EVGA announces a GTX 680 Mac Edition

[derbothaus]

599.99 ain't bad after looking over Newegg's GTX680 PC supply. $80.00-100.00 is not a bad tax compared to Apples 5870 cost. You all knew it was going to cost more. It generally does. But it is cheaper than Quadro for mercury engine. And for enterprise it would relatively 'supported'. EVGA has a great warranty program. Buuuuut it may fail hard like GTX280 did out the gate. Will be watching even though I almost pre'd.

 

[wafl iron]

I fear that amd and nvidia know something about the next macpro and that is why they are releasing cards early. If apple comes out with a macpro, wouldnt they sell oem 7xxx series and 6xx series gpu kits?

...maybe its going to have integrated discrete graphics, oh noes.

 

[spaz8]

Two DVI ports is cool, but only 2GB of mem is a shame. As is the pci 2.0 and OpenGL 3.2 specs.

 

[RoastingPig]

please dont be 599 and be 499 does than mean the new pro will come with a 680

 

[bsbeamer]

I fear that amd and nvidia know something about the next macpro and that is why they are releasing cards early. If apple comes out with a macpro, wouldnt they sell oem 7xxx series and 6xx series gpu kits?

...maybe its going to have integrated discrete graphics, oh noes.

Thunderbolt expansion chassis then? I really hate the thought of that, but it would "work", I guess... then the machine is just a better spec'd Mac Mini and far from "Pro" for my needs.

It's a waiting game, and we're all getting fed up with it.

 

[Pressure]

599.99 ain't bad after looking over Newegg's GTX680 PC supply. $80.00-100.00 is not a bad tax compared to Apples 5870 cost. You all knew it was going to cost more. It generally does. But it is cheaper than Quadro for mercury engine. And for enterprise it would relatively 'supported'. EVGA has a great warranty program. Buuuuut it may fail hard like GTX280 did out the gate. Will be watching even though I almost pre'd.

The cheapest Geforce GTX 680 goes for $419.95 ...

That's a 30% price hike for the exact same product. $180 can buy you a nice SSD or upgrade to 32 GB.

As is the pci 2.0 and OpenGL 3.2 specs.

That's limitations imposed by OS X and the current Mac Pro hardware.

 

[slughead]

Nice bit of price gouging as usual.

$599.95 is a bit silly.

Why are all high prices considered "Gouging" ? Shouldn't you be thankful Nvidia is offering a Mac Edition at all? Would it be better if they hadn't made one?

They're producing 1/100 as many of these as the PC cards; that's going to inflate the price.

Besides, there isn't much competition, and that has nothing to do with NVidia and everything to do with Apple and their choice of EFI.

I'm not going to get one (I have a 670 anyway), I'm super stoked they're releasing a mac edition though. If they have to "gouge" in order to make it worth it to release a product like this, then so be it.

----------

The cheapest Geforce GTX 680 goes for $419.95 ...

That's a 30% price hike for the exact same product. $180 can buy you a nice SSD or upgrade to 32 GB.

Imagine if there were 20 or 30 aftermarket options for Mac Pro, and they released a card witha 30% markup. Would you call it Wrong? Gouging? No, you'd call it dumb and laugh at them. You're mad because you're pushed so hard to buy one by the lack of alternatives; but whose fault is that?

Mac Pro users are DESPERATE for modern graphics solutions as a result of Apple crapping on us for years. That's the only reason NVidia released this card. They don't owe you squat; be thankful we have companies willing to compete for your business at all, especially given how much Apple has screwed us.

In time, maybe the price point will be pushed down via competition, but for now you have 2 real options for modern graphics cards that are fully Mac Compatible; that's 2 more than a year ago.

 

[Pressure]

Why are all high prices considered "Gouging" ? Shouldn't you be thankful Nvidia is offering a Mac Edition at all? Would it be better if they hadn't made one?

They're producing 1/100 as many of these as the PC cards; that's going to inflate the price.

Besides, there isn't much competition, and that has nothing to do with NVidia and everything to do with Apple and their choice of EFI.

I'm not going to get one (I have a 670 anyway), I'm super stoked they're releasing a mac edition though. If they have to "gouge" in order to make it worth it to release a product like this, then so be it.

