Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Why being able to change PCIE cards is CRUCIAL, GTX750 Ti MAXWELL

M

MacVidCards

Suspended
Original poster
Nov 17, 2008
6,096
1,056
Hollywood, CA
We have boot screens and full display support working on GTX750 and GTX 750Ti. Nets and I are hoping to have some exciting news on these soon. (did I say GTX980?)

Amazingly, this "entry level" card produces results similar to a GTX470, on 150 fewer Watts of power !!!!

This is still at PCIE 1.0, mind you.

So, 150 Watts less power and heat for similar performance. Amazing increase in short time.

Imagine if the 2009 Mac Pro had a mid level GPU bolted in from 2009. Those nMPs are going to look like junky old iMacs in short time.Anyone want to see how a 2009 era GT120 does?

Instead we can upgrade to modern GPUs like this that make even former high power GPUs seem weak.

As soon as we finish 5.0 support (and add some new "protection" methods) we will be offering these as Mac EFI cards. They work great already.

Thank you Nvidia.
 

Attachments

  • Screen Shot 2014-11-05 at 3.06.51 AM.png
    Screen Shot 2014-11-05 at 3.06.51 AM.png
    75.9 KB · Views: 151
  • Screen Shot 2014-11-05 at 3.06.35 AM.png
    Screen Shot 2014-11-05 at 3.06.35 AM.png
    77.5 KB · Views: 141
Sounds like somebody is feeling hurt because they're getting put out of business ... :p

Seriously good work.
 
working on GTX750 and GTX 750Ti

MacVidCards said:
Amazingly, this "entry level" card produces results similar to a GTX470, on 150 fewer Watts of power !!!!

Anyone want to see how a 2009 era GT120 does?

As soon as we finish 5.0 support (and add some new "protection" methods) we will be offering these as Mac EFI cards. They work great already.
Click to expand...

Amazingly, one of the reasons I joined MacRumors today was my ongoing search for the right cards for my MacPro 3,1. And "entry level" is a proper place for that search, because this project should be just one of my hobbies; my newest Mac's should be the work computers.

From just reading a few threads, on a few forums, my goal for this project, of having the "wall of monitors" had seemingly slapped me back to GT120's :(

I naively purchased my MacPro, because I read it could support 8 x 30" Cinema Displays. Are there "modern" cards that get me to my goal?
 
More amazing Maxwell numbers

A card with no cables again beating a GTX470 running Dual 6 pins, this time in Valley.

Amazing progress.

And just 10% slower than a GTX480, the former "King of the Hill"
 

Attachments

  • Screen Shot 2014-11-05 at 9.22.02 PM.png
    Screen Shot 2014-11-05 at 9.22.02 PM.png
    158.2 KB · Views: 91
  • Screen Shot 2014-11-05 at 9.04.11 PM.png
    Screen Shot 2014-11-05 at 9.04.11 PM.png
    169.9 KB · Views: 80
  • Screen Shot 2014-11-05 at 9.12.32 PM.png
    Screen Shot 2014-11-05 at 9.12.32 PM.png
    149.7 KB · Views: 77
Well, a Radeon R7 265 is faster than the Geforce 750 Ti, so why is this impressive?

Obviously it uses less power but it also performs worse.

Maxwell2 aka GM204 (Geforce GTX 970/980) is whats impressive, however.
 
Pressure said:
Well, a Radeon R7 265 is faster than the Geforce 750 Ti, so why is this impressive?

Obviously it uses less power but it also performs worse.

Maxwell2 aka GM204 (Geforce GTX 970/980) is whats impressive, however.
Click to expand...

Wow, tough crowd.

First off, let me say that I run my central air relentlessly to offset the heat generated by 3 or 4 Mac Pros running all day and night. I drive a V8 car (made in Europe) that gets 9MPG.

So honestly I don't give a flat damn about saving a few pennies/dollars on electricity. The point was that the GPU power that used to take up ALL of the available power plugs in a Mac Pro can now run without using them at all. So, if you had single slot versions of this card you could run 4 of them, for four times the GPGPU power.

