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Why is my Mac Pro 5,1 with GTX 780 slower on some games

Acceleroto

Acceleroto

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 11, 2009
39
2
I have a 2010 Mac Pro w/2x 2.4GHz quad-core Xeons. I recently replaced the ATI HD5870 with an EVGA GTX 780 (03G-P4-2781-KR). On some benchmarks & games, it's much faster (2-4x). On some games, it's actually much slower though. Has anyone seen this?

Some maybe-relevant info:
  • Stock non-EFI GTX 780
  • OS X 10.8.5 with Cuda 5.5.25 drivers from here
  • 24GB RAM & 512GB SSD
  • System info shows "Graphics: NVIDIA GK11x 3072MB" -- I've never been able to get it to say GTX 780
  • Diablo 2 is solid at 60fps with all settings maxed at 1920x1080
  • LuxMark crashes (I believe with an OpenCL error). I'm using version 2.0 - can't find the link for 2.1beta.
  • Borderlands 2 is about 45 fps at 1920x1080 with everything maxed (with dips to 30 fps). It runs between 50 & 60 fps with all quality settings at off/low. I can't remember the speed it ran on the 5870, but it's not tons faster with the 780 (I seem to think it's roughly the same).
  • Guild Wars 2 slowed to about 30fps with settings maxed at 1920x1080 (with dips below that and very little variation with lower quality settings)

Anyone have any ideas why some things (games) aren't seeing any speed boost?

Here are some benchmark results (lots of images...have fun scrolling):
780furmark0xaa.png

780furmark8xaa.png

780tessmark0xaa.png

780tessmark8xaa.png

780gimark0xaa.png

780gimark8xaa.png

780heaven8xaa.png
 
I would say that the 2.40GHz CPUs are your problem. They are your bottleneck. A GTX 780 with 2.40GHz is wasted for gaming.

Look at the attached image and see how going from 2.40GHz to 2.93GHz provided a huge boost in performance. But going from GTX 670 to GTX 680 showed a much modest improvement. In this instance, I need faster CPUs to fully realize the potential of my GTX 680. As it stands now, some of its potential is wasted.

This is one of the reasons I'm in no hurry to move to GK110 from my GK104.
 

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pastrychef said:
I would say that the 2.40GHz CPUs are your problem. They are your bottleneck. A GTX 780 with 2.40GHz is wasted for gaming.
Click to expand...
Valid point, but why would Guild Wars 2 be slower (much slower!) than before with the same CPUs?
 
pastrychef said:
What are you comparing your Guild Wars 2 FPS with? Are you running it in Windows?
Click to expand...
No, that's the same computer comparing when I had the 5870 in vs the 780 (Mac Pro both times). Guild Wars 2 is much slower.
 
Me either. Seems really odd. Guild Wars 2 is really annoying to play now - even on the lowest settings. Not smooth at all. I'm bummed.

It looks like LuxMark is crashing becuase OpenCL isn't supported on the 780 in OS X 10.8.5. It apparently it is in 10.9 Mavericks.
 
I gave up on playing games in OS X a while back. If you're serious about gaming (which sounds like maybe you are given this thread) then the greatest performance increase you can do is simply boot into Windows (via Bootcamp). You should notice a great increase in FPS.

Only thing is you won't get PCIE 2.0 (it'll only do 1.0).
 
flowrider said:
My results are not the same as yours, and yes Open CL does, in fact, work in Mavericks.

I luv this card! But, mine is a MacVidCards modified Gigabyte GTX780 OC edition.
Click to expand...
Thanks Lou. I wanted to stay on internal power without doing the MVC mod (I don't care about the boot screen right now), so I stuck with the stock 780 just to be sure. I re-ran the Heaven benchmark with 2xaa to match your test, but my monitors are 1920x1080, so I can't quite match your resolution (not sure what your tessellation settings were either - mine was Extreme). At those settings it scored 1599 at 63.5fps. Your CPU is significantly faster than mine. If yours was running overclocked during the test, the cards probably match up fairly closely. Good to know.

I'll do some tests to see what Guild Wars 2 and Borderlands 2 are doing. If they're only running on 1 or 2 CPU cores and those cores are maxed, then that may be the driver.

Thanks!

