Nvidia Quadro K5000 announced for Mac Pro

[Cindori]

http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/Releas...Performance-With-NVIDIA-Quadro-K5000-861.aspx


Release October, for $2,249 :O

I guess it's good for the super pro's. I've never been a fan of the Quadro cards, to me it has always seemed so much of the Quadro advantage was just firmware/driver, and the desktop cards came pretty close if flashed with Quadro firmwares.

However, with this card we will probably get EFI firmware that we can use to flash desktop GK104 cards, like GTX 670, to work in Mac Pro with bootscreen (it works out of the box without bootscreen though)

 

[StephenCampbell]

This is good news! Now Apple has to at least keep PCI slots in the new Mac Pro next year.

 

[Cindori]

Hey, I never thought about it that way, but that makes sense.

 

[JesterJJZ]

Very good news.

 

[Cindori]

 

[StephenCampbell]

Nvidia probably knows something about the new Mac Pro.

 

[JesterJJZ]

And there is light...

 

[Spacedust]

Apple will make 4K screens - WOW ;P

 

[matteodv]

Did no one pick up on "A new display engine that can drive up to four displays simultaneously"? Could this be the missing key to more than 2 monitors support?

 

[scottrichardson]

Pardon my ignorance, but what level of gaming performance could one expect from one of these? Would we be looking at similar to a 670/680?

I'm tempted to get one of these to give my 09 Mac Pro a few more years. Surely this would be miles better than a 5870 - and since I am a graphics/web/photoshop/finalcut guy, I'll make use of it!

Scottie

 

[Cindori]

Pardon my ignorance, but what level of gaming performance could one expect from one of these? Would we be looking at similar to a 670/680?

I'm tempted to get one of these to give my 09 Mac Pro a few more years. Surely this would be miles better than a 5870 - and since I am a graphics/web/photoshop/finalcut guy, I'll make use of it!

Scottie

Not much more, usually even less. Quadro cards are not optimized for gaming. You don't pay for performance with quadro cards. You pay for support. Quadro is not going to improve your web/photoshop experience. More like CAD experience.

Did no one pick up on "A new display engine that can drive up to four displays simultaneously"? Could this be the missing key to more than 2 monitors support?

well, ATI 5870 could run 3 displays. still, many flashed cards were limited to 2. if you want more displays, it's writing your own connector info that's gonna help you. more of that at netkas.

 

[thekev]

Not much more, usually even less. Quadro cards are not optimized for gaming. You don't pay for performance with quadro cards. You pay for support. Quadro is not going to improve your web/photoshop experience. More like CAD experience.

On Windows Creative Suite requires a workstation card for 10 bit displayport, so it can be used for that stuff too. With workstation cards in general, I typically use the rule that the people who need them are aware of it. This is even more true under OSX as fewer applications are tuned for them.

 

[Umbongo]

I guess it's good for the super pro's. I've never been a fan of the Quadro cards, to me it has always seemed so much of the Quadro advantage was just firmware/driver, and the desktop cards came pretty close if flashed with Quadro firmwares.

The advantages are drivers, certification and support. Obviously businesses get the best of the last two and are the reason that the prices are what they are, but the performance can also valuable for single users. $500-1000 for a graphics card when you are on a $6,000-$10,000 workstation, with the same in software, isn't much for the performance gains you get.

Soft-modding was a way to get a bit more performance out of your GeForce for CAD usage, but it didn't provide you with the same performance of a real Quadro card.

On Windows Creative Suite requires a workstation card for 10 bit displayport, so it can be used for that stuff too. With workstation cards in general, I typically use the rule that the people who need them are aware of it. This is even more true under OSX as fewer applications are tuned for them.

Spot on. Just sometimes they get ruled out by people that haven't seen the difference and can't afford to investigate the benefits properly.

 

[matteodv]

The advantages are drivers, certification and support. Obviously businesses get the best of the last two and are the reason that the prices are what they are, but the performance can also valuable for single users. $500-1000 for a graphics card when you are on a $6,000-$10,000 workstation, with the same in software, isn't much for the performance gains you get.

Soft-modding was a way to get a bit more performance out of your GeForce for CAD usage, but it didn't provide you with the same performance of a real Quadro card.

Image

What are the metrics for that chart? as in what do the numbers represent on the x axis?

The performance in Maya versus essentially the same cards is astonishing!

 

[Umbongo]

What are the metrics for that chart? as in what do the numbers represent on the x axis?

The performance in Maya versus essentially the same cards is astonishing!

Average frames per second over the period of the benchmark being run.

 

[matteodv]

Average frames per second over the period of the benchmark being run.

Thanks so thats bloody good then, well depending on how intensive the Maya animation was but still.

