New Nvidia GTX 970 and 980 - cMP?

[roobarb!]

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.

I read that too, but their power usage ratings seem very suspicious to me. They're way above what they should be; in fact, probably too high for the cabling to allow.

Much more sensible is this review:

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/2014/09/18/geforce-gtx-980-review-performance-lower-power/

There's a lot of power information in there, which tallies much more with what I would expect from the specs of the card. I have also read elsewhere that the GTX 980 pulls somewhere around 30W less than the standard GTX 680 under load. That's reassuring to me, as I have a GTX 680 SuperClocked in my MacPro5,1 with no additional power supply (all internal) which has been running perfectly for over a year now - with some very stressful work. Two standard 6-pin connectors on that too, and no problems.

I can't see that Nvidia would ship a card that from stock pulled more than its cabling was rated for. That'd just be wild. Having said all that, I have a GTX 980 ACX 2.0 SuperClock (04G-P4-2983-KR) inbound for my MacPro5,1 and will be happy to report back on my burning traces.

EVGA state a power draw of 165W and 500W PSU required for the 04G-P4-2983-KR, which would be rather less than the 550W PSU requirements of the GTX 680.

Here's the GTX 680 Spec (PDF) and GTX 980 Spec (PDF). The GTX 680 is as I have used it, and as I say, been super happy with no additional PSU requirements.

NB. I don't have any spinning drives in my Mac Pro now, though I did have two 2TB WD Black drives when I first installed the GTX 680. No problems then either.

 

[logicalways]

Check the TDP of the ATI Radion HD 5870 as a baseline to know how much power draw your MP 4,1 or 5,1 system can handle. I think it's a TDP of 230w and that card was standard. So my mind says anything less, you're good to go.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

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.

Those have been fixed. There was an issue with the BIOS of their review sample - check the page for an update.

Expect 980 and 970 performance to improve a bit as the drivers mature. NVidia's web drivers are still very much beta. The 750 Ti I have in my Xserve is probably running at only 50% performance right now.

 

[roobarb!]

The 750 Ti I have in my Xserve is probably running at only 50% performance right now.

In your Xserve? Good work, sir!

Well, my GTX 980 SC arrived and I am using it to type this right now on my MacPro5,1. Under Windows.

I'll spend a bit more time with it, but even in these early stages the performance is pretty impressive. GPU-Z reports all is well, except for it appearing as only a PCI-E 1.1 x16 device, rather than PCI-E 2.0 x16. I believe this is a known issue - MacVidCards have certainly mentioned it. Also, no boot screens of course (as there's no EFI support in the card's firmware) and starting Mavericks just puts the system in a reboot loop.

Yosemite works with the beta web drivers, but those drivers are far from ready. I got it through the Valley benchmark, but the results are useless as its obvious some things are not being rendered properly. On an earlier version of Yosemite though.

A very promising start, though. Apple will have to make use of Maxwell architecture cards (and thus provide drivers) soon enough; it's too powerful at such low energy usage for them to ignore. Looking forward to experimenting more!

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

In your Xserve? Good work, sir!

Well, my GTX 980 SC arrived and I am using it to type this right now on my MacPro5,1. Under Windows.

I'll spend a bit more time with it, but even in these early stages the performance is pretty impressive. GPU-Z reports all is well, except for it appearing as only a PCI-E 1.1 x16 device, rather than PCI-E 2.0 x16. I believe this is a known issue - MacVidCards have certainly mentioned it. Also, no boot screens of course (as there's no EFI support in the card's firmware) and starting Mavericks just puts the system in a reboot loop.

Yosemite works with the beta web drivers, but those drivers are far from ready. I got it through the Valley benchmark, but the results are useless as its obvious some things are not being rendered properly. On an earlier version of Yosemite though.

A very promising start, though. Apple will have to make use of Maxwell architecture cards (and thus provide drivers) soon enough; it's too powerful at such low energy usage for them to ignore. Looking forward to experimenting more!

Thanks! I have a 2008 Octo 3GHz Xserve in my basement with a couple of USB over Cat5 and an HDMI over Cat6 adapters with cables running up two floors to my home office. It's my wife's main machine now and is obviously completely silent as the computer is two floors away! Xserves go for crazy cheap, much cheaper than their corresponding Mac Pros. I think I paid £100 for it. Only issue is that it's not officially supported with Mavericks, Yosemite etc due to the ATI card they used to put in it not having support. A simple plist edit for supported machines fixes that though.

The GTX 750 Ti is working well for now although there's still quite a bit of graphics oomph missing. I'm using GM2 with the web drivers at the moment. I haven't upgraded to GM3 yet as nVidia haven't released a new web driver and I can't be arsed to make the modifications to get the GM2 web driver working in GM3.