Or, you could use a gtx750 for boot screens and run a 980 via the power plugs. (Until we get EFI done)

So, feel free to run off and rain on someone else's parade. Your inability to understand significance of something doesn't change the fact that it is significant.

Here is a good example, read this thread.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1814308/

Your R7 whatever would be of no use to someone needing CUDA. Aside from which, no boot screens on the AMD card.
 
Pressure said:
Well, a Radeon R7 265 is faster than the Geforce 750 Ti, so why is this impressive?

Obviously it uses less power but it also performs worse.

Maxwell2 aka GM204 (Geforce GTX 970/980) is whats impressive, however.
Click to expand...

IOW, you're missing the whole point of this thread:eek:

Lou
 
I have a question about flashing the EFI. I see the advantages it brings; boot screen and the card runs at PCI 2, but why does it cost 180$ to flash a titan!?!?
Does it take long hours to create the code to flash the card? does it require expensive equipment?

And also on your website you didn't put the R9 as a card that requires external PSU, but i saw that it has an 8 pin and 6 pin connector which means it will need a PSU or am I wrong somewhere?

thank you
 
sebseb said:
I have a question about flashing the EFI. I see the advantages it brings; boot screen and the card runs at PCI 2, but why does it cost 180$ to flash a titan!?!?
Does it take long hours to create the code to flash the card? does it require expensive equipment?
Click to expand...

What a SILLY SILLY Question. Do you have a Job? What are you being paid by the hour?

Do you think it takes development time to develop a Flash that would work in all the appropriate Video Cards and Mac Pros with the latest OS and Software? How would the flasher develop and test for this if he didn't own the appropriate equipment?

You can see from the posts by MVC on this forum, how serious he is about this segment of his life, and the time he spends researching and developing the appropriate EFI Flash. And, how important is it for us to have the choices we now have?

I have a MVC flashed Nvidia Card, in fact this is my second card, and IMHO, the services that MVC provides are priced are very reasonably.

Now let's look at the retail market:

Since the PC version of the GTX680 is now an old card (not available anymore), but the GTX680 is the latest Macintosh card issued by a third party vendor, the closest comparison I can come with is:

EVGA GTX770, 2GB PC Card - $355.00

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-...id=1415395291&sr=8-9&keywords=EVGA+2GB+GTX770

EVGA GTX 680, 2GB Mac Edition - $642.00

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-...6368&sr=8-1&keywords=EVGA+GTX+680+mac+edition

or a Macintosh Tax of $287.00. Clearly higher than what MVC charges for his services.

Lou
 
Last edited:
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
flowrider said:
What a SILLY SILLY Question. Do you have a Job? What are you being paid by the hour?

Do you think it takes development time to develop a Flash that would work in all the appropriate Video Cards and Mac Pros with the latest OS and Software? How would the flasher develop and test for this if he didn't own the appropriate equipment?

You can see from the posts by MVC on this forum, how serious he is about this segment of his life, and the time he spends researching and developing the appropriate EFI Flash. And, how important is it for us to have the choices we now have?

I have a MVC flashed Nvidia Card, in fact this is my second card, and IMHO, the services that MVC provides are priced are very reasonably.

Now let's look at the retail market:

Since the PC version of the GTX680 is now an old card (not available anymore), but the GTX680 is the latest Macintosh card issued by a third party vendor, the closest comparison I can come with is:

EVGA GTX770, 2GB PC Card - $355.00

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-...id=1415395291&sr=8-9&keywords=EVGA+2GB+GTX770

EVGA GTX 680, 2GB Mac Edition - $642.00

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-...6368&sr=8-1&keywords=EVGA+GTX+680+mac+edition

or a Macintosh Tax of $287.00. Clearly higher than what MVC charges for his services.

Lou
Click to expand...

Never mind the hours of testing, the hundreds of hours of sweat, tears and frustration.

The old adage of pay peanuts, you get monkeys applies to EFI Mac cards too. MVC and Brand X.

