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So what are the firepro d300's?
- Thread starter Zellio
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Like others have said, these are probably 7xxx series cards with new firmware. They are most likely Apple-specific as the form factor is non-standard for the new Mac Pro. We will need to wait until reviewers get their hands on them before we know much more.
These cards are the justification for the package price. They have to be good at something worth paying for.
I don't believe OSX supports crossfire. Professionals use the cards independently, so I doubt you'd want them for gaming.
Crossfire would work in windows though, right? One of the reasons I'd want a mac pro is for gaming. I have 50 million other reasons, but it does need to do gaming well, as well as other graphically intensive stuff programming wise....
Some answers...
Q: Is Crossfire supported?
A: By the cards? Yes, FirePro supports Crossfire technology. The only concern I have is whether OS X supports it, or if Windows will via software bridging. There doesn't appear to be a physical hardware bridge between the cards like you see on PCs.
Q: Are they good for gaming?
A: The current FirePro cards are very capable gaming cards, sitting between the 7850 (W5000) to the 7970 GHz Edition (W9000). The perform slightly worse in some cases, but not by much to be concerned about. All in all, you won't be disappointed in a pair of these for, say, Battlefield 3.
Q: How expensive are these cards?
A: Damn expensive. Newegg has a W5000 for $450, while its gaming competitor, a 7850 goes for $150. The W7000 clocks in at $650, and compares to the 7870 for $180. The W8000 also compares to the 7870, but its price is $1400. The top tier card, the W9000, compares to the 7970 GHz as stated above. However, while the 7970 goes for $400, the W9000 goes for $3500.
Q: Any theories on what gaming cards these new D-series GPUs will compare to?
A: This is a theory based on the W-series, but I'm guessing the following:
Q: Is Crossfire supported?
A: By the cards? Yes, FirePro supports Crossfire technology. The only concern I have is whether OS X supports it, or if Windows will via software bridging. There doesn't appear to be a physical hardware bridge between the cards like you see on PCs.
Q: Are they good for gaming?
A: The current FirePro cards are very capable gaming cards, sitting between the 7850 (W5000) to the 7970 GHz Edition (W9000). The perform slightly worse in some cases, but not by much to be concerned about. All in all, you won't be disappointed in a pair of these for, say, Battlefield 3.
Q: How expensive are these cards?
A: Damn expensive. Newegg has a W5000 for $450, while its gaming competitor, a 7850 goes for $150. The W7000 clocks in at $650, and compares to the 7870 for $180. The W8000 also compares to the 7870, but its price is $1400. The top tier card, the W9000, compares to the 7970 GHz as stated above. However, while the 7970 goes for $400, the W9000 goes for $3500.
Q: Any theories on what gaming cards these new D-series GPUs will compare to?
A: This is a theory based on the W-series, but I'm guessing the following:
- The D300 will likely compare to the new 260X
- The D500 potentially compares to the 270X
- The D700 will compare to either the 280X or 290X.
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This what I found..
Tahiti-based FirePro graphics, up to 2048 stream processors each, and 384-bit bus is the hint.
FirePro D300: 2 GB GDDR5, 256-bit
FirePro D500: 3 GB GDDR5, 384-bit
FirePro D700: 6 GB GDDR5, 384-bit
The press release says "Configure-to-order options include [...] AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6 GB of VRAM...", emphasis mine, notice the plural "GPUs".
EDIT: So it's 6 GB VRAM each (Click Tech Specs, and check under Graphics section), i.e. a total of 12 GB VRAM.
Tahiti-based FirePro graphics, up to 2048 stream processors each, and 384-bit bus is the hint.
FirePro D300: 2 GB GDDR5, 256-bit
FirePro D500: 3 GB GDDR5, 384-bit
FirePro D700: 6 GB GDDR5, 384-bit
The press release says "Configure-to-order options include [...] AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6 GB of VRAM...", emphasis mine, notice the plural "GPUs".
EDIT: So it's 6 GB VRAM each (Click Tech Specs, and check under Graphics section), i.e. a total of 12 GB VRAM.
FWIW, the newer AMD cards do NOT need the crossfire bridge to run in crossfire anymore. They use the PCIe channel to communicate now. So it is possible that they would work in Windows in crossfire configuration without the bridge. IMO it is unlikely though.
The D300 256-bit, 1280 "cores", and 2 GLOPs performance match up with the W7000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units#FirePro_Workstation_Series
Although the Scrooge McDuck move by Apple is gutting these back to just 2GB of VRAM instead of 4GB.
The "1526 Stream Processors" is odd. Doesn't match up with any of AMD's current/previous offerings. It looks like tweaked AMD 7870 "Tahiti LE" or "Tahiti Pro"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compar...g_units#Southern_Islands_.28HD_7xxx.29_Series
only with a different memory interface ( 384) in the case of the first or tweaked stream processor count in the case of the second. Roughly around a W8000.
Relative to a W8000 again gimped on VRAM. 4GB being standard on W8000 and Apple using 3GB.
Seems like the only one not gimped from the AMD FirePro equivalent (W9000 , 6GB , 385 , full complement of processors. )
Given the prices announced today that likely means stratosphere pricing too.
The press release says "Configure-to-order options include [...] AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6 GB of VRAM...", emphasis mine, notice the plural "GPUs".
