Dual GTX 680 4GB make my 2010 12-core Fly!

[pprior]

If the man is doing after effects or premiere work, then the massive CUDA cores may well be worth it.

Don't see why the man is getting grief. I'm glad people are pushing performance, Apple certainly isn't at this point.....

[lucasfer899]

Just to put it out there, this is kinda what I wanna do with a Mac Pro 5,1.
Hands down, you have the best/most powerful mac pro. In the world.

[Dr. Stealth]

Originally Posted by adder7712

Can you SLI it?

I didn't see a SLI bridge.

No SLI bridge as SLI is disabled. I do no gaming. I actually work in windows about 75% of the time using Solidworks for cad and Bunkspeed Shot for rendering. Shot uses a rendering engine from Nvidia called iRay. It directly utilizes all CUDA cores available. There is no benefit from SLI and SLI can actually cause issues with iRay's performance.

[Dr. Stealth]

Originally Posted by Major Reeves

And what is the point of all that when you don't have official support for the gtx680 on OSX? You're just that future releases of OSX wont break compatibility with your setup and NVIDIA'll continue, unofficially, to pump new drivers for the 600 series.

Have you ever heard this old line ? TIME = MONEY

Well it's true. I do CAD, rendering & graphics work freelance. A few months ago I started a render before going to bed and when I got up in the morning it said I had 5 1/2 hours left to render. Basically tying up my Mac for 13+ hours. I needed a solution. After a little research, I upgraded my processors and popped in the dual 680's. I can now complete that same exact render in 1 hour 15 minutes. Within one month the time I saved paid for the upgrades. My rendering program, Bunkspeed Shot is a hybrid renderer that can utilize all 24 3.3GHz CPU threads and all 3,072 GPU CUDA Cores at the same time on the same render making this possible.

If I had room for another 680 I'd pop one in tomorrow.

Far from "risking your money on a bet".

I could care less about "official support". I run my own life.

[etc]

Originally Posted by Dr. Stealth

No SLI bridge as SLI is disabled. I do no gaming. I actually work in windows about 75% of the time using Solidworks for cad and Bunkspeed Shot for rendering. Shot uses a rendering engine from Nvidia called iRay. It directly utilizes all CUDA cores available. There is no benefit from SLI and SLI can actually cause issues with iRay's performance.

You can enable SLI using HyperSLI patch (on Windows 7). I tried it with two 560 Ti's.
If you need a more information, PM me.
Anyway, GTX 690 doen't need this patch.

Originally Posted by GPUFreak

Hmm tell me?

Hmm, what can I say. I know, that my MP can't cover needs of 690, but I don't want to buy another PC just for games for 10-20% performance boost. And don't want to reconnect my shiny Cinema 30" every time I want to play. And don't want ugly box under the table.

p. S.Then, it looks good in Pro

[fhenry]

is a third one possible on the last pci port? even a low speed?

[OrangeSVTguy]

Originally Posted by fhenry

is a third one possible on the last pci port? even a low speed?

No. Unless they bring out a single-PCIe slot card.

[GPUFreak]

Originally Posted by etc

p. S.Then, it looks good in Pro

Ikrrrrr

I saw a case mod once that had a modded MP case, two e5-2687w's and two 690's along with I think 32 gb of dominator platinums, it was for lack of a better word, beautiful

[MacVidCards]

Originally Posted by fhenry

is a third one possible on the last pci port? even a low speed?

If you remove drives 2-4, yes

I have done Tri-Sli this way.

[nugat]

If I had room for another 680 I'd pop one in tomorrow.

Cubix PCI extension chassis offers 4 double slots. Under Windows you can put in there 4 GPU cards (mac os x has a limit of three-not counting GUI card)

[fhenry]

Originally Posted by nugat

Cubix PCI extension chassis offers 4 double slots. Under Windows you can put in there 4 GPU cards (mac os x has a limit of three-not counting GUI card)

may be in the future this limitation will be remove ?

[nugat]

Linux today recognizes 8 or more GPUs (>8 via infiniband linked clusters). Da Vinci Resolve takes advantage of this. Another way is to put in GPU coprocessors with a bigger number of "cores". Tesla k20 has +3000 CUDA cores, double the number of gtx680.

[fhenry]

Originally Posted by nugat

Linux today recognizes 8 or more GPUs (>8 via infiniband linked clusters). Da Vinci Resolve takes advantage of this. Another way is to put in GPU coprocessors with a bigger number of "cores". Tesla k20 has +3000 CUDA cores, double the number of gtx680.

yes but not working on mac

[phobos]

Have you tried the octane renderer?
If yes what kind of performance are you getting?

[lucasfer899]

Originally Posted by MacVidCards

If you remove drives 2-4, yes

I have done Tri-Sli this way.

Woah, you've done tri SLi in a MP?!
Picture please!

[Dr. Stealth]

Originally Posted by phobos

Have you tried the octane renderer?
If yes what kind of performance are you getting?

I haven't tried Octane yet but I have my eye on it. I imagine speeds will be on par with Bunkspeed which is blazing fast. I tried to use a couple CPU renderers (Maxwell, Maya) but after you use a GPU renderer it's very painful to go back. It's like 1 hour or 10 hours for the same render. BIG difference.

Also looking at Arion.... Another hybrid. (cpu&gpu)

[Mov55]

Hi all and thank you for taking the time to read my request.

I have a 2011 Mac Pro 5,1 12 core updated with ML and running Win 7 X64 Ultimate in bootcamp.

I was wondering if anyone has installed 2 GTX680 in SLI and got it to work in windows 7?

I have 2 MSI GTX 680 4gb OC (both works well so it dosent seem to be a card problem)

I have tried to install hypersli 0.96 and it seems to install well. But everytime I try to activate SLI in Nvidia Control Panel, the screen starts to flash and graphics controller stops working then Comp reboots.

