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Need a new video card... GTX 680?

S

ScottishCaptain

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 4, 2008
871
475
Ugh.

So, apparently Apple's currently shipping 5870 GPU drivers are buggy as hell when it comes to modern day professional OpenGL applications. I've spent the past 4 days going back and forth with several companies over crappy performance with this card and the blame has apparently been placed on Apple. Bug reports have been filed, nothing has happened, and near as I can tell all of 10.8.x and 10.9 are afflicted by said bug.

So I am in the unfortunate position of:

A) Sticking with older software (which has the primarily disadvantage of being slow)
B) Replacing my stock 5870 GPU with something that has sane drivers

So I've got a few questions.

1) What is the most powerful officially supported GPU for OS X? Is that the eVGA GTX 680?

2) How loud is the eVGA GTX 680?

3) What does a third party GPU do without drivers? Does OS X just drive the card as a VESA unit without any kind of acceleration? Basically, I want to know if I'm going to have to perpetually swap out the new card with my 5870 every time the drivers need to be changed or something.

4) What GPU would you recommend if not the eVGA 680 GTX? Please note that I do NOT want to modify my Mac Pro in any way. The card needs to plug into the existing aux cables (or come with it's own) and must NOT draw more power then the logic board can safely provide.

Thanks in advance,
-SC
 
ScottishCaptain said:
So I've got a few questions.

1) What is the most powerful officially supported GPU for OS X? Is that the eVGA GTX 680?
Click to expand...

Yes.

ScottishCaptain said:
2) How loud is the eVGA GTX 680?
Click to expand...

Inaudible to my ears, even when under load.

ScottishCaptain said:
3) What does a third party GPU do without drivers? Does OS X just drive the card as a VESA unit without any kind of acceleration? Basically, I want to know if I'm going to have to perpetually swap out the new card with my 5870 every time the drivers need to be changed or something.
Click to expand...

The built-in drivers from OS X have support for the GTX 680.

ScottishCaptain said:
4) What GPU would you recommend if not the eVGA 680 GTX? Please note that I do NOT want to modify my Mac Pro in any way. The card needs to plug into the existing aux cables (or come with it's own) and must NOT draw more power then the logic board can safely provide.
Click to expand...

The GTX 680 meets all of your requirements. There's also the Sapphire Radeon 7950, but you'd be back to the AMD drivers.
 
Sorry, I'm not looking to buy a modified card. I need support from the manufacture for whatever it is because of the 3D software I'm running in a professional capacity. I can't afford to be running modified hardware that "may or may not be causing issues" if any problem should arise.

That does bring up another question: does the eVGA GTX 680 Mac card not come with boot screens?

-SC
 
ScottishCaptain said:
Sorry, I'm not looking to buy a modified card. I need support from the manufacture for whatever it is because of the 3D software I'm running in a professional capacity. I can't afford to be running modified hardware that "may or may not be causing issues" if any problem should arise.

That does bring up another question: does the eVGA GTX 680 Mac card not come with boot screens?

-SC
Click to expand...

The Mac Version comes with the boot screen:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130912&Tpk=GTX680 mac

The PC Version does not.

Lou
 
i recently went from the 5870 to the 680 in my mac pro.
noise is a wash when running os x or windows- the 5870 and the 680 are both silent under 99% of operating conditions. I can hear a slight whine from either card after multi-hour gaming sessions, but I have to make the room absolutely silent for it to be audible.

performance has been good with the 680- mavericks brings a huge performance increase. huge. gaming under 10.9 is now in the same performance ballpark as in windows. 10.9 is about 10 fps slower than win7 in the games I've checked (civ5, bioshock infinite, kerbal space program) as opposed to a deficit of ~20-30 fps under 10.8.
I don't use professional modeling apps, though, so I can't give you data on that. gaming is really the only way I stress the card.

seriously loving the OpenGL in 10.9. :D

about drivers- the Mac 680 is an officially supported product. drivers are built into the OS. this is no more risky than your 5870 was as far as support. you should get official support from autodesk, pixologic, etc using the standard drivers
 
Last edited:
elvisizer said:
about drivers- the Mac 680 is an officially supported product. drivers are built into the OS. this is no more risky than your 5870 was as far as support. you should get official support from autodesk, pixologic, etc using the standard drivers
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Then four separate companies told me it was a bug in Apple's 5870 drivers, that they had all filed bug reports, and Apple had otherwise done nothing. One of the developers/engineers even told me that he had heard that Apple wasn't actively working on the 5870 drivers anymore with the new Mac Pro around the corner- they were just maintaining them in semi-workable condition from now on until they dropped support for it completely.

