For me:
HD2600XT: Middle-range card, fine for most people
8800 GT: Gaming card
HD 3870: "Pro" card
FX 5600: Advanced "Pro" card
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Radeon HD 3870 for Mac coming end of May
- Thread starter barefeats
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For me:
HD2600XT: Middle-range card, fine for most people
8800 GT: Gaming card
HD 3870: "Pro" card
FX 5600: Advanced "Pro" card
Each machine produces different results, even though they have the same specs.
300+ higher score in OpenGL test is a pretty BIG deal. It's like having a dead perfect 10 second car and then running a 9.7 pass same day.
Especially that most people around forums do have scores that are similar to mine. Barefeats gets a significantly higher and it's weird especially that the 8800 next to it has a pretty much same numbers as the rest of the world.
Timing issues galore. You will basically render your card inoperable.
However, yes you can stick two Radeon HD 3870s in the Mac Pro and have CrossfireX in Windows.
Or Crossfire the 3870 with the 3870x2 which will combine all the cards in Windows but will only use the single 3870 when booted into OS X.
Are you sure about this? That would be a nice setup for me but I am kind of worried that the 3870x2 will mess up in Mac OS ... don't want to unplug it everytime I run my Mac Pro in Mac OS
So I have a 2.66 MacPro with 8GB ram and a 1900XT GPU at the moment.
Will I get any real benefit from sinking 250/300 into the HD3870?
Most of my apps aren't GPU accelerated (as of yet - but we all know the likes of photoshop will be eventually), and I only use motion once in a blue moon.
From barefeats it's not clear whether in general mac usage - even in pro apps if I'm going to see any major differences in performance, so I'm hesitant to blow the just for the sake of a non de script upgrade.
Will I get any real benefit from sinking 250/300 into the HD3870?
Most of my apps aren't GPU accelerated (as of yet - but we all know the likes of photoshop will be eventually), and I only use motion once in a blue moon.
From barefeats it's not clear whether in general mac usage - even in pro apps if I'm going to see any major differences in performance, so I'm hesitant to blow the just for the sake of a non de script upgrade.
The new card will run cooler and draw less power than the X1900. Fan noise won't be an issue either way since your X1900 is never stressed enough to make any (except at startup). So beyond the impulse to acquire new stuff, I'd agree that given your usage profile the upgrade really isn't worth it.
This is the core of the problem.
How can 2 years newer card be as slow as the old one with older (Clovertown) MP?
Is it related to ATI's expertise on writing drivers or are Apple's proApps somehow so limited on using more processing power?
The former:
ATI does a gr8 job in writing the drivers.
The nVidia 8800 GT card is a faster card. Look at Windows gaming or even OpenGL based Mac gaming. But Core Image seems to need fine tuning on the driver side to be able to use all that horsepower.
Maybe Apple is internally focussing more on Snow Leopard's OpenCL implementation, instead of full attention on "normal" Leopard's GeForce drivers.
Apple knew the Radeon HD 3870 was coming, so Pro's could get a good card and drivers anyway.
I'm running a 7300 GT in an '06 Mac Pro, how much gain will I see
I'm hoping to squeeze another 12-18 months out of this machine before upgrading.
I'm hoping to squeeze another 12-18 months out of this machine before upgrading.
I'm running a 7300 GT in an '06 Mac Pro, how much gain will I see
.
A LOT!
- In 3D gaming: incredible amount
- In Core Image: unf****** much more!
For the rest... not so much
The former:
ATI does a gr8 job in writing the drivers.
The nVidia 8800 GT card is a faster card. Look at Windows gaming or even OpenGL based Mac gaming. But Core Image seems to need fine tuning on the driver side to be able to use all that horsepower.
Maybe Apple is internally focussing more on Snow Leopard's OpenCL implementation, instead of full attention on "normal" Leopard's GeForce drivers.
Apple knew the Radeon HD 3870 was coming, so Pro's could get a good card and drivers anyway.
That's because the ATI drives are a two way street between them and Apple. On the other hand, there is very little support of the Mac platform by Nvidia.
I'm running Vista 64 in a Boot Camp partition on my Mac Pro 3.2GHz octo-core with two Radeon HD 3870 Mac & PC Edition cards with a CrossFire jumper. The ATI Control Center lets me enable or disable Crossfire at will. And it even lets me overclock the cards using Overdrive function. I've published the results showing the gains from Crossfire mode here:
http://www.barefeats.com/harper18.html
Maybe they should make it one way street, if that's why Clovertown MP does not get any speedup with 3870 & FCS compared to 1900.
A question for Rob, Barefeats related to this which I've already mentioned.
Have you tried Crossfire with a Radeon HD 3870 Mac & PC Ed card jumpered together with a Radeon HD 3870x2 PC Ed card in Boot Camp Vista 64? I don't see any problems with this setup and assume OS X would only see the single 3870 Mac & PC Ed card on restart into Mac.
Thanks, I have exactly the same question. Also, is it possible (and does it make sense) to "crossfire" 3x 3870 in a Mac Pro, since there is a 2x 16PCIe limitation? And last question, is it possible to "crossfire" different ATI cards ... let's say a 3870 and a 2600 card?
Thanks for any info!
I've tried running with the 2600 XT + the 3870x2 (no jumper) and been able to jump between Mac OS X and Vista 64.
The problem with running the 3870 Mac & PC + 3870 X2 is that that combo requires three PCie power feeds. There are only two. I suppose I could use an external power supply (kludge) to provide the third power source but then there's the issue of exceeding the maximum 300 watts of the PCie bus.
Running triple crossfire with the HD3870 in the mac pro should work. Again you have to source the power for the three cards and it will only work in bootcamp.The performance of three HD3870 may be worse than a single HD3870 AGP as I have heard that you need a processor clocked to 5.0Ghz to prevent bottleneck-ering, although I could be talking out of my ass.
But the question remains, what does it do to "overdrive" the PCIe bus with cards totaling over 300 watts? Is that going to do damage to the motherboard?
And what about the "uneven" Crossfire setup. Shouldn't you jumper two matching cards to get best efficiencies?
I was told it does, but wouldn't be 100% on that.
I just wish crossfire worked in OSX, then I could really justify my whim.
Humh, think I will give the 3870 crossfired setup a try, either two 3870 or one 3870 and one 3870x2. I'm curious how it compares to the one 8800GT setup I use right now. Wonder how quick I can get my hands on the 3870 here in Switzerland. I saw that you can preorder the card from OWC and they claim it will be shipping in about two weeks. Does someone else here know of an online shop that offers the card for pre-order? When will it be available from Apple?
With 3 cards you are not close to maxing out 300 Watt from the PCI-Express ports. 3 x 75 Watt = 225 Watt. The rest is pulled directly form the power supply.
CrossfireX will always clock all the cards down to the slowest of the cards.
Any chance you can mail the firmware to me?