Let me address your first point by saying it isn't NVIDIA who offers this Mac edition at all. Secondly, the difference between a normal Geforce GTX 680 and the Mac edition is merely software, e.g. adding Mac Pro compatible EFI to the firmware, and the box it ships in.

I would be stoked the day NVIDIA and AMD will simultaneously release cards compatible with all major platforms out of the box, be it Linux, Windows or OS X. Sure, drivers would be an issue but it would have to start from them.

Imagine if there were 20 or 30 aftermarket options for Mac Pro, and they released a card witha 30% markup. Would you call it Wrong? Gouging? No, you'd call it dumb and laugh at them. You're mad because you're pushed so hard to buy one by the your lack of alternatives; but whose fault is that?

Mac Pro users are DESPERATE for modern graphics solutions as a result of Apple crapping on us for years. That's the only reason NVidia released this card. They don't owe you squat; be thankful we have companies willing to compete for your business at all, especially given how much Apple has screwed us.

In time, maybe the price point will be pushed down via competition, but for now you have 2 real options for modern graphics cards that are fully Mac Compatible; that's 2 more than a year ago.

But there is really nothing, other than money, holding NVIDIA and AMD away from releasing modern graphic cards for OS X simultaneous with their Windows parts. I would think the goal would be to diminish the segregation of operating systems by deciding that all cards forward will be compatible.

The pricing does justify calling it price gouging.

 

[DanielCoffey]

But there is really nothing, other than money, holding NVIDIA and AMD away from releasing modern graphic cards for OS X simultaneous with their Windows parts.

I wonder if there is an Apple Licensing issue preventing nVidia and AMD from releasing cards in the past? It is odd that suddenly both companies pop one out within a couple of weeks of each other and to me that says that a licensing obstacle has been removed. If it was just money, they would have done it long ago.

 

[slughead]

But there is really nothing, other than money, holding NVIDIA and AMD away from releasing modern graphic cards for OS X simultaneous with their Windows parts. I would think the goal would be to diminish the segregation of operating systems by deciding that all cards forward will be compatible.

The pricing does justify calling it price gouging.

LOL "apart from the fact that it would cost these companies more, there's nothing stopping these companies from giving me what I WANT! It's gouging when they don't!"

Oh no, a business interested in making money! Apple surely didn't have this in mind when they chose to use EFI32/64 over BIOS! Or chose to lock us in to their hardware!

Yes, NVidia and AMD could have decreased their profit margin on the ~100 million cards they sell each year in the off chance a few would end up in a Mac. Or they could just forget this tiny portion of the market entirely and leave us where we were 2 years ago.

Maybe future PC cards will have dual compatibility, but that's only if Apple sells enough machines to create a market for them. For now, let's stop complaining we have a new player in our small market.

 

[Pressure]

I wonder if there is an Apple Licensing issue preventing nVidia and AMD from releasing cards in the past? It is odd that suddenly both companies pop one out within a couple of weeks of each other and to me that says that a licensing obstacle has been removed. If it was just money, they would have done it long ago.

AMD did release the Radeon HD 3870 on their own for the first Mac Pro back in 2008.

 

[Pressure]

LOL "apart from the fact that it would cost these companies more, there's nothing stopping these companies from giving me what I WANT! It's gouging when they don't!"

Oh no, a business interested in making money! Apple surely didn't have this in mind when they chose to use EFI32/64 over BIOS! Or chose to lock us in to their hardware!

Yes, NVidia and AMD could have decreased their profit margin on the ~100 million cards they sell each year in the off chance a few would end up in a Mac. Or they could just forget this tiny portion of the market entirely and leave us where we were 2 years ago.

Maybe future PC cards will have dual compatibility, but that's only if Apple sells enough machines to create a market for them. For now, let's stop complaining we have a new player in our small market.

Please don't put words in my mouth.

The next Mac Pro will, hopefully, use the same GOP EFI (instead of the deprecated UGA EFI) as current available in the iMac, Mac Mini and their MacBook range.

We are talking cents to the dollar if they did indeed spread out the cost across the whole range when that happens.

The strongest obstacle has been UGA EFI with modern graphic cards so far.

