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New Nvidia GTX 970 and 980 - cMP?

hi,

I was also very excited to see the arrival of the GTX 980, and very excited by reading tests.
But I quickly became disillusioned when I read this one:

geforce gtx-http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-980-970--maxwell,3941.html

look on page 12 Their conclusions regarding consumption when used GPGPU is very worrying.
 
gochi said:
i'd just use the TITAN that video card was incredible.

what was it 6gb gddr5
Click to expand...

I think for people that don't mind having the extra power supply that is an excellent idea, but for others that prefer to use just the cMP power, then these cards seem to be fantastic. Will be waiting anxiously to see if anyone gets one of these working in either Mavericks or Yosemite.
 
So what's the situation with this?

Are we just needing someone to purchase and install and see if OSX see's the card?

I'm tempted to buy one myself but I need an EFI card so I can install Windows on my Mac Pro as well for some game tests etc
 
ashurao said:
hi,

I was also very excited to see the arrival of the GTX 980, and very excited by reading tests.
But I quickly became disillusioned when I read this one:

geforce gtx-http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-980-970--maxwell,3941.html

look on page 12 Their conclusions regarding consumption when used GPGPU is very worrying.
Click to expand...

I am really interested in this card. However, the power consumption under stress is way outside my comfort zone.
 
I have a pair of 980s inbound and a 2010 MP, but I haven't seen anything to suggest that support is in OSX.
 
h9826790 said:
I am really interested in this card. However, the power consumption under stress is way outside my comfort zone.
Click to expand...

This looks strange to me. Considering the fact that the GTX 980 has two 6 pin power connnectors, the max power draw is limited to 225 W.

On page 11 Tom's Hardware describes that they used a new method to measure the total power draw of the graphics cards. Perhaps their new setup needs some more fine tuning? From my own experience I know that making correct measurements isn’t as trivial as it sounds.

And even if the card would draw ~*285 W, this would usually lead to some stability problems of the system. If you try to draw more power than the system is designed to deliver, you rely on safety margins. More often than not, once you exceed these margins, a system behaves badly.

Since I did not hear about any stability issues with the GTX 980 yet, my bet is that Tom’s Hardware measurements are not 100% correct under all circumstances.
 
tomvos said:
This looks strange to me. Considering the fact that the GTX 980 has two 6 pin power connnectors, the max power draw is limited to 225 W.

On page 11 Tom's Hardware describes that they used a new method to measure the total power draw of the graphics cards. Perhaps their new setup needs some more fine tuning? From my own experience I know that making correct measurements isn’t as trivial as it sounds.

And even if the card would draw ~*285 W, this would usually lead to some stability problems of the system. If you try to draw more power than the system is designed to deliver, you rely on safety margins. More often than not, once you exceed these margins, a system behaves badly.

Since I did not hear about any stability issues with the GTX 980 yet, my bet is that Tom’s Hardware measurements are not 100% correct under all circumstances.
Click to expand...

Is that total power draw from just the card or the total draw of the entire system? I get confused sometimes when the reviews don't label them properly.

I would like to see reviews of the GTX 970 running at base speed too. The ones on the web are mostly the overclocked ones.
 
ShawnF said:
Is that total power draw from just the card or the total draw of the entire system? I get confused sometimes when the reviews don't label them properly.

I would like to see reviews of the GTX 970 running at base speed too. The ones on the web are mostly the overclocked ones.
Click to expand...

As far as I understand the description on page 11 in the review article, the measurement includes only the graphics card and nothing else. The power via PCIe-Slot was measured on a raiser board and the two external PCIe power connection have been measured separately.

I'm not an electrical engineer, but the results from the measurements seem strange to me. Perhaps other reviewers will pick up the topic and do their own research on the maximal power draw during extreme loads on the GPU.
 
ashurao said:
hi,

I was also very excited to see the arrival of the GTX 980, and very excited by reading tests.
But I quickly became disillusioned when I read this one:

geforce gtx-http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-980-970--maxwell,3941.html

look on page 12 Their conclusions regarding consumption when used GPGPU is very worrying.
Click to expand...