----------

I just ran Guild Wars 2 at a bunch of different resolutions. It got about the same framerate at every resolution running either in a window or full screen. So, I guess let's blame GW2's speed on the GW2 team. If 2 Xeons aren't enough (even if they are 3 years old), then dang.

Borderlands...maybe CPU-bound there too?

Thanks all!
 
How are you powering the card?

Most 6 to 8 adapters actually supply LESS current than they should.

ie, they only have 2 or 3 grounds wired, just enough to trigger the sense pins.

Especially bad are the adapters that ship with the cards where there are 2 @ 6 pins melded into an 8.

It is possible to only use one of the 6 ends and the card will fire up, but only 2 of the grounds are wired out of 4 that way.

In any case, your Heaven score is awful.

I just ran it in 10.8.5 on a 3,1 and got DOUBLE your score.

Please note that whatever you set Tesselation at in 10.8.5 it won't work since it isn't supported until 10.9.

Can you run CUDA-Z and see if you are getting PCIE 2.0 speeds?

But please let us know how you are powering it, it seems that the card is throttled in some way.
 

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I still feel the 2.40GHz is severely hobbling him. Even my GTX 680 is doing better than his GTX 780.
 

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Ok, Just ran the Ultra quality settings you guys are using. But ran @ 1920 X 1200 Res. Ran in Mavericks. Results attached:

I STILL luv this card.

Lou
 

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We have a 5.1 and have been looking for a GPU board update..Just about everybody will tell you that you really need a pre-flashed OSX ready card. Your benchmarks are about the same as ours in games and we are currently running a 5770...just the baby card. I'd sell the non EFI version and look at pre-flashed versions.

We are looking here:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_o...cards&_nkw=macvidcards&_sacat=27386&_from=R40
 
pastrychef said:
I still feel the 2.40GHz is severely hobbling him.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's all about. Heaven is gaming engine benchmark thus it reflects how games use hardware resources. High CPU clock is important almost that much as decent graphics card. All scores above are confirming that. What makes this benchmark a little useless TBH.
 
If you are going to use the 780..Remember you need to be careful with the PSU...macvidcards recommends underclocking the card to prevent burning out that power supply. It draws around 300Watts...Take care!
 
Macman45 said:
We have a 5.1 and have been looking for a GPU board update..Just about everybody will tell you that you really need a pre-flashed OSX ready card. Your benchmarks are about the same as ours in games and we are currently running a 5770...just the baby card. I'd sell the non EFI version and look at pre-flashed versions.
Click to expand...

How fast are the CPUs in your 5,1?

Others who have used unflashed Nvidia cards have never displayed any disadvantage in gaming performance other than running at 2.5GT/s in Windows. But it has been shown that 2.5GT/s for gaming represents a fairly small hit.
 
pastrychef said:
How fast are the CPUs in your 5,1?

Others who have used unflashed Nvidia cards have never displayed any disadvantage in gaming performance other than running at 2.5GT/s in Windows. But it has been shown that 2.5GT/s for gaming represents a fairly small hit.
Click to expand...

3.33 using 6 cores...Pretty slow...It could be that the system is thermal throttling...causing a loss of performance too..I'm guessing you do have BOTH power connectors attached?
 
Macman45 said:
If you are going to use the 780..Remember you need to be careful with the PSU...macvidcards recommends underclocking the card to prevent burning out that power supply. It draws around 300Watts...Take care!
Click to expand...

My MacVidCards modified Gigabyte GTX780 is an OC Gigabyte card. And when MacVidCards modified it, he did not lower the Clock. My card runs at 954/1006 GHz. Cuda-Z shows it running at 1006GHz.

Lou
 

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Thank you.

Notice how jetjaguar's results are better than flowrider's? The only primary difference is his 3.47GHz vs. flowrider's 3.33GHz. 140MHz was enough to knock 5 fps average and 20.3 fps on max fps off the score. Acceleroto is only at 2.40GHz...
 
flowrider said:
My MacVidCards modified Gigabyte GTX780 is an OC Gigabyte card. And when MacVidCards modified it, he did not lower the Clock. My card runs at 654/1006 GHz. Cuda-Z shows it running at 1006GHz.

Lou
Click to expand...

That's because he's pre-flashed it and it's set up correctly...It's where we will be getting our new card when funds allow...Super helpful guy, and a member here too I believe
 
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