So really, the ATI 5870 is supposed to be a "supported product". Everyone has it certified, but that's not the problem. The problem is buggy drivers from Apple, hence my desire to switch to a card with a more sane set of drivers then the 5870 which has apparently been abandoned.

-SC
 
elvisizer said:
i recently went from the 5870 to the 680 in my mac pro.
noise is a wash when running os x or windows- the 5870 and the 680 are both silent under 99% of operating conditions. ....
Click to expand...

Recently made the same move to eVGA Mac Edition GTX 680 in my 5,1 MP. As quiet as the 5870. Switched mainly to get CUDA support for Adobe Premiere Pro. Easy install using same power cables as the 5870. Stable performance. The only drivers I had to install were the Nvidia CUDA drivers.
 
53kyle said:
I think OS X also supports the nvidia titan card, but that is $1000 and might require an external power supply.
Click to expand...

OSX (10.8.3 +) does support the Titan. I have a GTX780 modified by MacVidCards, and it is supported, but no Open CL - YET for the GK110:mad: My understanding is that support for that GPU chip will come with Mavericks.

Lou
 
flowrider said:
OSX (10.8.3 +) does support the Titan. I have a GTX780 modified by MacVidCards, and it is supported, but no Open CL - YET for the GK110:mad: My understanding is that support for that GPU chip will come with Mavericks.

Lou
Click to expand...

As always, just be a little careful when throwing around the support word. It's clear that the OP is looking for an actual Mac-version of a card so that they are covered if something goes wrong.

While I know what you mean by supported (no boot screens, PCIE 1.0 in Windows, card not read properly in System Profiler, etc), we don't want to confuse.
 
^^^^I wasn't responding to the OP (who I know wants an Apple supported card). But, to 53kyle who mentioned to the Invidia Titan, a card that uses the same GPU chip as my GTX780.

My card does not have Apple support or the Manufacturer's support (in my case Gigabyte) But MacVidCards does stand behind the stuff he sells. But it does have Mac OS System Support.

And as far as Apple support goes, it is my understanding that Apple Apple does not support the Sapphire Radeon HD7950 or the EVGA GTX680 Mac Editions sold by those two companies. The buyer would need to get support from the Card manufacturer, not Apple.

When we modify our machines, we do lose Apple support, and that can (and does) apply to:

RAM
HDD
SSD
Add on PCIe Cards (i.e. USB3, SATAIII SSD cards, raid cards & etc.)
Graphics Cards

There's a lot of third party stuff available for a Mac Pro, and none of it is supported by Apple.

Lou
 
ScottishCaptain said:
Yeah, that's what I thought.

Then four separate companies told me it was a bug in Apple's 5870 drivers, that they had all filed bug reports, and Apple had otherwise done nothing. One of the developers/engineers even told me that he had heard that Apple wasn't actively working on the 5870 drivers anymore with the new Mac Pro around the corner- they were just maintaining them in semi-workable condition from now on until they dropped support for it completely.

So really, the ATI 5870 is supposed to be a "supported product". Everyone has it certified, but that's not the problem. The problem is buggy drivers from Apple, hence my desire to switch to a card with a more sane set of drivers then the 5870 which has apparently been abandoned.

-SC
Click to expand...
supported does not mean bug free, unfortunately!
nvidia drivers have had their issues on OSX, too, but in general I've had fewer with nvidia on the applications you're using than ATI.
At ILM we used all nvidia cards in our macs in the art dept.
 
Check the supported GPU list from your preffered software apps. They will most likely only support the workstation cards like the slow Quadro 4000 for mac or the expensive K5000 for Mac. Gtx 680 is a consumer gaming card so they are less likely to have that on their recommended hardware list.
 
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