Radeon Pro 580 8 GB Preformance?

[PJivan]

I'm in a position that I can return the 2017 iMac and wait for the Pro. I have the funds to afford it, but I don't know if I can justify it. As far as the video card goes, the tflop calculation would show about a 78% performance boost, though even if less, that's pretty significant. It should be equivalent to the NVidia 1080 in performance while the Vega 64 would have about 10% extra over the baseline. I'd probably stick with the baseline expecting the upgrade to add even more. I'm running games at half resolution and they're running fine right now. I may get into VR games in the future, but that's in the air and probably years down the road. I expect the upgrade to last 10 years.

So the question, 580 vs Vega 56, looking at over 2k more just for the benefit of the Vega at probably 70% improved performance...worth it? Is it even needed? IDK

CPU is also an equation. I do encoding and upgrading to an existing 8 core xeon would give me about a 16% performance boost.
However, single core ops would likely hurt pretty bad on a xeon as they run slower with more cores; 70% of the speed of an i7 when benched. What impact would that have on general use? And also, that's based on an older xeon as we don't know exactly what will be in the imac pro.

Niceties: grey in color, better cooling.
I'd appreciate any thoughts.

With the money of an iMac pro, since you want to keep it for long time, you can buy a base i5 580 now and sell it in 2 years time to enjoy a redesigned iMac AMD Navi 7nm GPU and all the other improvement (cpu, ram, i/o etcc) that will most likely feature HBM2 ram onboard and will destroy vega performance...while still selling your "old" iMac for a good chunk of money...so at the end doing the math you would still saving money....enough to buy a whatever external gpu in the meantime if you are sick of waiting for Navi

 

[Trebuin]

With the money of an iMac pro, since you want to keep it for long time, you can buy a base i5 580 now and sell it in 2 years time to enjoy a redesigned iMac AMD Navi 7nm GPU and all the other improvement (cpu, ram, i/o etcc) that will most likely feature HBM2 ram onboard and will destroy vega performance...while still selling your "old" iMac for a good chunk of money...so at the end doing the math you would still saving money....enough to buy a whatever external gpu in the meantime if you are sick of waiting for Navi

Unfortunately the idea of selling iMacs & iPhones is a thing of the past for me. I can't sell things locally because no one can afford it, while eBay is ever so kind to side with the purchasers of an iPhone & another older MacBook who claimed I only sent an empty box. As far as the 7nm process...I trust that might be delayed given the delays of the 10nms given the quantum levels that technology is dealing with now.

 

[nullonade]

Have to say I am pleased with the 580's performance in Boot Camp. PUBG actually runs and Overwatch looks great.

What kind of performance are you getting? settings? fps? primarily in PUBG

 

[SaSaSushi]

I can't sell things locally because no one can afford it, while eBay is ever so kind to side with the purchasers of an iPhone & another older MacBook who claimed I only sent an empty box.

If you're in Japan and can read/write Japanese (or know someone who can on your behalf) then Yahoo Auctions is the way to go. The system fees are on the high end at around 8% but Apple products tend to get excellent resale value there.

I've sold several Macs on Yahoo Auctions over the years and use it regularly. I try to avoid eBay as much as possible.

 

[Appleaker]

It depends what you mean, some ‘popular’ games can run at 5K while many can’t. And for some it will require booting into Windows to achieve high frame rates.

 

[Ylan]

It depends what you mean, some ‘popular’ games can run at 5K while many can’t. And for some it will require booting into Windows to achieve high frame rates.

Just out of curiosity, do you have an example of a game that runs fine in 5k resolution?

Humbly, Ylan

 

[Luxtrau]

It depends what you mean, some ‘popular’ games can run at 5K while many can’t. And for some it will require booting into Windows to achieve high frame rates.

The big games won't run in 5k (like Battlefield, The Witcher 3 or Rise of the tomb raider).
I think someone tried Minecraft in 5k and it ran fine. So games like this one will probably run in 5k. For example an old Need for Speed, like Underground 2.

And I would say it is always a good idea to game on Windows OS, Framerates will be higher here. So I think you're right.

 

[PJivan]

Just out of curiosity, do you have an example of a game that runs fine in 5k resolution?

Humbly, Ylan

Civilization 6 under bootcamp LoL, Pillars of Eternity, most of the indy, some strategy games, nothing GPU intensive, still nice to have them in 5k to be honest, they look gorgeous.

 

[koyoot]

Heroes of the Storm can run in 5K.

 

[CWallace]

Just out of curiosity, do you have an example of a game that runs fine in 5k resolution?

Diablo 3 works at 5K, though performance is a fair bit better under Windows (DX11) than macOS at that resolution.

 

[Ylan]

Has anyone played Hitman (Steam) with the Radeon Pro 580? At what resolution?

Humbly, Ylan

 

[PJivan]

Has anyone played Hitman (Steam) with the Radeon Pro 580? At what resolution?

Humbly, Ylan

I don't but on bootcamp you can expect performance on line with the 480X

 

[Ylan]

I don't but on bootcamp you can expect performance on line with the 480X

Being just a casual gamer, (and not really needing e.g. Excel for Windows) I have not installed Windows on my iMac.

I was just curious whether a "new" (as in new for Mac) game would be playable in 1440p.

Humbly, Ylan

 

[throAU]

Hi,

anyone know or can estimate the performance of this card ?
Will it run popular games at 4K ?

it will do 1080p at >60 fps on virtually any modern game on ultra settings

it will not handle 4k

ultra wide 2560x1080 is fine
maybe 1440p

but 4k is too much for it

i own a 480, they're basically the same card

 

[PJivan]

Being just a casual gamer, (and not really needing e.g. Excel for Windows) I have not installed Windows on my iMac.

