Official Mac Edition Radeon 7950

GermanyChris said:

The I think AMD will start the kill off of the $100-$175 discrete cards with Kavari..I think we're at the beginnings of AMD as complete platform vs CPU/GPU manufacturer.

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That is a suicidal move since 80+ % of PCs out there have Intel chips in them. Kavari can only cover those boxes that have AMD x86 cores in them. The Intel implementations of x86, it can't.

What they need to do is move more performance down into he $100-175 so there is a value added performance gap between HD4500 and their cards. Which looks like what they plan to do.

The sub $100 range? Now that is questionable. Cost sensitive folks don't want to buy two GPUs.

IMHO that's why they got out of the CPU race with Intel.

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They got out of the race of trying to match everything that Intel is doing. It remains to be seen if they are going to do well competing iGPU vs. iGPU with Intel with the transistor budget skew they have overly weighted on GPU.

Intel is closing the gap relatively rapidly without having to sacrifice much on the x86 core side. AMD relatively slow pace to 28nm is going to bite them in the butt if Intel's Haswell transition goes smoothly.

HD5200 should arrive roughtly the same time as Kavari
http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2013/2013012702_Haswell_GT3_graphics_to_launch_in_Q3_2013.html

It looks like Intel may be packaging dedicated RAM into the package with HD5200 variants. I don't think it will be faster but it will be less risky for most system vendors.

I'm sure AMD will make some money when PS4 and XBox720 launch.... just not sure if more mainstream PC market is going to buy that style of architecture.

bsbeamer said:

I know that After Effects uses CUDA for speeding up ray-traced 3D processing and that the Mercury Playback Engine in Premiere is GREATLY sped up by CUDA with Nvidia cards, especially when layering effects.

would greatly welcome adding this card to the "certified" Adobe list to make everything work right out of the box without a bit of hackery to get there...

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/mercury-playback-engine.html

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Mercury Playback Engine supports ATI cards as well in CS6.

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/mercury-playback-engine.html

There are two Radeons on that list. Sure, the 7950 isn't on the list, but it should be pretty trivial to add it.

He might get some benefit from it anywhere CUDA can help but by itself it can not enable MPE. It supports a version of Compute that would work, but does not have enough RAM to qualify. (min of 768)

MacVidCards said:

He might get some benefit from it anywhere CUDA can help but by itself it can not enable MPE. It supports a version of Compute that would work, but does not have enough RAM to qualify. (min of 768)

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I'm not sure if I'm on target with this comment but my 8800GT offers CUDA to PS (CS6) and PS is faster at some things because of it. It's the only GPU card in the system.



Not relavent?

CIA said:

I only ask as I replaced my older 8800 from my 2008 MP (FCP editing machine) with the 5870. The 8800 is just collecting dust on my shelf (but works fine otherwise). We have a 2009 MP here at work with a stock 5770 in it. The editor on it only uses CS6 apps (90% of the time spent in AE and Premiere) for literally everything. So I didn't know if the 8800 with CUDA would speed anything up for him vs the stock 5770 which has little to no support from Adobe.

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You could just patch in support for the 5770 into Premiere.

http://nrsotw.blogspot.com/2012/07/enabling-mercury-playback-engine-for.html

I'm not sure why Adobe is skimping so much on that list. They really should just allow you to use whatever OpenCL card you want.

I agree $450 would be absurd, but we don't know what the price will be in the USA. 9to5Mac is quoting a German website that got the price from a show in Germany. Pricing in Europe is always way higher.

A PC7950 in Germany is about $400, and in USA is about 75% of that at $300. If the same holds true for the Mac version, and I admit that's a big if, the 7950 Mac Edition could MSRP around $350 here in the USA. And, being Sapphire brand instead of Apple, perhaps the street price will be lower as resellers compete.

Strange though that Sapphire priced it in USD instead of Euros at a show in Europe. Are they simply using USD as a "global currency" at all the shows they attend, or is that pricing specifically for the US market?

CIA said:

I only ask as I replaced my older 8800 from my 2008 MP (FCP editing machine) with the 5870. The 8800 is just collecting dust on my shelf (but works fine otherwise). We have a 2009 MP here at work with a stock 5770 in it. The editor on it only uses CS6 apps (90% of the time spent in AE and Premiere) for literally everything. So I didn't know if the 8800 with CUDA would speed anything up for him vs the stock 5770 which has little to no support from Adobe.

