All this hype, only for Apple to release the new Mac Pro with a soldered graphics card
Haha that's why both Nvidia and AMD are offering new models, it's the last time they will have the chance of making money with the mac pro....
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EVGA Announces GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition Graphics Card for Mac Pro
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Haha that's why both Nvidia and AMD are offering new models, it's the last time they will have the chance of making money with the mac pro....
GL drivers
Mac hasn't rewritten the drivers for this card. As a result, thing monster is half as fast - not as fast as the original - unless you run it in Windows.
Mac hasn't rewritten the drivers for this card. As a result, thing monster is half as fast - not as fast as the original - unless you run it in Windows.
So... EVGA is just selling this card with no drivers?
That kinda sucks.
What makes it "Mac compatible" if it doesn't have drivers?
I am bummed that a $450 windows card is $600 for the Mac. I'd pay a $50 premium.
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EFI firmware and bigger eeprom
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EFI firmware and bigger eeprom
Not really. Having an embedded GPU on the Mac Pro's motherboard does not mean it still can't have 4 PCI-e slots. If using a Xeon E5 CPU package there are 40 PCI-e v3.0 lanes. Here is one simple allocation of those.
x16 ___ x16 electrical and physical slot.
x8 ____ x8 electrical and x16 physical slot
x8 ____ embedded GPU. (e.g., AMD 8750M which has x8 v3.0 interface anyway)
x4 ____ x4 electrical and physical slot
x4 ____ ... ditto of the above ....
Since this is PCI-e v3.0 three of the slots ( x16 , x4 , x4 ) have twice the bandwidth as previous three generations of Mac Pros. The x8 v3.0 slot has x16 of v2.0 so no loss in bandwidth from previous gen.
The embedded GPU would be used to "power" a Thunderbolt controller's two DisplayPort inputs.
Note this could be an upside to the 3rd party GPU market if Apple allows for a BTO Mac Pro that comes with four empty slots. Those that want more will buy a 3rd party card.
Even if the Thunderbolt controller siphoned off x4 lanes for the PCI-e connection ( not necessary as C602 IO Hub has x8 v2.0 lanes four of which could be put to TB controller use) still wouldn't loose a slot. The last x4 slot above could be split.
x4 ( v3.0 )
|
PCI-e switch ----> x4 v2.0 speed to TB controller
|
x4 v2.0 speed open slot like current Mac Pro
[ The current Mac Pro's switch the two x4 slots so this is actually a decrease in switched open slots. ]
The only way this could be backsliding is if going with Intel's mainstream desktop versions that can't do more than 4 cores and have integrated graphics. They are capped at just 16 lanes in the case of basic Core i ( or 20 in Xeon E3) case.
What is "bad" there is far more throwing the 20+ PCI-e lanes of bandwidth out the window far more than the presence of an embedded GPU on the motherboard (in this case an integrated one). That's is what would kill the PCI-e card market..... lack of slots with full bandwidth.
Requires 10.8.3 if you rely on internal drivers. Can we run it on prior OS versions with a download of the driver?
That's what I'm hoping, put a ASUS GTX670 in my Mac Pro, works great with a 30 and 27 inch screen, but it has 4 outputs, one HDMI, one display port and two DVI. Only the DVI works, now I have to use a Black Magic HDMI IO card.
Would be cool if we could either flash it or a new driver would support the 4 outputs. But to be honest, after using a noisy Quadro 4000 for years, just the fact this card is SO quiet already makes me happy.
The lack of support for all 4 outputs I guess.
GTX 680s are either 2GB or 4GB.
Maybe they are limited the choice of a 256-bit memory bus. AMD accomplishes 3GB of video memory with a wider 384-bit memory bus.
It wouldn't really matter for this card anyway, a 680 doesn't even saturate a x16 v2 slot.
The OpenGL version that can be supported is controlled by the Apple OpenGL framework, not NVIDIA. The GPU can support DX11/GL4 features like tessellation, but if Apple doesn't expose the functionality at the framework level, there's nothing anyone else can do about it.
The card has Mac driver support. Support for a GPU and support for OpenGL features/versions are two entirely different things. In fact, the 680s have been working under Mac OS X for quite some time now, just not in any official capacity.
This is more expensive and has 1GB less vram. I think you're still in a better place with the Radeon.
This is very much dependent on the workload, and there are definitely workloads that will saturate the PCIe bus. Most games are only limited by bus transfers when they are first loading (i.e. during the loading screen) but after that, all their resources are on the GPU. Other workloads, such as film editing or other GPGPU things where the data set can't entirely fit in the GPU's memory will usually be limited by bus transfers, since the data needs to be streamed down to the GPU and then streamed back when it's done.
No, it's confirmation that a third-party company has released a graphics card compatible with all existing Mac Pros. That's all, nothing else. You think Apple went to these companies and said "hey, we are going to keep the Mac Pro the same and we are letting you know so that you can release your graphics card"?
ROTFL!
So what exisiting pc gtx 680 cards can you just insert a macpro and they work without installing drivers? (just no bootscreen?)
You have no boot menu because the card you currently have in your MP 3,1 is a PC card that recently is supported but because PC cards lack EFI rom, you get no boot menu. This card is made for Mac so yes, with this card you would get boot menu and bootcamp support.
But I am soooo excited that we have a mac supported Nvidia card. I was kinda bummed when the 7950 came out.... two radeons in a row??? I need the CUDA POOOOWER without having to go Quadro.
I hope so.
I will be testing it in X-Plane 10 as the my current 5870 has serious performance issues with it.
Also, the Radeon has mini-DisplayPort built-in which the GeForce has not.
I'm also wondering if my Mac Pro 2008 will be CPU bound instead of GPU bound once the 7950 is inside it.
I hope there will be some comparison tests with the GeForce in older Mac Pro's.
Still, it's gr8 we now have options!!!
