10.9 + Radeon 7970 = Instant FirePro 9000!

[MacVidCards]

Take a EFI flashed 7970 into OSX 10.9 and suddenly it's a FirePro .

Guess we know why they got the 7950 done when they did.

Also proves for the 1 Millionth time that the "High End" GPUs are more like their lowly brothers on the shelf at Fry's then anyone would like to admit.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

@MacVidCards:
Interesting results. Thank you!

 

[theSeb]

Take a EFI flashed 7970 into OSX 10.9 and suddenly it's a FirePro .

Guess we know why they got the 7950 done when they did.

Also proves for the 1 Millionth time that the "High End" GPUs are more like their lowly brothers on the shelf at Fry's then anyone would like to admit.

It has been the case for a while, especially for AMD, where most of the difference was the drivers.

 

[ElderBrE]

Thanks for this, as always.

 

[bsbeamer]

Thanks for the info, as always. The folks at Sapphire must love this sorta news. If enough video and 3D software starts working better with OpenCL, their cards will continue to sell.

Any sign of early drivers for Nvidia cards in 10.9?

 

[Salavat23]

except the FirePro has ECC memory

 

[666sheep]

except the FirePro has ECC memory

6GB of it, and 274 W TDP, to be precise.

Driver seems tweaked for testing purposes. W9000 has different device ID than 7970. It's present in drivers as well.

BTW, Fire driver OpenCL performance looks poor. As 7970 it should be about twice as that. But hey, that's only first beta.
7950 got a boost in 10.9, quite big one. This one in 10.8.4 gets 1749 (with overclock). 1575 without overclock. Tesselation works too thanks to OpenGL 4.0.

 

[thekev]

I'm aware of the driver tweaked thing. So how is the OpenGL performance?

Images weren't loading for me before. Are those benchmarks better than what you were getting on the gaming card drivers?

 

[salvatore951]

6GB of it, and 274 W TDP, to be precise.

Driver seems tweaked for testing purposes. W9000 has different device ID than 7970. It's present in drivers as well.

BTW, Fire driver OpenCL performance looks poor. As 7970 it should be about twice as that. But hey, that's only first beta.
7950 got a boost in 10.9, quite big one. This one in 10.8.4 gets 1749 (with overclock). 1575 without overclock. Tesselation works too thanks to OpenGL 4.0.

Hi, I saw in the image that you have a 7950 overclocked to 1175 mhz in Mac OS. Could you tell me how have you overclocked it?

 

[666sheep]

Hi, I saw in the image that you have a 7950 overclocked to 1175 mhz in Mac OS. Could you tell me how have you overclocked it?

Piece of cake Do not touch the voltage.

 

[netkas]

They just named the card so in driver.

It's just of one string, not more not less.

 

[666sheep]

That's what I've thought. It could explain 7970 (dressed in FirePro clothes) poor performance in Luxmark.
From what I know, Luxmark code is optimized for 7xxx series. When it detects "FirePro", it runs with "non optimized" settings (I presume so). That's why Titan's score is low as well. But seems that OCL performance in new build is improved. Let's wait for new version of Ocean Wave from mitch.de

Edit: it's not that simple, see my next post.

 

[slughead]

By the way

FirePro W9000 = $3300

Radeon 7970 = $370

 

[666sheep]

Comparison of these 2 (Windows only):
http://vr-zone.com/articles/sapphire-pgs-amd-firepro-w9000-review/19919.html

 

[slughead]

Comparison of these 2 (Windows only):
http://vr-zone.com/articles/sapphire-pgs-amd-firepro-w9000-review/19919.html

Clearly the workstation cards are way better for those tasks...

But, considering the W9000 is about 9 times the price, what about a triple -SLI 7970 performing those benchmarks --at 1/3 the price.

 

[666sheep]

But, considering the W9000 is about 9 times the price, what about a triple -SLI 7970 performing those benchmarks --at 1/3 the price.

They would suck some serious watts from the wall.
Here is the tri-crossfire and quad-crossfire 7970 test. Gaming only but still interesting.

Meanwhile here is 7870 XT 2GB running in 10.9 on 2006 Mac Pro as FirePro W8000. Again, these Luxmark results are strange... Now 8 ROPs "vanished" from the card (it has 32 physically).

 

[Alex-IN]

Take a EFI flashed 7970 into OSX 10.9 and suddenly it's a FirePro .

Guess we know why they got the 7950 done when they did.

Also proves for the 1 Millionth time that the "High End" GPUs are more like their lowly brothers on the shelf at Fry's then anyone would like to admit.

Hello!
Can You help Me with the BIOS EFI Video cards 7970?
Which Video cards 7970 Vendors can be BIOS EFI reprogrammed on?
I've Got MacPro 5,1 and I'de Like to Have the Same

Sincerely, Alex

 

[alexlov]

 

[slughead]

They would suck some serious watts from the wall.
Here is the tri-crossfire and quad-crossfire 7970 test. Gaming only but still interesting.

Meanwhile here is 7870 XT 2GB running in 10.9 on 2006 Mac Pro as FirePro W8000. Again, these Luxmark results are strange... Now 8 ROPs "vanished" from the card (it has 32 physically).

Electricity is pretty cheap. How many hours of rendering on an energy-inefficient setup would it take to add up to the $2,000 difference?

 

[Jani81]

Is there any updated info about this subject? Would be great to have way different ati drivers with new maverick.

 

[FluJunkie]

They just named the card so in driver.

It's just of one string, not more not less.

This. Also some of us care about ECC RAM.

 

[linuxcooldude]

While firepro may be based on some consumer versions they still differ on the chip & board level.

 

[mattvs]

Bios?

Any body have the Mac BIOS or EFI Rom for the Sappphire Radeon HD 7970 GHz edition to download?

Take a EFI flashed 7970 into OSX 10.9 and suddenly it's a FirePro .

Guess we know why they got the 7950 done when they did.

Also proves for the 1 Millionth time that the "High End" GPUs are more like their lowly brothers on the shelf at Fry's then anyone would like to admit.

 

[DanielCoffey]

Yes - it is over on the netkas.org forum in the "OSX and Graphics Cards" area.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

By the way

FirePro W9000 = $3300

Radeon 7970 = $370

Right, but if you need a FirePro card, you don't flash a 7970. You lose the ECC memory, which applications depend on, and more importantly, you lose support.