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I actually did run it with extreme presets at first, but ran the other one for comparison with another post i saw. Guess i just got the wrong screenshot attached, sorry. The extreme preset gave a score of 1200 :).

MacPaulli, was that score of 1200 achieved at 1600x900 or 1920x1080?

I'm very pleased with my accelerated 970. Using the Extreme setting at 1600x900 I got a score of 1391 at 55.2 fps. Running Extreme at 1920x1080, I got a score of 1128 at 44.8 fps.


MassMacMan1600.png
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...
Only problem so far was a steam game causing the graphics card driver to crash and freeze the screen. had to restart my system. Is odd actually because that particular game (borderlands 2) seems to be running really bad as well with this card and web drivers (using 343.01.01f03) - anyone else experienced crashes like this?
...


Borderlands 2 and the Pre-Sequel give me problems under Yosemite if I have two monitors attached (4k & 1440p) - get maybe 5-10 minutes of play before crashing. Works fine under 10.9, or if I disconnect the second monitor. Pretty much same behavior with the web drivers (all version including f03) and the stock ones.

Granted I'm running a GTX 680 currently - have a GTX970 on the way, maybe it will act differently.
 
Here are my results.

Valley:
Low score is my reference GTX 980.
High score is the flashed gamestablev1a bios which overclocks the card to 1500 mhz.

Linky: http://www.overclock.net/t/1517316/...-970-and-980-firmware-nolimits-and-gamestable

I HIGHLY recommend flashing your 980 because all the vendors are overclocking the 970s straight from the factory so... a stock bios 980 barely preforms any better but it costs 200 extra; only after OC the 980 is it truly worth the premium.
 

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MacPaulli, was that score of 1200 achieved at 1600x900 or 1920x1080?

Sorry for not going much into detail. The score was achieved at 1920x1080. I'll run some more benchmarks later today and post the results here.

Borderlands 2 and the Pre-Sequel give me problems under Yosemite if I have two monitors attached (4k & 1440p) - get maybe 5-10 minutes of play before crashing. Works fine under 10.9, or if I disconnect the second monitor. Pretty much same behavior with the web drivers (all version including f03) and the stock ones.

Granted I'm running a GTX 680 currently - have a GTX970 on the way, maybe it will act differently.

Guessing it's a driver problem then, although i've read multiple threads of Steam being broken in Yosemite, but that's kinda off topic. Anyways, thanks for posting that - i'm glad that I am not the only one at least. hopefully this will be solved soon :)
 
I HIGHLY recommend flashing your 980 because all the vendors are overclocking the 970s straight from the factory so... a stock bios 980 barely preforms any better but it costs 200 extra; only after OC the 980 is it truly worth the premium.

Hey ToroidalZeus, I'm guessing you are running a Hackintosh, right? What temp are you seeing on the OC 980?
 
Again just for comparison, Here's my MVC Gigabyte GTX accelerated GTX 780.

MacPaulli, to show apropos Heaven Benchmarks, you should be using Extreme Settings.

Lou

Thank you for sharing those results. Could you please post the results with a 1920 x 1080 setting?

I'm vacillating between getting a MacVidCards 780 6GB like you or an unflashed 980 4GB. Most of the results people have been posting are with 1920x1080 or 2560x1440. It'd be nice to compare apples to apples.

And a question to those who have purchased a 980: What brand/type did you buy and where did you buy it from?

Thanks!
 
^^^^Sure. BTW, I have the 3GB version.

Lou
 

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Hey ToroidalZeus, I'm guessing you are running a Hackintosh, right? What temp are you seeing on the OC 980?

Temps are the same as stock: 80C under load. The cool thing is the limit has been upped from 80C -> 84C so if i spike to 81C for miisecond it won't throttle the GPU like it did before; thus my clock rate is always between 1450-1506mhz.

The only issue Ive noticed with the bios is that I get coil whine now when the framerate exceeds a reasonable amount. Once I capped the games to 120 FPS the coil whine disappears. I hear this is a typical issue from running the graphic cards higher voltage.

Thank you for sharing those results. Could you please post the results with a 1920 x 1080 setting?

I'm vacillating between getting a MacVidCards 780 6GB like you or an unflashed 980 4GB. Most of the results people have been posting are with 1920x1080 or 2560x1440. It'd be nice to compare apples to apples.

And a question to those who have purchased a 980: What brand/type did you buy and where did you buy it from?

