What REALLY is the difference between FirePro and consumer?

[LongSticks]

Question

As beaker7 pointed out, NVidia only makes tesla cards, the rest are aftermarket. Doesn't that mean all clocking is aftermarket?



I really don't think I argued anything else



I always said AMD beats NVidia at OpenCL. Nobody ever disputed that, or that the nMP is targeted at OpenCL tasks (and, it seems, no other tasks). I thought we were talking about gaming, if we're talking about all things video cards are used for... How's that CUDA performance?



Again, really didn't say otherwise. If we're talking about gaming in the nMP Vs Nvidia options, we should be talking about the price/performance of the Dx00's, which I don't think you'd argue is anything but abysmal for gaming.



I couldn't find any 4K gaming benchmarks of non-reference GTX780 apart from this one.

edit: Image

How is a slower clock a better indicator of performance? Because it suits your purposes? I think the best indicator of performance is a cool, stable clock.



Anything's possible when you cherry-pick your data. Again, find some non-reference benchmarks and see what happens.



So it's a straw man, is it? I guess if you're only going to look at OpenCL, you'd be right, but for those of us who don't cherry pick our data, things are a little more complicated. I was only talking about gaming in this thread, you keep bringing up OpenCL which isn't even a point I was arguing.

Image

What was the point of the Catia benchmark results from Toms Hardware? Didn't understand that.

 

[spaz8]

As I was reading up on the 280X and 290's.. I can't help but think that the nMP is going to borrow a lot of the "power tune" (I forget what Nvidia's version is called) diagnostic tech in the 290's to dynamically measure heat and power and adjust the nMP for the job its doing, if you want it to run silent, or if you want it to run full-tilt. Hence smartly keeping the nMP within its thermal and power envelopes.

 

[slughead]

What was the point of the Catia benchmark results from Toms Hardware? Didn't understand that.

He keeps bringing up OpenCL like it's some trump card, he goes onto say that AMDs offerings are comparable to Quadro. I was pointing out there are other things that people do with their video cards other then OpenCL that perhaps AMDs are less suited for. Clearly it depends on what you're doing with your card.

 

[LongSticks]

I see!

He keeps bringing up OpenCL like it's some trump card, he goes onto say that AMDs offerings are comparable to Quadro. I was pointing out there are other things that people do with their video cards other then OpenCL that perhaps AMDs are less suited for. Clearly it depends on what you're doing with your card.

I understand now! Have to admit that my nMP purchase is going to go back 9 months from launch after considering these posts. Need to look at what's happening with the softwares I use and the strengths in Bootcamp where I have to also live.

Phil's statement at WWDC is the driver behind this system...over OpenCL.

For me the more I consider it, NMP is also extremely power-lopsided: it will initially max out at 12 cores, which is upper-midrange by Xeon standards, but it comes with a ridiculous amount of GPU power. This is overkill to just be about future desktop Retina Displays. Apple’s pushing for pro and scientific apps to shift more of the heavy lifting to OpenCL.

If the likes of Adobe, Autodesk etc adapt this, then it will succeed I feel in the visualisation market, were I sit.

Be interesting to see what pressure Microsoft puts on the vendors to back the current norms in a growing market worth an expected $20b software and workstation and visualisation market place.

 

[slughead]

It's better because it's the standard field, aftermarket over clocked cards are minuscule market in general, which run above the manufacturer Stock specifications. That's why they're called After-market Overclocked cards.
Not factory stock cards.

Minuscule? The non-reference ("overclocked") card market is extremely large. Around half of all the GTX780 available are overclocked. I would wager that most buyers of the GTX780 are actually buying non-reference, "overlcocked" cards. "Reference" specs are just numbers written on a piece of paper. In the real world, a huge portion if not the majority of the market exists outside of that piece of paper.

So an overclocked GTX 780 is 6FPS faster than a Stock 7970 Ghz card from AMD.
So how would it then hold up against a NON-OC'd standard GTX 780, which still costs significantly more than the 7970/280x

How about we talk about the Underclocked D700 which will likely cost much more than two GTX780? I thought we were trying to compare the gaming capability of the nMP vs NVidia's current cards, not the PC gaming market (which, if we really want to go nuts, also has the 290X which is another can of worms). You keep bringing up price/performance, if we're talking about the nMP, the comparison is laughable.