I was just curious whether a "new" (as in new for Mac) game would be playable in 1440p.

Humbly, Ylan

It's using Metal so I'm pretty confident the drop from the already very good performance on windows won't be huge.
It runs at almost 60fps with max details and AA at 1440P on windows, I expect similar performance on OS X, some Feral metal games play better on OS X some bit worse, but all pretty darn good

 

[Luxtrau]

Being just a casual gamer, (and not really needing e.g. Excel for Windows) I have not installed Windows on my iMac.

I was just curious whether a "new" (as in new for Mac) game would be playable in 1440p.

Humbly, Ylan

I experienced that 1440p is the sweet spot. The iMac with 580 Pro ran games like Rise of the Tomb Raider or Forza Horizon 3 really well in 1440p.

 

[graybot]

my experience so far-

overwatch - 1440p ultra settings with medium AA runs steady at 60fps with brief dips to 50-40 on some maps but not often

GTA V - 1440p with all settings on very high, medium AA, 60fps

PUBG - 1440p, ultra settings with medium AA - 60fps

see a trend? hah. very happy with the performance.

EXCEPT...


I haven't read the whole thread so I'm not sure if anyone else has experienced this, but in nearly ALL games in boot camp (OW, GTA, PUBG included) I have intermittent issues with a dramatic drop in frame rate; down to 10-20fps. this is solved by switching resolutions (to any) and then back to 1440p- at which point the frame rate goes right back to 60. Alternating between the desktop and the game will also solve this- it seems anything that causes the screen to "refresh" the resolution will clear up the problem. I need to do this at the beginning of maybe 1 out of 5 overwatch matches. It persists after reinstalling the games and after reinstalling Windows 10. I'm really hoping a driver update will solve this. Anyone else had this problem?

 

[PJivan]

my experience so far-

overwatch - 1440p ultra settings with medium AA runs steady at 60fps with brief dips to 50-40 on some maps but not often

GTA V - 1440p with all settings on very high, medium AA, 60fps

PUBG - 1440p, ultra settings with medium AA - 60fps

see a trend? hah. very happy with the performance.

EXCEPT...


I haven't read the whole thread so I'm not sure if anyone else has experienced this, but in nearly ALL games in boot camp (OW, GTA, PUBG included) I have intermittent issues with a dramatic drop in frame rate; down to 10-20fps. this is solved by switching resolutions (to any) and then back to 1440p- at which point the frame rate goes right back to 60. Alternating between the desktop and the game will also solve this- it seems anything that causes the screen to "refresh" the resolution will clear up the problem. I need to do this at the beginning of maybe 1 out of 5 overwatch matches. It persists after reinstalling the games and after reinstalling Windows 10. I'm really hoping a driver update will solve this. Anyone else had this problem?

I'm not using official bootcamp driver and never had this issue...

 

[Luxtrau]

I had this issue ,too. I was playing Project Cars, when suddenly framerate dropped to 15 fps. I did a reboot to fix it.

 

[acls86]

Never had this issue. You tried the newest driver from: http://www.bootcampdrivers.com
?

 

[MacsRgr8]

I am very happy with my i7 4.2 GHz / 8 GB Radeon Pro / 32 GB RAM 1 TB SSD.
Came from a late 2013 iMac / i7 3.5 GHz / 4 GB GeForce GTX 780M / 32 GB RAM / 1 TB SSD.

Most demanding and easily measurable app for me: X-Plane (10 and 11).
On average this Mac is about 1.5 - 2.0 x faster (depending on the type of scenery loaded: some are more CPU demanding which has less improvements, some are more GPU demanding where the performance increase is dramatic!)

It is the best Mac for X-Plane, see http://barefeats.com/xplane11.html

 

[BergerFan]

It's more than good enough for VR under Bootcamp, which is why I bought a Rift CV1!

 

[graybot]

Never had this issue. You tried the newest driver from: http://www.bootcampdrivers.com
?

No, but that's exactly what I've been looking for... thanks. I will be so happy if I don't have to deal with this anymore.

My late 2012 iMac had an Nvidia card and it received regular official driver updates. Not used to needing to fend for myself with AMD.

 

[fathergll]

View attachment 711485 It's more than good enough for VR under Bootcamp, which is why I bought a Rift CV1!

Don't tempt me! I almost pulled the trigger on a new imac to do the same thing!

 

[joelpagan]

my experience so far-

overwatch - 1440p ultra settings with medium AA runs steady at 60fps with brief dips to 50-40 on some maps but not often

GTA V - 1440p with all settings on very high, medium AA, 60fps

PUBG - 1440p, ultra settings with medium AA - 60fps

see a trend? hah. very happy with the performance.

EXCEPT...


I haven't read the whole thread so I'm not sure if anyone else has experienced this, but in nearly ALL games in boot camp (OW, GTA, PUBG included) I have intermittent issues with a dramatic drop in frame rate; down to 10-20fps. this is solved by switching resolutions (to any) and then back to 1440p- at which point the frame rate goes right back to 60. Alternating between the desktop and the game will also solve this- it seems anything that causes the screen to "refresh" the resolution will clear up the problem. I need to do this at the beginning of maybe 1 out of 5 overwatch matches. It persists after reinstalling the games and after reinstalling Windows 10. I'm really hoping a driver update will solve this. Anyone else had this problem?

I've been playing OW on Bootcamp and experiencing the same issues with the frames dropping down to 20fps or so. It happens most often when maps are changing, or a menu is loading something. I find that hitting the windows key or something then switching back to the app fixes the issue (resolution change like you've stated).

Were you able to fix it, and if so, how?