Thanks!

If you really need the ram you might want to consider waiting until the 8GB 980s come out.

For a Mac Pro you want to get a reference--blower style cooler--gpu because there isn't a lot of space around the GPU and without any real airflow the aftermarket coolers that blow the hot air into the case will get heat soaked.

With reference card brand doesn't matter; the only diff I've noticed is the quality of the packaging and the amount of useless accessories they give you. The difference in warranty can be nice but you'll probably upgrade the card before it really matters.

for places to buy : http://www.nowinstock.net/computers/videocards/nvidia/gtx980/
 
If you really need the ram you might want to consider waiting until the 8GB 980s come out.

For a Mac Pro you want to get a reference--blower style cooler--gpu because there isn't a lot of space around the GPU and without any real airflow the aftermarket coolers that blow the hot air into the case will get heat soaked.

Thank you for sharing that information. I edit mostly UHD video footage so having a lot of VRAM on my GPU would be a good thing. I have a 280X 3GB right now that's just not enough. An 8GB 980 would be awesome but when will it be released? I might go with a 4GB 980 in the mean time. Thanks for the purchasing information!
 
...
Guessing it's a driver problem then, although i've read multiple threads of Steam being broken in Yosemite, but that's kinda off topic. Anyways, thanks for posting that - i'm glad that I am not the only one at least. hopefully this will be solved soon :)

Just installed the 970 - Borderlands Pre-Sequel behaves exactly the same way as with the 680 - things play relatively well until I get to the cutscene where jack opens the airlock to the escape ships, then boom! I'm guessing if I disconnected the 2nd monitor I'd be fine....

This was done with 10.10.1 & the 343.01.02b01 web drivers.
 
Just installed the 970 - Borderlands Pre-Sequel behaves exactly the same way as with the 680 - things play relatively well until I get to the cutscene where jack opens the airlock to the escape ships, then boom! I'm guessing if I disconnected the 2nd monitor I'd be fine....

This was done with 10.10.1 & the 343.01.02b01 web drivers.

Game on Windows. DirectX11 has better FPS then OpenGL.

I haven't bought borderlands the pre-sequel yet because I hear it's a money grab DLC released as a full but on borderlands 2 i average the following FPS on windows with my 980.

@ 1440p/96hz
Just chilling and walking = 92-95 fps.
Combat = 70-90 FPS
Intense Combat = 40+ fps
Crazy one time lows where bunch of stuff blows up = 20 fps.
 

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And here's my 970 benchmarks.

Seeing those scores makes me really happy I overlocked my 980.

Cuz I originally bought a 970 and ended up exchanging it for a 980. But when I looked at the scores I was really disappointed. In Valley you got 29.6 FPS with the 970 and I got 32.5 FPS with 980; 3 FPS for 200 dollars :mad: But now that I overlocked the card I'm getting 7 FPS avg higher in the benchmarks and seems about right for the extra cost.
 
Game on Windows. DirectX11 has better FPS then OpenGL.

I haven't bought borderlands the pre-sequel yet because I hear it's a money grab DLC released as a full but on borderlands 2 i average the following FPS on windows with my 980.

Sure, its smoother in Windows - especially at 4k. But I like the option of not having to reboot.

I enjoyed B1.5 - it sure isn't a full sequel like B1 -> B2, but the main campaign was decently long and the new weapons were fun. A full-lenth Tiny Tina would have been bette though. :)
 
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Thanks everyone for the reports so far. I just installed an MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G in my Mac Pro:

Mac Pro 1,1 (Firmware upgraded to 2,1)
8gb Ram
Intel 530 SSD
Yosemite 10.10 - Installed using Piker-Alpha boot loader
MSI GTX 970 GAMING 4G GeForce GTX 970 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5
NVIDIA Web Driver: 343.01.01f03

Here are my findings:
  1. No boot screen as expected
  2. Powered by one 6 pin power cable and one 8 pin to 6 pin power cable, both connected directly to logic board
  3. DVI-D, DVI-I, and HDMI ports all work perfectly
  4. I couldn't test DisplayPort due to lack of DP test hardware
  5. Fan remains off and and silent while idling and barely spins up during normal gaming.
  6. Huge upgrade in gaming performance from my previous card (Apple 8800GT)
  7. Good performance in TF2 and Diablo 3
  8. Drivers still seem pretty immature and are providing substandard performance in very demanding games
  9. Borderlands Pre-sequel performed pretty well and did not crash when Jack opened the airlock as reported by a previous poster
  10. I have CUDA driver 6.5.18 installed but CUDA-Z says "CUDA not found!" when launching, i'm confused about whether CUDA is even possible on my old Mac Pro at this point or if I just need to wait for an updated version. Update: CUDA-Z works find with v. 0.9.230 SVN (Thanks MacVidCards!)