 

[eva01]

Well i kinda wish i had a crystal ball so i could have seen the future .


I'll stick with the 7950, don't think the new card is worth me spending 600 bucks and selling the 7950.

 

[derbothaus]

The cheapest Geforce GTX 680 goes for $419.95 ...

That's a 30% price hike for the exact same product. $180 can buy you a nice SSD or upgrade to 32 GB.

Yes. That is the 'cheapest'. The average is a bit higher on up to 599.99 for PC. How new are you to Apple? You will ALWAYS pay the very top plus a few points for supported stuff. Rare exceptions to this. I don't disagree it is very expensive and I really could have used a 349.00 670 but still happy something exists that isn't AMD. At least for my video buddies

 

[Asgorath]

Let me address your first point by saying it isn't NVIDIA who offers this Mac edition at all. Secondly, the difference between a normal Geforce GTX 680 and the Mac edition is merely software, e.g. adding Mac Pro compatible EFI to the firmware, and the box it ships in.

I would be stoked the day NVIDIA and AMD will simultaneously release cards compatible with all major platforms out of the box, be it Linux, Windows or OS X. Sure, drivers would be an issue but it would have to start from them.



But there is really nothing, other than money, holding NVIDIA and AMD away from releasing modern graphic cards for OS X simultaneous with their Windows parts. I would think the goal would be to diminish the segregation of operating systems by deciding that all cards forward will be compatible.

The pricing does justify calling it price gouging.

Actually, NVIDIA had to have had a big part in this -- they write the drivers, after all. Yes, Apple controls the OpenGL and OpenCL frameworks, but the folks from AMD and NVIDIA still need to implement the low-level part of the drivers.

Why aren't there more Mac editions? My guess is pretty simple: support. These cards, the GTX 680 and 7950 Mac Editions, are officially supported. That means there are people paid to answer phones and help people when things go wrong, and given that Mac users tend to not understand things like "install the drivers on the CD that was in the box first" or "go and download the latest driver from their website" since they're so used to everything coming with the OS itself, this can be a non-trivial amount of support.

So, given that the Mac market overall is small, and Mac Pros make up a tiny fraction of that:

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=mac

I doubt it will ever be cost efficient enough to devote the engineering and support resources to produce more officially-supported Mac editions. Don't get me wrong, I'd love it if there was a mid-range $250 option as well, but given the number of people here complaining about the cost of upgrading to a modern GPU when they've already dropped $2500-$3000 or more on their Mac Pro itself (i.e. you've already made a significant investment in the system) I just don't see it happening. Everything Apple makes has a premium price tag on it, so I'm certainly not surprised that the after-market GPUs with official Mac support cost a bit more.

----------

I wonder if there is an Apple Licensing issue preventing nVidia and AMD from releasing cards in the past? It is odd that suddenly both companies pop one out within a couple of weeks of each other and to me that says that a licensing obstacle has been removed. If it was just money, they would have done it long ago.

I'd bet it was simply the release of 10.8.3 in both cases. Both cards work out of the box with that OS, right? I believe AMD has an additional driver package and I'm assuming NVIDIA will have one as well, but allowing the card to pretty much work with the base OS version must certainly reduce the support burden of people plugging their card in before installing the drivers and ending up with an unaccelerated desktop.

 

[xav8tor]

There is a reason it is called a Mac "Pro." The majority of users who actually need this box and upgraded GPU's don't care one bit about the so-called price gouging. In exchange for a whatever percentage premium we can have a fully supported card in the OS and in terms of tech support that works OTB. The price difference can be made back in the FIRST HOUR the card is put to work. For recreational use, do you think a real hard core gamer cares about an additional hundred bucks for 10 to 20 more FPS? Yes, I know, they are probably on Windows and have had these cards for a year now, for less money too.

 

[Asgorath]

There is a reason it is called a Mac "Pro." The majority of users who actually need this box and upgraded GPU's don't care one bit about the so-called price gouging. In exchange for a whatever percentage premium we can have a fully supported card in the OS and in terms of tech support that works OTB. The price difference can be made back in the FIRST HOUR the card is put to work. For recreational use, do you think a real hard core gamer cares about an additional hundred bucks for 10 to 20 more FPS? Yes, I know, they are probably on Windows and have had these cards for a year now, for less money too.