EDIT: So it's 6 GB VRAM each (Click Tech Specs, and check under Graphics section), i.e. a total of 12 GB VRAM.[/QUOTE]
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Doubtful these have anything to do with the R. ....X stuff. The 'X' stuff is generally indicative of the DSP that AMD weaved into the design GPGPU . That likely isn't here at all.
Straight Pitcairn and older Tahiti specs match more closely with what Apple has posted so far.
I'm thinking the D300 is a R9 270X with new firmware. All specs line up and the price is where Apple would want to be. You are correct, they are probably without the TrueAudio stuff.
VERY disingenuous.
Even more than Nvidia's Quadro cards, FirePro means "regular card marked up by 300-400% for no discernible performance increase".
This is a lot like saying "we didn't want to charge so much, but when you factor in the Gucci Design fan imported from Italy, it's a sensible price"
Eventually the TrueAudio stuff might help Apple appeal to the music/sound folks who are currently scoffing at dual GPUs. However, it seems doubtful that the foundation for the R9 270X (Curaçao ) since one of the major principal differences between that and Pitcairn is the Audio stuff. Apple graphics drivers typically arriving later rather than sooner make the Mac Pro cards more likely to be dependent upon graphics that were around 6-7 months ago as opposed to the bleeding edge.
Maybe they are putting "future proof" DSP hardware in that will get enabled later, but I wouldn't count on that. Far more likely that Mac Pro 2014 would get updates to cover this and other things.
I'm not familiar with how the cards are written for Macs in terms of firmware, but I do know there's discernible performance difference in 2D/CAD/Rendering work on the PC side. A large part is due to the much higher clocks compared to their gaming counterparts, but the firmware on the card is as much responsible for the performance increase.
At least with AMD, the FirePro cards tend to be consumer versions with much higher clocked memory and GPU and a different Firmware. Can't speak for Quadro/nVidia.
TrueAudio is a gimmick at best. If game developers wrote their audio engines correctly, they could easily do positional audio with very high accuracy. Hell, Mumble does it with voice audio at a minimal performance hit. As for DSP, aren't those better served by external devices nowadays? I thought the idea of the analog audio output on the Mac Pro was to appeal to the folks who just need a line out for speakers and don't care about the DAC quality.
I think Macvideocards is thinking about Cuda. For the Adobe suite, the benchmarks between regular gaming cards and quadro cards don't show an important improvement in performance.
More VRAM as opposed to higher clocker.
TrueAudio doesn't do any AD or DA conversations at all. It is a straight digital to digital conversion.
If Apple puts a real API that developers can commonly use over the hardware then it will be more than a gimmick. If every single app developer has to do a custom DSP kernel then it would be a gimmick.
Long term audio and video processing is likely to get integrated. With every larger transistor budgets it isn't that hard to throw multiples functions into one integrated, lower cost component.
For NVIDIA cards, the Pro level stuff typically uses LOWER clocks and MORE RAM with ECC available.
Hard to compare Radeon & FirePro cards with just a 4" screen so I will look once in the lab.
But I strongly believe that Phil was flashing "D300" as if it meant something when he full well knows it means nothing whatsoever right now.
"My SkyJam4000 is Super Duper fast since it uses the Intel TurboJet 427" sounds really impressive but also tells us nothing. Consider this, the crappy Radeon 2600XT that came in 2008 Pros also had another name. It was called a FireGl V3600 and cost $400. (Much more impressive name, and it had better be, you're paying for it)
It was no faster or better in OSX than a 2600XT. It had a solid copper heat sink but a cheapie 2 wire fan and was used in cheapie workstations.
I know the 7790 shipped with the audio hidden and will be enabled in the future. I would think if TrueAudio is in there, Apple would have leveraged the technology during the presentation. I don't really care, but I do know that the "D300" is a rebadged $130-$150 consumer card with new firmware and ECC memory. If Apple chose the old or new GPUs doesn't really matter too much, not much has changed in the last two years with AMD.
I'm not a technical guy so a straight forward question would do me just right 
Are we kind of being set up again by Apple giving us outdated or low performance cards in a very expensive computer? When the NMP was announced there was allot of talk about how powerful and awesome the graphics cards where going to be...is this actually the case or is the entire thing blown way out of proportion.
Reason i ask is that even with the previous MP the graphic card options especially in the base configuration where outdated and cheap in comparission with the cost of the machine....is history repeating itself with the new macpro?
Are we kind of being set up again by Apple giving us outdated or low performance cards in a very expensive computer? When the NMP was announced there was allot of talk about how powerful and awesome the graphics cards where going to be...is this actually the case or is the entire thing blown way out of proportion.
Reason i ask is that even with the previous MP the graphic card options especially in the base configuration where outdated and cheap in comparission with the cost of the machine....is history repeating itself with the new macpro?
The 7790 didn't get released until March 2013. Yes for what AMD targeted new implementation variants for 2013 release they generally all have the audio stuff. The bulk of their line up is far more speed bumped 2012 targeted products.
Generally both AMD and Nvidia have done "virtual" ECC. It is an overlay on general memory by the memory controller. But yes it is probably flipped on. The other option generally turned on is also a broader VRAM capacity coverage. That is where Apple appears to have gone cheap.
Nvidia is busy reshuffling the deck chairs too. Same general architectures rebadged with features flipped on/off.
Neither one has a Intel like tick/tock cadence were they move on multiple fronts arch and process at the same time with overlapping design teams.