Based on my testing so far I think this card is an excellent pick for Mac users looking to upgrade to a 970. I think the previous poster's recommendation of only buying cards with reference "blower" coolers is unnecessary because of how cool Maxwell cards run in general. If anyone has any questions or wants me to run any tests let me know.
 
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Thanks everyone for the reports so far. I just installed an MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G in my Mac Pro:

Mac Pro 1,1 (Firmware upgraded to 2,1)
8gb Ram
Intel 530 SSD
Yosemite 10.10 - Installed using Piker-Alpha boot loader
MSI GTX 970 GAMING 4G GeForce GTX 970 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5
NVIDIA Web Driver: 343.01.01f03

Here are my findings:
  1. No boot screen as expected
  2. Powered by one 6 pin power cable and one 8 pin to 6 pin power cable, both connected directly to logic board
  3. DVI-D, DVI-I, and HDMI ports all work perfectly
  4. I couldn't test DisplayPort due to lack of DP test hardware
  5. Fan remains off and and silent while idling and barely spins up during normal gaming.
  6. Huge upgrade in gaming performance from my previous card (Apple 8800GT)
  7. Good performance in TF2 and Diablo 3
  8. Drivers still seem pretty immature and are providing substandard performance in very demanding games
  9. Borderlands Pre-sequel performed pretty well and did not crash when Jack opened the airlock as reported by a previous poster
  10. I have CUDA driver 6.5.18 installed but CUDA-Z says "CUDA not found!" when launching, i'm confused about whether CUDA is even possible on my old Mac Pro at this point or if I just need to wait for an updated version.

Based on my testing so far I think this card is an excellent pick for Mac users looking to upgrade to a 970. I think the previous poster's recommendation of only buying cards with reference "blower" coolers is unnecessary because of how cool Maxwell cards run in general. If anyone has any questions or wants me to run any tests let me know.

Download CUDA-Z Beta 9.23
 
GTX 980 in Mac Pro 5,1 - no cuda

Just figured I would throw my hat in the ring. I dropped in the gtx980 in to my mac pro 5,1 with 32 gig ram. Up to this point i am exactly on par with everyone else's assessment. It seems to work fine, but with no CUDA. I am a video editor so the cuda is a necessity. I am considering sending the card off to MacVidCards to get the memory flashed so I can see the boot screen. Is there any reason that this would be a bad idea? I am not too familiar with flashing graphics cards.
 
New Nvidia GTX 970 and 980 - cMP?

Just figured I would throw my hat in the ring. I dropped in the gtx980 in to my mac pro 5,1 with 32 gig ram. Up to this point i am exactly on par with everyone else's assessment. It seems to work fine, but with no CUDA. I am a video editor so the cuda is a necessity. I am considering sending the card off to MacVidCards to get the memory flashed so I can see the boot screen. Is there any reason that this would be a bad idea? I am not too familiar with flashing graphics cards.


Make sure you have installed:
- latest Nvidia drivers
- latest CUDA pakkage
- latest CUDA-Z for reference checking your card

Check latest versions on the websites!

Please report back! Cheers

PS flashing the card by MVC is of course a good idea, not sure if MCV has it ready yet!
 
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Anyone have any idea how a GTX 980 4g would stack up against a GTX780 6G? Its my last day eligible for the step-up program, so I'm trying to assess whether I should bother. I have a MVC-modded GTX780 6g. I suspect there's not much to be gained.

If the 980 8g had been released yet, I would have a stronger case I'm sure.

Thanks
 
Anyone have any idea how a GTX 980 4g would stack up against a GTX780 6G? Its my last day eligible for the step-up program, so I'm trying to assess whether I should bother. I have a MVC-modded GTX780 6g. I suspect there's not much to be gained.

If the 980 8g had been released yet, I would have a stronger case I'm sure.

Thanks

I was searching for reviews on the GTX 980 and found this:

Review Geforce GTX 980

Cheers
 
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