New Mac Pro with SLI support?

[jchahn]

I am a junior in college with a major in computer science, so I often frequent the big name websites to see what kind of jobs they are offering, what kind of experience they require, etc. This is a legitimate job posting that I found on http://www.nvidia.com :

OPENGL SOFTWARE ENGINEER - MAC #782559

RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Apply your skills to develop the best OpenGL implementation in the industry
- Develop of new OpenGL software features under the OSX operating system. Examples: GLSL, SLI, etc.
- Maintenance and bug fixes for NVIDIAs OSX OpenGL driver
- Support / bring-up of OSX OpenGL drivers on new NVIDIA GPUs / Architectures

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:
- BSEE/CS.
- Experience with 3D graphics, OpenGL, API, OSX and/or Windows operating systems.
- Thorough knowledge of C/C++ required.
- Kernel driver experience is highly desirable
- Team player

EOE


I was under the impression that apple made the nvidia drivers in house. This seems to contradict that because nvidia is wanting to hire someone to make new mac drivers. Also, under the "Responsibilities" section it says they want the candidate to add new features to the mac driver such as SLI. Why would nvidia want to make a mac driver that has SLI support? Maybe a new mac pro is on the horizon?? Interesting.

 

[Umbongo]

I was under the impression that apple made the nvidia drivers in house. This seems to contradict that because nvidia is wanting to hire someone to make new mac drivers. Also, under the "Responsibilities" section it says they want the candidate to add new features to the mac driver such as SLI. Why would nvidia want to make a mac driver that has SLI support? Maybe a new mac pro is on the horizon?? Interesting.

Well I don't really think it's contradictory if Apple have been developing in house and Nvidia now want to have someone on staff to do OSX work for their own reasons.

A new mac pro certainly is on the horizon and the new intel server/workstation chipset will have multiple full PCI-E x16 slots making SLI very useful and likely indeed.

 

[trainguy77]

Well drivers that support don't require a new mac pro. The current mac pro would be fine for this...I thought...just need the drivers.

 

[jchahn]

Well drivers that support don't require a new mac pro. The current mac pro would be fine for this...I thought...just need the drivers.

That's right. However, it wouldn't be full blown 16x on each slot. They would need a new mb like what they offer for PCs now that has multiple 16x slots. You could get SLI now, but it would only be 8x per card.

 

[trainguy77]

That's right. However, it wouldn't be full blown 16x on each slot. They would need a new mb like what they offer for PCs now that has multiple 16x slots. You could get SLI now, but it would only be 8x per card.

8x per card would be fine for say the 7300...yeah it would slow down the faster cards though...I am looking forward to SLI support though.

 

[beerad72]

Okay I can tell you from personal experience that when comparing benchmarks of two cards in my case 2 x 7800gt's in sli @ 2 x8x and 2x 16x there is hardly any difference. Bottom line is cards barely use the bandwidth of 8x. However in the future as cards bandwidth requirements get more demanding we may use 16x to it's fullest but not yet.

 

[jchahn]

What would make my day is an announcement from apple that nvidia and ati were both going to create mac version of their universal drivers and that apple was going to modify OSX to support BIOS roms as well as EFI roms so that way we could use whatever video card we want instead of being limited to Apple's limited (and overpriced) selection.

 

[QCassidy352]

What would make my day is an announcement from apple that nvidia and ati were both going to create mac version of their universal drivers and that apple was going to modify OSX to support BIOS roms as well as EFI roms so that way we could use whatever video card we want instead of being limited to Apple's limited (and overpriced) selection.

yes, that would be outstanding. It's hard to see it happening, though, given that apple's restrictive video card implimentation has been that way for years. Of course, stranger things have happened (using Intel, for example).

 

[jchahn]

yes, that would be outstanding. It's hard to see it happening, though, given that apple's restrictive video card implimentation has been that way for years. Of course, stranger things have happened (using Intel, for example).

This is probably just wishful thinking, but I'm hoping that boot camp and parallels (if the parallels team ever gets 3d acceleration implemented, their working on it btw) will become hugely popular and apple will see that there is a huge market for playing windows games on a mac. Hopefully they will realize that people are going through the trouble of swapping cards back and forth just to play their favorite games at the fps they want when they boot into windows, and they will just make it seamless and easy like it should be. I mean, apple gives us the ability to use whatever video card we want in windows with boot camp. The logical next step is to allow us to leave the card in and use it when we go back to OSX.

 

[Pressure]

This is probably just wishful thinking, but I'm hoping that boot camp and parallels (if the parallels team ever gets 3d acceleration implemented, their working on it btw) will become hugely popular and apple will see that there is a huge market for playing windows games on a mac. Hopefully they will realize that people are going through the trouble of swapping cards back and forth just to play their favorite games at the fps they want when they boot into windows, and they will just make it seamless and easy like it should be. I mean, apple gives us the ability to use whatever video card we want in windows with boot camp. The logical next step is to allow us to leave the card in and use it when we go back to OSX.

The percentage of people that buy a Mac Pro for gaming is minuscule at best. This is a workstation class computer and meant for business.

The Radeon X1900XT should be more than enough for the majority of people, even though it may not be the best.

It's more than enough for the only game I play (Dark Age of Camelot) and it will run World of Warcraft like butter. Of course, if you have to be bleeding edge just for the sake of it, so be it.

 

[cynerjist]

It's more than enough for the only game I play (Dark Age of Camelot)

...LOL

 

[Lord Blackadder]

Maybe this is another step closer to parity with the PC industry when it comes to video card options available to the Mac owner.

SLI is overrated IMHO, 9 times out of 10 you are better off going with a single card. But getting SLI on the Mac would be a good thing, don't get me wrong!

 

[Grenadier]

I kind of agree-
SLI would be a nice feature.

However...I personally think that its better to buy a very powerful card for...say, £400, than 2 mid-powered cards for £420 and get the same performance. Just my honest opinion.