I admit that the 280X is a spectacular deal compared to the GTX780. I believe this is the 3rd time I've mentioned it. Both are [probably] absolutely crushing the D700 in the nMP in terms of Price/performance in gaming though. This is probably more valid.

Or If these same tests are then ran with that OC'd GTX 780 vs an OC'd 280X, would that not mean the 280X OC matches, it? Possibly beating it?

You're welcome to find some benchmarks in fact, I already posted some. We had the 1440P Benchmarks I posted earlier with an overclocked 7970 (Basically 280X OC).

The problem is that AMD is already clocking its cards to the hilt. Of course, you can't call it overclocking because "Overclocking is the process of making a computer or component operate faster than the clock frequency specified by the manufacturer" (wikipedia)... In fact, because AMD releases its cards running incredibly hot and incredibly up-clocked, the OC capability is pretty low.

This is what annoys me about the whole "Hey, you can't compare to non-reference!" It is completely arbitrary. If, as a practical matter, I can get buy a stable, cool-running clock that's higher than reference, that's the comparison I should use--it's called the real world.

In fact, reference cards are so unpopular, Nvidia only made a small number of reference cards themselves, and left the rest to the AICs:

The card you are seeing reviewed here today is what is commonly referred to in the enthusiast hardware community as a "reference card." These GTX 780 units are produced by NVIDIA for today’s launch and to support initial retail sales of the GTX 780. While in the past it has been common for reference cards to be found for sale under many different Add-In-Card partners' names, the program is changing up a bit this time. NVIDIA is producing a limited amount of "reference" cards, and after that it is up to its AIC partners to pick up the ball and run with it. Expect to see many of NVIDIA’s AIC partners with its own GTX 780 products in the market very soon, and do not expect to find an abundance of "reference" cards built by NVIDIA on the stores shelves for very long at all. So if you want a "GTX 780 in TITAN clothing," you would be served best by buying one very soon. (source)

Here is a list of most (All?) of the GTX780 available. Half are non-reference. So according to you we should just ignore half the available cards on the market?

Stock benchmarks are the resounding standard for all measurements.

... Except that 1) Almost nobody plays at 4K due to cost and lack of performance, so you are cherry-picking (once again) and 2) Almost all benchmarking websites do benchmark non-reference ("Overclocked") cards or OC the cards themselves like NCIX.

They do this because they understand what really matters is stability and cooling, AND what users actually buy, not whatever number the manufacturer suggested clock is.

Yet in the graph you posted there's a 6FPS difference between the STOCK 7970Ghz with an Overclocked GTX 780.

Again, that's a 30% difference in one esoteric area (4K gaming). It's interesting you pick the least-popular use-case scenario with the lowest FPS, then insist on comparing a low FPS to a lower FPS, as opposed to percentages (much more valid). Again, I invite you to look at the NCIX benchmarks I posted. They show a much more realistic scenario, between the popular non-reference 780 Config running a popular resolution.

So at gaming then the benchmarks from all reputable sources shows the 7970/280x still competing against current NVIDIA offerings

NCIX is not reputable now? Just throw away all data you don't like.

I mean if 4-6FPS is such a huge difference to all

Again, you're losing context (my guess is that it's intentional). 4-6FPS is 20-30% in those 4K tests. When you're getting 20FPS, 6FPS IS a huge difference. Why don't we just crank the settings up even more, run multiple monitors. When the 280X gets 1FPS and the GTX780 gets 3FPS, you'll be raving about how "it's only 2FPS difference!" Yeah, thanks for that.

 

[slughead]

Yet people here are buying over clocked GTX 780's, and Titans, which also cost an arm and a leg.
I guess they're also just for bragging rights?

Non-reference cards with aftermarket coolers cost as little as $10 more (Gigabytes Windforce is an extremely good card, by the way). Just keep making things up, hoping nobody will call you on it. Non-reference cards are economical, cool better, and have better performance. Often they have longer warranties too.

Yes because referenced sources and benchmarks are now 'pretend'.

The GTX 770 might essentially be a rebrand to some extent, but it's a better reference design from NVIDIA in general. Not just having better overall clocks, but a much high TDP. It launched 30th of May 2013.

It's also still current offering by NVIDIA from this year.

He was saying you're "pretending" this is much more than a rebrand, which you are, not that the benchmarks are pretend.

You're comparing the 280X (2 months old) and saying it's "the same as" or "a rebrand of" a 7970 (2 years old), while at the same time saying the 770 is not the same as the 680.