Umbongo? As in takeamewithyou?
Ignore that if you don't get it

 

[DJenkins]

$500-1000 for a graphics card when you are on a $6,000-$10,000 workstation, with the same in software, isn't much for the performance gains you get.

But this card is listed at over $2,249 as the OP mentioned. Definitely aimed at certified workstation market. With 670/680 cards gaining more osx support it would be hard to justify the price for a lot of people.

Also looks to be an all too familiar 'mac premium' price attached

 

[Cindori]

Spot on. Just sometimes they get ruled out by people that haven't seen the difference and can't afford to investigate the benefits properly.

is your benchmark picture for mac using OSX? if not, its not relevant. I'll bet quadro does not have as much advantage on the Mac side. while I agree that the improved support might be a deal sealer for the super pro's (I even heard you can contact Nvidia engineers to get custom build software patches mailed to you), most pro's are much better off getting a GTX 670 / 680

 

[Umbongo]

is your benchmark picture for mac using OSX? if not, its not relevant. I'll bet quadro does not have as much advantage on the Mac side.

No its not in OS X. I assumed your statement about Quadro performance and flashing them was in general, and not specific to OS X, as there was no reason to flash a GeForce to a Quadro in OS X as they used the same quality of drivers. Only when Nvidia made 4000 for Mac did actual driver optimisations come; and you are correct in that there is not much advantage.

 

[goMac]

: whistles :

 

[deconstruct60]

I guess it's good for the super pro's.

That may be limited to a subset. One issue though is the difference in spec sheets:


Regular K5000

http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-k5000.html#pdpContent=2

Mac K5000

http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-k5000-mac.html#pdpContent=2


There is a gap in the Technologies Supported. Obviously the Windows and/or Linux specific stuff can get dropped (e.g., GPUDirect & Linux ) and the historically non-tracked SLI. The highly curious issue though is the lack of OpenCL on the Mac Version. Similar to the OS X driver issue of slow technology adoption that will require a wait till 10.9 to clear up?

There is some "CUDA and those 'emerging' APIs like OpenCL" lip service on the Features tab, but there is no OpenCL explicitly listed on the spec sheet.

 

[deconstruct60]

Not much more, usually even less. Quadro cards are not optimized for gaming. You don't pay for performance with quadro cards. You pay for support. Quadro is not going to improve your web/photoshop experience. More like CAD experience.

Toward the higher half of the Quadro offerings there tends to be a different in VRAM sizes also.

This particular card has 4GB of memory which there won't be a corresponding non-pro Mac version of.

CAD models of real products have to follow the complexity of the real products. If the wing assembly has 8,000 parts to it then need a model with 8,000 highly detailed parts.

If it it s a game details will get throw out if inconvenient to model in extremely accurate fidelity.

 

[florianuhlemann]

Did you guys realize that the used chip has the same configuration as a gtx680 but uses the same architecture as the GT630 and GT640 card? Even less power and less tdp than gtx680...

Still a tempting card for professional use, but gtx cards have always lacked performance under Mac OS in things like cine bench or OpenGL viewer. Plus some games!

Still betting on seeing a 7970M on the next iMac update and therefore support for GCN

 

[MacVidCards]

Quadro 6000 tests at Barefeats.com

The GPGPU is disabled on Kepler cards in a much more permanent & effective way then in past architectures.

It is quite likely that the CUDA and OpenCl performance of the GTX cards will ALWAYS be much lower than the Quadro cards. The GTX570 and GTX580 do not suffer this same fate, they are able to SLAUGHTER their Fermi based Quadro counterparts.

Have a look at CS6 performance, Engadget claims a "twice as fast in CS6" than Q4000, this is already true of GTX570, even the Quadro 6000 we sent Barefeats gives the Q4000 a good trouncing.

http://www.barefeats.com/rogue01.html

 

[Asgorath]

Did you guys realize that the used chip has the same configuration as a gtx680 but uses the same architecture as the GT630 and GT640 card? Even less power and less tdp than gtx680...

Still a tempting card for professional use, but gtx cards have always lacked performance under Mac OS in things like cine bench or OpenGL viewer. Plus some games!

Still betting on seeing a 7970M on the next iMac update and therefore support for GCN

This is simply not true. The GT 640 is a GK107-based card. The GTX 680 and Quadro K5000 are GK104-based cards. It is likely that the K5000 will be floorswept to include less SM units or memory partitions or something, as well as running at lower clock speeds for better stability, but it is absolutely based on the same GPU architecture as the GTX 680 (i.e. GK104).

Cinebench is a CPU benchmark these days. The graphics test is so old and out of date that it is completely CPU limited, even on modern low-end cards. As MacVidCards has pointed out many times, a GTX 680 and an 8800 GT will run at the same framerate, because the GPU simply doesn't matter for that test. To suggest the K5000 has bad performance based on Cinebench is a joke.