Tried with a host of driver options as well, but seeing as there is so many I was hoping someone may have done it and suceeded and can give me a helping hand in setting it up?

Thank you in advance !

Mo

[etc]

Originally Posted by Mov55

Hi all and thank you for taking the time to read my request.

I have a 2011 Mac Pro 5,1 12 core updated with ML and running Win 7 X64 Ultimate in bootcamp.

I was wondering if anyone has installed 2 GTX680 in SLI and got it to work in windows 7?

I have 2 MSI GTX 680 4gb OC (both works well so it dosent seem to be a card problem)

I have tried to install hypersli 0.96 and it seems to install well. But everytime I try to activate SLI in Nvidia Control Panel, the screen starts to flash and graphics controller stops working then Comp reboots.

Tried with a host of driver options as well, but seeing as there is so many I was hoping someone may have done it and suceeded and can give me a helping hand in setting it up?

Thank you in advance !

Mo

Hmm, I tried HyperSLI 0.96 with two GTX 560 Ti on my MacPro3,1, everything worked well. Are you using SLI bridge?

[OrangeSVTguy]

The beta didn't work for me but I was able to sli my 2 670s, with the latest version of hypersli I believe. You will have to select when your Mac boots up the sli option. I believe you can set that as default so you don't have to keep selecting it.

Just try different versions until one works. I have a 4,1.

The OP does run dual 680s but he doesn't SLI them.

[MacVidCards]

A bad SLI bridge will cause flashing. When I had one it was green flashing. (Nvidias color)

[Tesselator]

So what kind of render times are you seeing with these? And before the installation?

Oh, NM, I just read up a bit... Basically a 5x speed increase, right?
http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost...6&postcount=54

And for less than the cost of adding 4 more complete machines to your farm... Nice!

Originally Posted by Dr. Stealth

Two EVGA GTX 680 FTW+: Total 8GB & 3,072 Cuda Cores

FSP Group Booster X5 450W PSU - Newegg

I don't game, this is for cadd & rendering. I've given it a 20 hour render to test and all works awesome. Just need to find a little time to stuff it all in the box.

Image

Image

[Mov55]

Dear all,

Thank you for your replys. It seems to be the Nvidia Graphic Dirver which is at fault with my setup as the message that comes up each time it freezes and recovers is " xxxx driver has stopped responing and has recovered". This goes on for a few times and then it reboots and I cant get it to load up on screen once I pass the password login phase. I've tried with 310.90, 310.70 (modded and unmodded) and 313.xxbeta. Was wondering what drivers you all use and do you hypersli in hardware or software mode. Also is there any need to enable anything in the boot windows + hypersli selection page.

So close yet so far

Thank you all again!

[etc]

Originally Posted by Mov55

Was wondering what drivers you all use and do you hypersli in hardware or software mode. Also is there any need to enable anything in the boot windows + hypersli selection page.

I used 306.xx, 46 or 97, don't remember, WHQL precisely. And HyperSLI 0.9 or similar. Anyway I don't have these 560 Ti now, so I can't check latest HyperSLI or drivers.

[SilvioM]

Originally Posted by Dr. Stealth

Finished installing the Aux PSU. Of course I usually do things a little "Different". I wanted to run the 120v power to the aux psu from the main psu so I wouldn't have to deal with a extra power cord running about. The main psu is inches away so it seemed to make sense. The aux psu also needs 12v in the form of a molex connector. This is so it can turn on and off in conjunction with the mac powering on and off. The likely place to get this power from is from one of the sata connectors in the optical bay. This means you lose one of your sata connections. I wasn't ready to do that so I figured if I was going to be mucking around in the main psu I may as well draw both the required 120v and 12v from there. It all went well.

The cable assay's that come with the unit are nice but not real long. I really didn't want to cut them so I looked for a different solution. Found that if I mounted the psu upside-down & backasswards the cables would reach fine. I didn't like the idea of the aux psu's twin fans blowing air in the opposite direction of every other fan in the case. This could lead to stagnant air in the aux psu. So I opened up the aux psu and just flipped the fans around.

I still run a blu-ray drive and my bootcamp SSD in the drive bay along with the aux psu ! Sweet. I didn't use screws to secure the aux psu and that gave me enough room between the optical drive and the aux psu to slip a Samsung 500gb 840 SSD for my bootcamp.

Main PSU
Image

120v & 12v from main PSU
Image

I clipped a very small piece of aluminum to snake the cables through here.
Image

All cables in place and ready to button up.
Image

Flipping the aux psu fans.
Image

Snug as a bug….
Image

Complete !
Image

Nice build the only thing I would change is that I would of made the cables black so it looks great together, but that's me. Can you please post some screenshots in About This Mac and system profiler.
Thanks

[AlexMaximus]

Originally Posted by Dr. Stealth

No SLI bridge as SLI is disabled. I do no gaming. I actually work in windows about 75% of the time using Solidworks for cad and Bunkspeed Shot for rendering. Shot uses a rendering engine from Nvidia called iRay. It directly utilizes all CUDA cores available. There is no benefit from SLI and SLI can actually cause issues with iRay's performance.

Hello Stealth,

First of all many thanks for this interesting thread/post and the impressive work on the rendering job on the posted grabcad link.
At the moment I am planing to get a workstation for solidworks 2012. Since its a home project and not work related I will go for a MacPro from 2010. Now here is the question:
Since I have only one Cinema Display 27 at the moment, would a dual GPU setup make sense for me? I assume you use two displays with your setup.
I am wondering, can a MacPro with only one screen even take advantage of two cards that are not linked through SLI or Crossfire?