Well considering the benchmarks provided just a few above yours showing the 7970 GE outperforming the w9000 in Heaven by 15% I would say that he's workstation GPUs are not as good at gaming as consumer GPUs.....
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My nMP Review (vs my old 4,1 Mac Pro)
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Well considering the benchmarks provided just a few above yours showing the 7970 GE outperforming the w9000 in Heaven by 15% I would say that he's workstation GPUs are not as good at gaming as consumer GPUs.....
Thank you very much for extensive review !
I share the opinion of many here that it's a pretty good upgrade if you have a 4,1 and a maybe-you-can-wait if you have a well tuned 5,1 (Accelsior, 680, usb3+TB lci-e card etc) but hey, those many TB ports are really tempting...
I think the next would be to see how it performs vs a tuned 5,1.
Question: so the d500 is the sweet spot for this nMP?
Thanks in advance
I share the opinion of many here that it's a pretty good upgrade if you have a 4,1 and a maybe-you-can-wait if you have a well tuned 5,1 (Accelsior, 680, usb3+TB lci-e card etc) but hey, those many TB ports are really tempting...
I think the next would be to see how it performs vs a tuned 5,1.
Question: so the d500 is the sweet spot for this nMP?
Thanks in advance
Not as good, but close.
This article has a lot more benchmarks (I'm not sure how many people play unique heaven all day). Keep in mind the GE is 25-75mhz faster (2.5-8% faster) which may account for the difference. In some apps it goes to 12%, mostly about 3-7% difference, with many being within 0.5% (and the W9000 winning at a few)
People saying workstation cards can't game don't know what they're talking about--this is so close it's ridiculous. Not to mention that it may be moot as the D700 et al may not be workstation cards (still no SpecPerf and Zero Windows Pro application support...)
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Great review of a product which really did surprise me and exceed my expectations when I had a hex core to setup for a client for half a day with bootcamp. I really want one but don't really need it though!
Fastest thing I've seen run OSX and Windows Hate as well as the smallest - it truly was ludicrous speed everywhere doing anything but equally the physics of the thing is also astounding. Size, lack of heat and noise all frankly a knock-out. Even the drivers for Windows were very stable though I didn't have time to do a hell of a lot to it cos it had a plane to catch.
It's the ultimate compact workstation, not for those who like a big box to throw all your bits in though. But I can see this can taking big lumps out of the Windows workstation market soon enough and selling far, far more numbers than our beloved towers ever did.
Fastest thing I've seen run OSX and Windows Hate as well as the smallest - it truly was ludicrous speed everywhere doing anything but equally the physics of the thing is also astounding. Size, lack of heat and noise all frankly a knock-out. Even the drivers for Windows were very stable though I didn't have time to do a hell of a lot to it cos it had a plane to catch.
It's the ultimate compact workstation, not for those who like a big box to throw all your bits in though. But I can see this can taking big lumps out of the Windows workstation market soon enough and selling far, far more numbers than our beloved towers ever did.
No it's the worst value i would say.
Unless you have a very specific reason to buy one.
The D300 is slightly faster for most tasks. And of course the d700 is quite a bit faster.
Seriously, people should stop comparing workstation GPUs to gaming GPUs, there are optimized for different purposes, sure it'll not perform badly but it wont be the best either when it comes to games. What matters is when you use professional OpenGL softwares, that's where the difference between a workstation GPU and gaming GPU will be night and day.
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Hmm, any idea why the W5000 and W7000 has the word FireGL V at the end in a bracket whereas none for the W9000?
Haha, I'm still waiting for a specviewperf benchmark test. For those who didn't know, I actually have a post asking for any nMP owners with Windows installed to run a specviewperf benchmarking test.
Yeah, it still remains to be seen though, despite being "workstation" cards, what these downclocked and slightly crippled versions of these cards actually do.
What is becoming more clear is that unless you have some specific app needs, it's either the low end D300, or the high end D700 that are your choices... and the extra $1000 for the D700 merits some benchmarks to back up that price difference.
Quoted for truth!
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As you can see from recent posts here, there's some significant debate going on with respect to the value of the D500s... it appears to perform very similarly in OpenGL and OpenCL to it's lower priced D300 sibling. The only real advantages the D500 has, that we know of at the moment, are the added VRAM and the potential for much greater double-precision floating point performance but no one really knows what, if any apps, can tap into that.
I personally believe that if you plan to do any 3D work, you should opt for the D700s. If you know you don't need any GPU performance for your work, opt for the D300. And if you're like me, and don't know what the future holds as far as GPU compute goes, then opting to spend a few hundred extra on the D500s may be a wise move.
I'm certainly one of those "resistance to change" types.
I don't like the idea of trading my "built in to one box" Mac Pro full of storage and expansion cards for a nMP with external storage and expansion devices.
However, I NEVER liked how much the Mac Pro weighed, or hitting my knee on that boat anchor!
I'll trade some clutter for a faster, smaller machine. As a benefit, I don't have to push a laptop into desktop duty because the old Mac Pro was too unwieldy for carrying back and forth to gigs/studios. Though ironically that will mean carrying a seperate bag or container for any external expansion (not a problem with the old MP, but then again...too heavy to comfortably lug).
I don't like the idea of trading my "built in to one box" Mac Pro full of storage and expansion cards for a nMP with external storage and expansion devices.
However, I NEVER liked how much the Mac Pro weighed, or hitting my knee on that boat anchor!