At the same time it’s interesting to note that between the higher core clockspeed, higher memory clockspeed, and higher TDP plus GPU Boost 2.0 found on GTX 770, NVIDIA has improved their performance over GTX 680 by just 7% on average.(source)

 

[theSeb]

The market for third party graphics is indeed minuscule in comparison to the oem and mobile markets. The subset which includes non-reference cards is simply tiny. You lose credibility when you try to argue against this.

 

[slughead]

The market for third party graphics is indeed minuscule in comparison to the oem and mobile markets. The subset which includes non-reference cards is simply tiny. You lose credibility when you try to argue against this.

... First off, yes there are a lot more OEM and mobile graphics cards and they hugely outnumber the aftermarket ones. We were discussing the technology within the sphere of aftermarket cards. While smaller than the whole market, it still is rather massive, with sales in the billions (tens of billions?) of dollars per year.

Second, in the sphere of aftermarket cards, I find it hard to believe that half the GTX780 on the market are Non-Reference clocks and yet do not represent around half (or more) of market sales (especially at around the same price). In fact, if you're talking about non-reference in general (non-reference coolers, non-reference boards, etc), MOST (72%) of the cards on that list are nonreference. Most graphics review sites and users in general encourage the buying of non-reference cards. At any rate, I doubt I lose any credibility to say that the market for non-reference cards is "not tiny."

Insofar as this relates back to the New Mac Pro, the D700 (which is probably going to be multiple thousands of dollars) is likely based on woefully outdated chips that are basically a generation behind, at least in terms of gaming (Which is the only part of Nightmare's argument I was ever disagreeing with). The 290X is here, the 780Ti is here, they blow the 7970 away (yes, even on *reference* speeds), and the nMP isn't even out yet. The possibility of crossfire is still there, but seems unlikely.

Nightmare was basically focusing on the reference GTX780 Vs the 280X ignoring all the other cards, and then even only comparing 4K gaming benchmarks (which is still a joke, even on the best hardware). He flat-out rejected any benchmarks comparing other cards (like non-reference GTX780) or resolutions other than 4K (1440P, for instance). You want to talk about "miniscule" parts of the market, talk about 4K gaming--but that's exactly the comparisons he was focusing on. He also kept harping on price/performance which I never disputed favors the 280X--but certainly not the D700.

Perhaps I'm interpreting his logic wrong, but I saw his primary point as being that the 7970/W9000 (and therefore the D700) was totally on par with all other current GPU options, not only in OpenCL (which is true and not in dispute by anybody) but in gaming as well. This was mainly to say that the NMP is not using outdated hardware. To be clear: Apple could not have gotten better cards than the W9000 (D700) for OpenCL, but when you throw that into the gaming world, it's like a fish out of water--roughly equivalent to $300 mid-range cards.

 

[mindcomputing]

I am from germany and a freelancer into the IT buisness since 13 years, started my business back in 1999 and registered a small firm y2k.

The new mac pro is a pure catastrophy in my opinion, I have been repairing old Mac workstations g4, g5, dual g5 mac pro Intel based etc since they are out in the world. Flashing gfx cards, finding solutions for USB 3.0, SSD drives, RAM upgraded without OEM Apple RAM and so on, always the most efficient solution for my clients and now this mac in a tin box pro how in the Hell *sorry for swearing* I am gonna to the after support here?
I was playing on my free time since quite a while with x84.hackintosh solutions with Intel Based PC Workstations and even build four system for a friend of mine, he is a sound engeneer and does a lot of recording for german television. it works like a charm and if anything goes wrong with the hardware its no problem since its PC Hardware.

I cant seem to find the point where Professionals or IT-Professionals will support such a uninovative product as the Mac Pro 2013

cheers and glückwünsche
Serhat

 

[goMac]

Flashing gfx cards, finding solutions for USB 3.0, SSD drives, RAM upgraded without OEM Apple RAM and so on, always the most efficient solution for my clients and now this mac in a tin box pro how in the Hell *sorry for swearing* I am gonna to the after support here?

The new Mac Pro has user swappable SSD and RAM. I don't know if anyone else will produce SSDs for it (I'm betting they will as people are already making SSDs for the rMBP), but there is no reason you'd have to only do OEM RAM.

It also has USB 3.0, and Thunderbolt to get out to any sort of connection you need.