I'd recommend you update your Yosemite build and web drivers though. I had weird artifacting a few builds back which are now completely gone. It's only the performance which is a bit off.

 

[Lone Deranger]

In your Xserve? Good work, sir!

Well, my GTX 980 SC arrived and I am using it to type this right now on my MacPro5,1. Under Windows.

I'll spend a bit more time with it, but even in these early stages the performance is pretty impressive. GPU-Z reports all is well, except for it appearing as only a PCI-E 1.1 x16 device, rather than PCI-E 2.0 x16. I believe this is a known issue - MacVidCards have certainly mentioned it. Also, no boot screens of course (as there's no EFI support in the card's firmware) and starting Mavericks just puts the system in a reboot loop.

Yosemite works with the beta web drivers, but those drivers are far from ready. I got it through the Valley benchmark, but the results are useless as its obvious some things are not being rendered properly. On an earlier version of Yosemite though.

A very promising start, though. Apple will have to make use of Maxwell architecture cards (and thus provide drivers) soon enough; it's too powerful at such low energy usage for them to ignore. Looking forward to experimenting more!

So this card works in a Mac Pro 5.1 with only the factory PSU from Apple? No external PSU needed?
How would you say this card compared to a PNY Nvidia Quadro K5000 using Autodesk Maya?

 

[Zorn]

So this card works in a Mac Pro 5.1 with only the factory PSU from Apple? No external PSU needed?
How would you say this card compared to a PNY Nvidia Quadro K5000 using Autodesk Maya?

I can answer the first part of your question - the 970/980 only require the six pin connectors that are in the Mac Pro, so no external PSU required. I don't use Maya though.

 

[Lone Deranger]

I can answer the first part of your question - the 970/980 only require the six pin connectors that are in the Mac Pro, so no external PSU required. I don't use Maya though.

Thanks Zorn! That sounds hopeful!

 

[roobarb!]

I'd recommend you update your Yosemite build and web drivers though. I had weird artifacting a few builds back which are now completely gone. It's only the performance which is a bit off.

Yes, I would, but I think GM2 has vanished now, so I'd get pushed straight to GM3 and need to twiddle with plists - and like you, I can't be bothered! Especially as the final version will be out in the wild shortly.

In the beta build I'm using there are indeed many weird glitches, including one where Preview won't display anything - just white with coloured single pixels here and there. Not seen that since I stuck an Nvidia 7800 GS in my PowerMac G4.

Good to hear you're keeping the Xserve alive - they're definitely my favourite Apple machine. Still use them at work, too. I keep seeing them on eBay, but I'd be shot if I started filling the house with them on top of everything else!

 

[MacVidCards]

Yes, I would, but I think GM2 has vanished now, so I'd get pushed straight to GM3 and need to twiddle with plists - and like you, I can't be bothered! Especially as the final version will be out in the wild shortly.

In the beta build I'm using there are indeed many weird glitches, including one where Preview won't display anything - just white with coloured single pixels here and there. Not seen that since I stuck an Nvidia 7800 GS in my PowerMac G4.

Good to hear you're keeping the Xserve alive - they're definitely my favourite Apple machine. Still use them at work, too. I keep seeing them on eBay, but I'd be shot if I started filling the house with them on top of everything else!

7800GS was 2nd card I wrote by myself. Rather proud of that one. The public rom out for it got refined after my initial work by my Strangedogs brethren.

In a basement in WNY sits a G5 I gave my dad. I tried to tell him the Gainward 7800GT in it is worth more than rest of machine.

 

[roobarb!]

7800GS was 2nd card I wrote by myself. Rather proud of that one. The public rom out for it got refined after my initial work by my Strangedogs brethren.

In a basement in WNY sits a G5 I gave my dad. I tried to tell him the Gainward 7800GT in it is worth more than rest of machine.

Fantastic! In which case I have you to thank for all those hours scaring myself to death with Doom 3 on that G4. Cheers!

That G4 ended up overclocked, liquid-cooled and with the 7800GS. Think it lasted me nearly 10 years! Still works, too.

 

[roobarb!]

Quick update. The official NVIDIA web drivers are out and working for Yosemite now - just updated them with the GTX 680 installed, then did some benchmarks, swapped in the GTX 980 and did the benchmarks again. Running driver 10.1.43 (343.01.01f01) on Yosemite Final (14A389).

All of the problems I was seeing with the GTX 980 in the beta exhibiting incomplete rendering and artefacts on the desktop are gone. Heaven and Valley benchmarks render properly. However, only MacVidCards and Netkas have PCI-E 2.0 working, so my tests are at PCI-E 1.0 x16 bandwidth, so half the speed it should be.

Seeing good improvements in Heaven, though the min FPS is low - doubtless there's the PCI-E limitation showing there. Much less of an improvement in Valley for the time being. Tests were run full screen on my little 1680x1050 panel, Ultra quality, normal tessellation, 8xAA.