I couldn't agree more. And, what's more, I'm going to buy one even though I've been using an unofficial GTX 680 for the past 6 months or so. Seems like a safe assumption that the better these cards sell, the more likely we are to see them in the future, and the more driver support we'll get, which has a trickle-down effect for the other Kepler-based GPUs.

For a pro user who is using their system to make a living, often using software that costs thousands or tens of thousands of dollars itself, dropping $600 on a high-end video card seems like a no-brainer, especially when you've already dropped $3-4k on the system itself.

 

[elvisizer]

That's a complete deal-breaker for people with two ACDs.

But it's not a problem at all for everyone else.

dvi to mini-dp converters exist don't they? not being sarcastic, I'm just too lazy to check!

 

[xav8tor]

dvi to mini-dp converters exist don't they? not being sarcastic, I'm just too lazy to check!

Yes, and vice versa. They're not cheap, but if you afford the Mac Pro, the new GPU, and two ACD's, you can easily swing the converter too.

 

[tomvos]

As is the pci 2.0 and OpenGL 3.2 specs.

Well, but this is due to Apple neglecting the Mac Pro hardware for a long time now. You can’t get PCIe 3.0 from the old Mac Pro chipset. I guess, EVGA did not change the hardware very much, so basically you still get a PCIe 3.0 video card with the PCIe 3.0 feature throttled down to PCIe 2.0 — Thank you, Apple.

Concerning OpenGL 3.2, the GTX680 can do up to OpenGL 4.2. But it’s a question of the drivers supporting OpenGL 4.x. Of course we all know, that Mac OS X is the most advanced operating system in the world — Thank you, Apple — then the idea of Mac OS X supporting OpenGL 4.x must be … from another world.

But let’s view it positive, once Apple decides to push the pedal and deliver not so extremely outdated hardware and software, the GTX 680 may have a few tricks up its sleeves.

 

[simplymuzik3]

dvi to mini-dp converters exist don't they? not being sarcastic, I'm just too lazy to check!

Yes they exist. I've been using the Atlona DP400 for over a year now. It's Dual Link DVI > MDP and supports full 2560x1440

 

[steph00]

one more company who considers 600$ = 600€
http://eu.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=02G-P4-3682-KR&family=GeForce%20600%20Series%20Family&uc=EUR

If higher vram is important to you then it could just be a waste of money IMO.
personnaly the 7950 is actually a better card for my specific use (3D artist),
I just compared it in my system next to a 670 before coming to this conclusion. I would say the same about the 680, much better gaming card but directX may not be your priority.
I had opengl issues with nvidia drivers that lead me to chose AMD, also higher VRAM can be very important.
IMO it is not true that if you are a professional you should prefer it to 7950, it depends on what you are doing with it. the more expensive may not be the best in any situation.
If you are a gamer and cost is no issue it is a no brainer, the GTX680 will be superior.

 

[derbothaus]

one more company who considers 600$ = 600€
http://eu.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=02G-P4-3682-KR&family=GeForce%20600%20Series%20Family&uc=EUR

there is no question the gtx680 is superior to 7950, but to me the performance difference is clearly not worth 160€ unless budget is no concern at all. add to this a 20€ minidisplayport to Displayport adpater.
especially if higher vram is important for you then it could just be a waste of money IMO.

It isn't a "waste" if you need it for Premier or CUDA. For games it really depends. 680 beats the crap out of 7950 in Battlefield as all Nvidia favored games would benefit. It isn't so simplified. But looking at Unreal engine or something, yes, waste of money. Then again the AMD drivers right now look abysmal in OS X with 5870 almost as fast. Look at OS X numbers. In Win it is different and more mature.
http://www.barefeats.com/gpu7950c.html

 

[steph00]

It isn't a "waste" if you need it for Premier or CUDA.

true, it really depends on the user priorities

 

[elvisizer]

...I've been using the Atlona DP400 for over a year now. It's Dual Link DVI > MDP and supports full 2560x1440

cool, i've got one of their mini-dp/hdmi switchers, love it. atlona makes good stuff.
i saw that gefen makes a dual link dvi -> mini-dp as well.