If he wants to be a cheapskate buy a GTX 680 PC used/refurb on ebay with a return option, and flash it yourself in bootcamp. More than good enough for 1920x1200.

Or buy the real deal eh Lou?
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
I've been looking at the Gigabyte versions of the 750/750 Ti cards. Seems to have the best port configuration and can drive 4 monitors. The dual DVI ports are desirable for me to drive two monitors via an IOGear 1644 KVM switch (dual-link, dual view). Additionally, the low power requirements will fit my good, olde MP3,1 just fine.
 
^^^^My last two video cards have been MVC flashed Gigabyte cards. A GTX570, that I still have BTW, for sale in the Marketplace section and a GTX780. I really like the Gigabyte 3 fan cooler - they call it WindForce 3X.

Lou
 
I don't work yet, I'm in grad school! Also I never owned a Mac Pro and I'm trying to buy one and I had no idea of EFI stuff until I came to this forum! I really wanted to know what MVC does! if someone asks why a Mac Pro costs 3000$, do you guys act like this ? Tell the guy he is poor, cheap and is paid hourly?? Or do you explain him the features of the device and why it costs that much!

Anyways I simply asked a question and I wanted to get an idea of what process goes on and why it's price tag!
 
Last edited:
sebseb said:
I don't work yet, I'm in grad school! Also I never owned a Mac Pro and I'm trying to buy one and I had no idea of EFI stuff until I came to this forum! I really wanted to know what MVC does! if someone asks why a Mac Pro costs 3000$, do you guys act like this ? Tell the guy he is poor, cheap and is paid hourly?? Or do you explain him the features of the device and why it costs that much!

Anyways I simply asked a question and I wanted to get an idea of what process goes on and why it's price tag!
Click to expand...

I have giant folders full of test roms. And notebooks full of scrawled notes, what was changed, what the effect was, etc.

For Kepler cards PCIE 5.0 I have a folder called "Hell" and another called "misery". I almost became single due to my single-minded obsession with night after night testing. And I would always finish in a dark and foul mood.

It takes us WEEKS to find just the right combo of code to make the cards work perfectly.To the people who do a hex compare and say "oh, look, they just changed 20 or 30 bytes, what's the big deal?" consider this, the GTX Titan has a rom that contains around 400,000 bytes. So it isn't like you can go start plugging values in and hit a lucky guess.

We have already got some time in on Maxwell. 750 is nearly done, just have to find the PCIE 2.0 switch. And I mean "just" like "just find the needle in the haystack". With every card family Nvidia has moved it, rather randomly. The cards are literally perfect otherwise, HDMI sports even work which I gather is a problem for the non-flashed ones.

But now in addition to the 2.0 switch we have to add another layer of "protection" due to some greedily eager code kiddies. So there will be a few extra weeks til release.

Some cards, like GTX770 are a never ending source of trouble. They keep changing RAM chips at the build sites. New RAM chips equals new rom. I get a fresh box from Newegg, put the working rom on and I get a screen of gibberish. This has made it very difficult for the illiterate code kiddies. I got an email from the customer of some clowns in NC. They bought a 770 from those guys and it ran like crap. I explained that the only reason that it had our name on the screen was because they had purchased it from clueless hacks who had placed the wrong rom on their card.

In short, we don't just google around until we find a rom. They have to be written. The roms had 1 part a few years ago. Then the EFI got added. Now modern Maxwell roms have no fewer than 5 separate pieces. All have to interlock, hand in glove. Any errors and the whole grinds to a halt.

IN short, it isn't easy.
 
I honestly did not expect it to be this hard! I knew you had to write a code (or rom) for each card model but not for each individual card.

Thanx for explaining everything and sorry if my question insulted you or your work in any way. I will probably purchase a 680..once I find a nice mac pro!

Also the GTX 760 you carry from MSI, how come it only needs one 6 pin cable? on nvidia website it says it requires 2x cables since it's a 170W TDP.

Thanx again
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back