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do you have any free PCIe slots available? if so, try to give it a shot with a dual-card setup. think you'd probably be better served with a more "modern" card though. the PC video card options do work, once enabled with the patch/hack, or can get an EFI modded card.

goMac said:

You could just patch in support for the 5770 into Premiere.

http://nrsotw.blogspot.com/2012/07/enabling-mercury-playback-engine-for.html

I'm not sure why Adobe is skimping so much on that list. They really should just allow you to use whatever OpenCL card you want.

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Have not ventured to try the patch/hack with any 5770 or 5870 on CS6, so if you do please post your results.

My understanding was it has a lot to do with certification testing across the entire Adobe suite rather than just a few apps. A lot could also have to do with user experience, especially if using older cards. May be better for them to let users enable this at their "own risk" on a Mac for now... those people tend to know what they're doing. As shocking as it is, you have to remember that there is still a large market segment of Mac users that don't crack open their MacPro cases at all.

Exactly what advantages will he get from running a dual card setup in OS X? Apart from gaining the ability to hook up more monitors?

The other stuff at CeBit is pretty, pretty unexciting this year: Other than a lot of corporate stuff for Mac (System Integrators, POS solutions and that kind of stuff), among the more interesting stuff is that Plextor announced the usage of TLC NAND in SSDs again which should make a great competitor to the Samsung 840, if they're reasonably priced.

Also the iCube Tivizen Pico TV tuner for European DVB-T with a Lightning connector.

(That's the Micro USB version, the Lightning one supposedly looks similar)

And last but not least, the Zotax RaidBox, a USB 3.0 enclosure for two mSATA SSDs with a RAID controller (0, 1, JBOD, Spanning) that works on OS X. Sounds great, unless you figure out that even one of those SSDs saturates USB 3.0, so RAID0 will be rather useless. Nevertheless, it houses two SSDs in a bus-powered enclosure that's about the size of a single 2.5" one.

I didn't see it mentioned here (lots of talk at the other post https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1552381/) that this card, as designed, will not fit in slot 1 of your MP. The clearance required by 4 screws on the back force in into slot 2.

Giuly said:

And last but not least, the Zotax RaidBox, a USB 3.0 enclosure for two mSATA SSDs with a RAID controller (0, 1, JBOD, Spanning) that works on OS X. Sounds great, unless you figure out that even one of those SSDs saturates USB 3.0, so RAID0 will be rather useless. Nevertheless, it houses two SSDs in a bus-powered enclosure that's about the size of a single 2.5" one.

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Yup, that's a daft set up. Such a system would need to utilize two dedicated USB 3.0 connections to be of any intelligence. Thunderbolt would be OK tho.

jenzjen said:

I didn't see it mentioned here (lots of talk at the other post https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1552381/) that this card, as designed, will not fit in slot 1 of your MP. The clearance required by 4 screws on the back force in into slot 2.

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That's nonsense. The 5770 and 5870 both have mountings as well as additional backplanes that occupy the same space that the screws on this card do.

cal6n said:

That's nonsense. The 5770 and 5870 both have mountings as well as additional backplanes that occupy the same space that the screws on this card do.

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Easy there, you'd think someone who has a lot of posts would know first hand before being dismissive.

Do have physically have these 3 cards? I own all 3 (Apple 5870, Apple 5770 plus PC 7870) and here's no question that my 7870 eyefinity 6 (and this 7950 mac edition, as photographed) have 4 protruding screws for the heat sink that prevent it from fitting into slot 1.

Check post 35 in that other thread, and pull out your own 5870/5770 and see what we mean by flush.

You don't have to believe me. Feel free to buy this mac edition 7950 when available and post your results of getting it into slot 1. I'll have my popcorn ready.

jenzjen said:

Easy there, you'd think someone who has a lot of posts would know first hand before being dismissive.

Do have physically have these 3 cards? I own all 3 (Apple 5870, Apple 5770 plus PC 7870) and here's no question that my 7870 eyefinity 6 (and this 7950 mac edition, as photographed) have 4 protruding screws for the heat sink that prevented it from fitting into slot 1.