You have a point, but from what I can gather, those Gigabyte cards tested are far from reference spec. The default 980 and 970 use (2) 6pin power connectors, and it looks like the Gigabyte Windforce 980 uses (2) 8pin connectors and the Gigabyte 970 uses (1) 8pin and (1) 6pin. So that may be the reason they draw so much more power.

Here's a link to the Gigabyte 980 card:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5208#ov

----------

One more thing to sort out is 4K performance. I really don't have any immediate need to game or work in 4K, but I'd like to be somewhat future-proofed.

In the past Nvidia has been locked out of the 60hz 4K game by Apple (letting AMD work just fine), and I also ran across a little asterisk on at the bottom of the spec pages on Nvidia's site that isn't the most encouraging in regards to the refresh rate:

(* 3840x2160 at 30Hz or 4096x2160 at 24Hz supported over HDMI)
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-980/specifications

Excuse my ignorance, but will 3840 or 4096 function just fine over DP 1.2?
 
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gochi said:
i'd just use the TITAN that video card was incredible.
Click to expand...

If you want CUDA or gaming performance, yes, but not if you're using OpenCL. Early reviews indicate the 980 blows the Titan out of the OpenCL waters. They're also showing more OpenCL computer power than the R9 290x (and 290), and a fair bit more than the 280 (and 280x). Folks still using a cMP and FCPX should be interested in these cards.

To the topic in general, I'm waiting to see what the verdict is. I'm tempted to buy a couple of cards and see what happens, but it looks like Amazon has limited stock of cards right now (primarily the more expensive ones are the ones they have in stock).

I've done a little poking around but I've still not seen any confirmation about them working in Mavericks or Yosemite. I can hardly wait to hear what your verdict is, brentsg.
 
Color my interested. Just picked up a msi 970, primarily for use in windows, but if I can get it flashed for OS X bios support as well, score! Keep us updated!
 
If (or more like when) Nvidia makes a Maxwell-based Titan, is it likely to weigh in under 225W and be 2x 6-pin?

165W on the 980 is very promising. Would love to be able to plug in a Titan without needing a second power supply.
 
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Demigod Mac said:
If (or more like when) Nvidia makes a Maxwell-based Titan, is it likely to weigh in under 225W and be 2x 6-pin?

165W on the 980 is very promising. Would love to be able to plug in a Titan without needing a second power supply.
Click to expand...

TDP ≠ Power Usage.

The 980 will happily draw all the power it can from the PCI-Express slot and 6-pin rails.
 
Gtx970 msi

I just bought a MSI GTX970 4gb to replace my GTX760. The 970 doesn't work: fans speed up, light goes on but I don't get a loginscreen, even after a couple of minutes.. Any ideas?:(
 
DevionNL said:
I just bought a MSI GTX970 4gb to replace my GTX760. The 970 doesn't work: fans speed up, light goes on but I don't get a loginscreen, even after a couple of minutes.. Any ideas?:(
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Yes. Wait for the release of Yosemite with drivers that support the card. Until then, you've got an expensive brick. Watch for posts from MacVidCards here, or other posts on netkas dot org. You'll likely see it there first. Right now, the 980 is performing marginally well in the next OS and there's only one report I've seen of a functional 970 and it's very, very buggy.
 
I'm Using a Mac Pro 1.1 and Ive 32 to 64 Mavericks on to it and now Ive x2 EVGA GTX 660 SuperClocked in there and im debating if apple or Nvidia get support would I grab the GTX980 cause there is a chance thats its not compatible it tuck forever to get the GTX660s working I wouldn't looking forward to goin through that again
 
Yes, have you installed the newest drivers?
Click to expand...

Yes. Wait for the release of Yosemite with drivers that support the card. Until then, you've got an expensive brick. Watch for posts from MacVidCards here, or other posts on netkas dot org. You'll likely see it there first. Right now, the 980 is performing marginally well in the next OS and there's only one report I've seen of a functional 970 and it's very, very buggy.
Click to expand...

I installed the newest drivers/yosemite beta. Can I download other drivers somewhere? Untill it works I'll just install it in a secondairy pc :confused:
 
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