I'll trade some clutter for a faster, smaller machine. As a benefit, I don't have to push a laptop into desktop duty because the old Mac Pro was too unwieldy for carrying back and forth to gigs/studios. Though ironically that will mean carrying a seperate bag or container for any external expansion (not a problem with the old MP, but then again...too heavy to comfortably lug).
I can see this being a very portable workstation - it's solid though a good blow will dent it. Biggest pita will be lugging around a decent keyboard for it. I know half a dozen video producers in the 'grown up' industry who currently live in the uk and have places in various parts of Eastern Europe where they live half the year and shoot their content. This will be ideal for them to lug on the plane back and forth.
Would be really interesting to see if someone could get FCP7 working on 10.9 to see how it crunches the numbers as most of them are marooned on 10.6.8 and practically all of them will not touch FCPX with a barge pole!
After a broken OSX bootcamp reinstall attempt from the TC and the windows server getting my MBP back up and running after the SSD broke I noticed that the TC had 130gb left out of 2gb for the 3 macs at home. Since most of the backups were from the MBP over years, I made copies of the home folders on an external, then bit the bullet this morning and flattened the TC drive. Went out working, left all the macs on with energy saver off and now I have just over 650gb all in!
Excellent Review
Thanks VR for the excellent review. nMP is on order and will be a welcome replacement to existing 3,1 boat anchor. Appreciate your inputs that have helped with decisions for external storage too.
Thanks VR for the excellent review. nMP is on order and will be a welcome replacement to existing 3,1 boat anchor. Appreciate your inputs that have helped with decisions for external storage too.
No, I didn't do that... it seemed like Heaven was the more popular benchmark around here
If it might tell us something we don't already know, I would consider it. What might we learn from it that Heaven, Valley, or LuxMark don't tell us?
No, I didn't do that... it seemed like Heaven was the more popular benchmark around here
I actually use C4D quite a bit...well,...I try to with what I've got, so seeing what your hex will do would be a good indicator of what I can expect when mine gets here. I'm going with the D700's, so the GPU will, hopefully, run a little better than your results.
As you can see, my MacBookPro5,2 is a little out-dated and I'm struggling to render pretty simple things. It'll run TextEdit like a champ though.
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No, I didn't do that... it seemed like Heaven was the more popular benchmark around here
Probably not much. But its about a 5 mins test. I did my system (mp 1,1) and wanted to compare. Plus there are some numbers from other reviews (digital arts) that show 8 core and D700 to compare against the 6 and D500. I would be curious to see the 680 there too. Mostly because GPU tests seem so inconsistent, I think you need several to get a good picture.
The nmp 8 core scores 1225 CPU, and D700 scores 87.74 FPS GPU
I'm gonna guess the nmp 6 core scores 830 CPU and 66.0 FPS GPU.
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Heaven has supported GL4.x on OSX since Mavericks was released. You can now use tessellation etc.
I actually use C4D quite a bit...well,...I try to with what I've got, so seeing what your hex will do would be a good indicator of what I can expect when mine gets here. I'm going with the D700's, so the GPU will, hopefully, run a little better than your results.
As you can see, my MacBookPro5,2 is a little out-dated and I'm struggling to render pretty simple things. It'll run TextEdit like a champ though.
Ok, Cinebench R15 results attached for my nMP...
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I actually use C4D quite a bit...well,...I try to with what I've got, so seeing what your hex will do would be a good indicator of what I can expect when mine gets here. I'm going with the D700's, so the GPU will, hopefully, run a little better than your results.
As you can see, my MacBookPro5,2 is a little out-dated and I'm struggling to render pretty simple things. It'll run TextEdit like a champ though.
The CB 15 OpenGl score for the D700 is between ~90fps in OSX and ~110fps in Windows.
Keep in mind that actually Cinema4D use just one of the two GPU.
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http://cbscores.com/
The 680 in OSX reach ~55 point(on the old 12core), substantially on par or even less than a standard ati 5770.
The GPU tests are very consistent, unless you are running other stuff in background you are going to get always nearly the same results(+-3%).
Ah fantastic! I'll have to compare my newMP when it arrives to my current system in my signature for OpenGL so.
AMD does need to sort out their overall OpenGL support though. Last time I checked they're not in compliance with the Khronos Group's OpenGL support/standards.
THANK YOU once again VR!!! I REALLY appreciate you taking the time.
Looks like I can expect 10+ times the GPU performance and 6+ times (expected) the CPU bump!
sirio76 said:
Thank you sir! That'll knock it up to ~11x what I'm experiencing currently.
I can only hope Maxon will make some changes that will fully utilize both cards.
It's not certified yet in Windows Professional apps. This is what makes it a "workstation" card. It may happen eventually, it may not.
As far as the benchmarks -- I'm sure they'll turn up eventually
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I don't know why it's labeled like that. I too am waiting for these results.
Before units started shipping, there were tons of posts talking about how great a deal this was because it was a "FirePro"... now we're asking for proof and there's nothing but crickets.
Haha, yeah, a lot of news or online news reviewers are testing it with gaming benchmarks which just doesn't make sense as these are FirePros and not Radeons (okay, it'll perform good but not as good as a dual Radeon Crossfire), not to mention that Apple pride themselves into having dual workstation GPUs at the price they are offering. I've been looking for someone to run a specviewperf 11 and or 12 test and look how long I've been waiting