Check post 35 in that other thread, and pull out your own 5870/5770 and see what we mean by flush.

You don't have to believe me. Feel free to buy this mac edition 7950 when available and post your results of getting it into slot 1. I'll have my popcorn ready.

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I'm sorry.

you are in error

best to admit now

jenzjen said:

Easy there, you'd think someone who has a lot of posts would know first hand before being dismissive.

Do have physically have these 3 cards? I own all 3 (Apple 5870, Apple 5770 plus PC 7870) and here's no question that my 7870 eyefinity 6 (and this 7950 mac edition, as photographed) have 4 protruding screws for the heat sink that prevent it from fitting into slot 1.

Check post 35 in that other thread, and pull out your own 5870/5770 and see what we mean by flush.

You don't have to believe me. Feel free to buy this mac edition 7950 when available and post your results of getting it into slot 1. I'll have my popcorn ready.

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I would suggest that you go and check that post again.

The screws on the 7950 protrude from the circuit board by around ¼". This is the same distance that the backplane and heatsink mounts stand off from the circuit board on the 5XXX series cards. I should know. I've stripped and rebuilt enough of them, replacing their noisy fans.

I hope you enjoy your popcorn...

I have a few 1000 GPUs through here per year.

You are in error.

MacVidCards said:

I have a few 1000 GPUs through here per year.

You are in error.

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Was this aimed at my post? If so, I think you'll need to be a bit more precise.

MacVidCards said:

I'm sorry.

you are in error

best to admit now

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Have you physically handled any of these ATI cards? If so, show me a picture of your getting a 7870 eyefinity 6 to fit into slot 1. I also owned a MSI 7970 that would not fit.

I'm not saying ALL 7XXX will not fit in slot 1, but the images of the mac edition 7950 backplane look exactly like my 7870, which does not fit.

Seems like both you and cal6n are using assumptions from other cards that you've handled vs physically trying one of the cards discussed. Please correct me if I'm wrong. If so, which 7XXX have you fit into slot 1?

There are 3 manufacturers for the 7870 e6 - Club, PowerColor and VisionTek. I emailed PowerColor asking if their card had the same design as my VisionTek, whose screws/backplane design prevent it from fitting into slot 1.

Attached is their reply. Am I still making this up?

Still mistaken?

Here are my cards along with the backplane of the Mac 7950 (post 22 from https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1552381/).

Your experience with 1000s of cards and/or your guesstimate of the protrusion being about 1/4 doesn't change (1) these pictures (2) my experience that the 7870 does not fit into slot 1 and (3) the reply from PowerColor.

My point and questions remain.

I'm not saying ALL 7XXX will not fit in slot 1, but the images of the Mac 7950 backplane look exactly like my 7870.

So, MVC/cal6n, which 7XXX have you physically handled that fit into slot 1?

jenzjen said:

There are 3 manufacturers for the 7870 e6 - Club, PowerColor and VisionTek. I emailed PowerColor asking if their card had the same design as my VisionTek, whose screws/backplane design prevent it from fitting into slot 1.

Attached is their reply. Am I still making this up?

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No, you're just wrong.

The cards will fit fine.

Go whip some other group into a lather about nonsense.

hint: you might want to follow the MR link about who discovered that these cards worked in the first place back in November and think about that for a minute.

MacVidCards said:

No, you're just wrong.

The cards will fit fine.

Go whip some other group into a lather about nonsense.

hint: you might want to follow the MR link about who discovered that these cards worked in the first place back in November and think about that for a minute.

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QFT. I never said the card would not work. My point is if you NEED the GPU in slot 1, this 7950 doesn't look like it will fit based off my experience with my 7870.

I'm assuming you haven't physically handled any 7XXX since you keep avoiding the question. Go order a 7870 eyefinity 6 off Amazon, who has a great return policy/no restocking fees and post back your experience in getting it into slot 1.

MVC, you have your opinion, which unfortunately is wrong. I'll let others decide for themselves. You have yet to post any pictures to the contrary.

Here is my 7870 backplane and it installed in my MP.

Open up your own MP and see how much room you have between the card backplane and the MP chassis and gauge whether these screws have enough clearance.

You can see nicks on my chassis/rubber where I tried many times to no avail.

This is why the Apple OEM cards are absolutely flush.