 

[karsten]

I'm on a haswell hackintosh with an eVGA 970 SC (blower style) and am getting terrible screen flickering with the latest nvidia web drivers. anyone else seeing this?

this is from dmesg, don't know if it's relevant:

process WindowServer[99] caught causing excessive wakeups. Observed wakeups rate (per sec): 242; Maximum permitted wakeups rate (per sec): 150; Observation period: 300 seconds; Task lifetime number of wakeups: 45024

 

[DevionNL]

nice, can't wait to try out my gtx 970

Is yours working?

What videocard brand and Mac Pro do you have?

 

[ToroidalZeus]

Is yours working?

What videocard brand and Mac Pro do you have?

I ended up returning the 970 and I'm waiting for a 980 to be available for sale.

 

[Chocomonsters]

Is yours working?

What videocard brand and Mac Pro do you have?

I have Gigabyte GTX 970 (GV-N970G1 Gaming-4GD). It works well under both OS X Yosemite and Win 7.

Only problem so far is that second screen (DVD-D) will not power back up from sleep under Yosemite. Only main screen (DVD-I) will power back up from sleep.

 

[P00t]

Just got my GTX980 (Galax Version) and it wouldn't boot, just got constant chime reboots

It's a stock NVIDIA card by the way, Galax are just acting as a middleman.

Trying to install the Webdriver and I get the message "OSX Version Not Compatible" which I think is due to me still being on the GM3 Beta, so I'm downloading the public version of Yosemite now.

Will report back when I've reinstalled.

UPDATE: OK, updated to Public Yosemite and it booted my system but I didn't see any video from HDMI, so maybe that's the problem?

I have no other compatible inputs on my TV, so I can't confirm.

Conclusion: No GTX980 for me lol

 

[Asgorath]

UPDATE: OK, updated to Public Yosemite and it booted my system but I didn't see any video from HDMI, so maybe that's the problem?

I have no other compatible inputs on my TV, so I can't confirm.

Conclusion: No GTX980 for me lol

You could always try a DVI to HDMI adapter?

 

[DevionNL]

I have Gigabyte GTX 970 (GV-N970G1 Gaming-4GD). It works well under both OS X Yosemite and Win 7.

Only problem so far is that second screen (DVD-D) will not power back up from sleep under Yosemite. Only main screen (DVD-I) will power back up from sleep.

I have got a MSI one. I just updated to the public version and Am going to test right now!

Did you install any additional software besides Yosemite?

 

[MacVidCards]

I have tried 3 different GTX980 now.

All 3 worked just fine. I am fairly certain that HDMI was functional to a Dell U2410 via HDMI.

It is absolutely 100% ESSENTIAL that you get Yosemite up dn running, THEN install the Web Driver.

Reboot and double check that Web Driver came back up with checkmark by it.

THEN YOU INSTALL THE 970/980.

If you build the install on one machine and have the driver selected but then move the drive to another, you lose the setting and install will be back on OS X Default and you will see a lovely black screen.

I have had trouble with 980s and HDMI but only on my Asus 321 4K, but nearly everything involving it is a nuisance.

 

[P00t]

@MacVidCards
I think that's exactly what's happening to me.

I think I'm either going back to an ATI Radeon for dual boot with the 980 External, but nobody has any good deals atm, so after tonight I won't have my Mac Pro since I sold my 660 to help fund the 980 LOL

So from ATI 5770 to 660 to 980 to nothing

Another part of me is tempted to just sell my Mac Pro in parts and get a Mac Mini again and a decent rig setup for gaming.

God I love going around in circles

 

[MacVidCards]

@MacVidCards
I think that's exactly what's happening to me.

I think I'm either going back to an ATI Radeon for dual boot with the 980 External, but nobody has any good deals atm, so after tonight I won't have my Mac Pro since I sold my 660 to help fund the 980 LOL

So from ATI 5770 to 660 to 980 to nothing

Another part of me is tempted to just sell my Mac Pro in parts and get a Mac Mini again and a decent rig setup for gaming.

God I love going around in circles

We should be able to get to bottom of this.

Be happy to help.

Can you put the 5770 back in and confirm that the "Web Driver" has the checkmark by it?

 

[P00t]

We should be able to get to bottom of this.

Be happy to help.

Can you put the 5770 back in and confirm that the "Web Driver" has the checkmark by it?

Sorry to confuse you MVC, I actually sold the 5770, but I may get another.

But thanks very much for your responses and help offer, appreciate it.

 

[Chocomonsters]

Just GM Yosemite.

 

[lexR]

Weird question but has anybody got a pair of 970's working in a cMP in OSX on just internal power? I've read some interesting reviews on the very low power consumption and just thinking if it was possible?