirePro Control Panel. You can select an option to have CrossFireX function for applications that don't have a profile but it doesn't get any more specific than that. You can also download/install application-specific CrossFireX profiles but none were included with the Control panel.

Anyway, my point is that I don't know how you're seeing game-specific CrossFireX profiles on your machine -- I guess you're using a different/older version of the AMD drivers.

 

[Anim]

There are profiles for all of those games except titanfall of course

Great, As Kfscoll can't find this functionality, can you please post a screenshot of where you are selecting these profiles so when my Mac Pro arrives I can dive straight in to the same place within the driver panel.

Cheers
Anim

 

[MikaMac]

I'm not seeing a "gaming" tab within the FirePro Control Panel that my system is running. You must have the Radeon Catalyst Control Panel installed for some reason. I'm using the latest AMD drivers downloaded directly from their website and they automatically install the FirePro Control Panel. You can select an option to have CrossFireX function for applications that don't have a profile but it doesn't get any more specific than that. You can also download/install application-specific CrossFireX profiles but none were included with the Control panel.

Anyway, my point is that I don't know how you're seeing game-specific CrossFireX profiles on your machine -- I guess you're using a different/older version of the AMD drivers.

I'm using the apple supplied drivers, keep looking. There's a section called "3d application settings" I think (on my mac partition right now or Id check) where you can add an .exe and override application settings like antialiasing, whether to use vsync etc. and at the bottom is where you can set app specific crossfire settings.

 

[theSeb]

Do we have any comparisons of gaming performance with these different driver versions? That would be very handy.

 

[nathan43082]

With a 512GB SSD I don't want to install big bloated Windows Apps on it. Ghosts alone is 45GB lol.

This is one of the reasons I specced my (still on order) Mac Pro 2013 with the 1TB drive. I fully expect to set aside at least one third of that for Bootcamp, pretty much for gaming.

 

[MikaMac]

This is one of the reasons I specced my (still on order) Mac Pro 2013 with the 1TB drive. I fully expect to set aside at least one third of that for Bootcamp, pretty much for gaming.

Also keep in mind that windows 8.1 appears to eat about 100GB by itself. I allocated 400GB of my 1TB to my boot camp partition and only 300 was actually open after installing windows.

 

[kfscoll]

I'm using the apple supplied drivers, keep looking. There's a section called "3d application settings" I think (on my mac partition right now or Id check) where you can add an .exe and override application settings like antialiasing, whether to use vsync etc. and at the bottom is where you can set app specific crossfire settings.

Okay, I see that. Here's what I was talking about...if you look at the screenshot on the left (Radeon Control Panel), you'll see there's a "Gaming" tab. I figured you were seeing the list of games under there. If you look at the screenshot on the right (FirePro Control Panel), there is no "Gaming" tab.

Come to think of it, where are you seeing the list of game profiles that you mentioned earlier? Or are you downloading the profiles from somewhere else?

 

[Demigod Mac]

I'm curious to see how the D700 performs in Windows with/without Crossfire enabled on the Unigine Valley benchmark.

 

[MikaMac]

Come to think of it, where are you seeing the list of game profiles that you mentioned earlier? Or are you downloading the profiles from somewhere else?

Here's screenshots. Go to 3D application settings, in the left column you add an .exe manually. Scroll to the bottom and for crossfire mode choose "Use AMD pre-defined profile". There's an enormous list of games and apps already there, no additional downloads required. Manually setting this up is only necessary for forcing a game to use a profile that doesn't match it exactly (like BF3 for BF4).

 

[kfscoll]

Here's screenshots. Go to 3D application settings, in the left column you add an .exe manually. Scroll to the bottom and for crossfire mode choose "Use AMD pre-defined profile". There's an enormous list of games and apps already there, no additional downloads required. Manually setting this up is only necessary for forcing a game to use a profile that doesn't match it exactly (like BF3 for BF4).

Awesome, thanks! Last time I used something similar was when I ran two GTX 295 cards in quad-SLI; with the NVIDIA drivers, you didn't have to add an .exe before you could see the supported games list. I guess I was expecting the AMD drivers to behave the same way.

 

[ActionableMango]

Also keep in mind that windows 8.1 appears to eat about 100GB by itself. I allocated 400GB of my 1TB to my boot camp partition and only 300 was actually open after installing windows.

Something weird going on there. The install size for Windows 8.1 64-bit is 20GB.

I have a 32GB tablet which has the full version of Windows 8.1 (not RT) and MS Office installed. If it took 100GB, I'd have negative space left over instead of 12GB left over.

 

[tuxon86]

Something weird going on there. The install size for Windows 8.1 64-bit is 20GB.

I have a 32GB tablet which has the full version of Windows 8.1 (not RT) and MS Office installed. If it took 100GB, I'd have negative space left over instead of 12GB left over.

The only way you could end up with a 100Gb installation of 8.1 is if you do an upgrade and end up with both the old and new version of os and apps. The old version is in a Win.Old folder which can be deleted. No way you can get a 100Gb install from a 4.7Gb install disk....

 

[padapada]

The only way you could end up with a 100Gb installation of 8.1 is if you do an upgrade and end up with both the old and new version of os and apps. The old version is in a Win.Old folder which can be deleted. No way you can get a 100Gb install from a 4.7Gb install disk....

Some people seem to feel better by talking BS about Windows.
But nuance is not very common on most fora...