Emperor of Mac Pros ;-) Dual GTX 970 GPGPU OS X

[Machines]

@lexR

That's a nice score ! Much higher than the pair of AMD 7950s I was using before . But the reason why I switched to the high end Maxwells is because nVidia now has respectable Open CL hardware acceleration in addition to their nice Cuda Core capabilities, of course . Clients want an all in one solution for all the programs they'll use with their workflow .

 

[A Hobo]

no scores yet, because I'm at work, but i think my machine might just have you beat

dual X5890s with dual 970s, on Internal power. with no hackery.

4x 512gb SSDs (mx100) are installed in the drive sleds but I'm picking up a sonnet card to get them on the PCIe bus asap. (i am aware that the sonnet pro only has 2 slots, it will have to do.)

I'll need to take some pics when i get home to show the Sli cable installed and to and to get the scores so ill remind myself to look at this thread then.

 

[Machines]

Hey Lucas ! I'm a bit jealous since your dual X5650 build looks so elegant with your dual 970s . Mine looks like the Borg grabbed hold of it .

But I build for the pro rendering crowd and stability and longevity are the primary concerns here . My rigs have to survive 3 years at load , so I'm conservative .

Please let me know how stable both your GPUs are at load and how much juice they draw . You might be facing a concern with slowly burning out your backplane board (motherboard) traces , if you don't grab power from a couple more points (like from the ODD mobo power connector or the SATA HDD backplanes .)

It also might be a good idea at the very least to spread the load from the two leads of each one of your splitter cables into one video card each .

Remember , Apple never intended a cMP to have two high end graphics installed simultaneously .

Max configuration from the factory was one 5870 and one 5770 .

Also, my build project was never about getting the highest Sala score, (both GPU and CPU) . It was about getting the highest GPU only score and also to determine which current rendering programs can utilize both of these Maxwells .

With regards to your drive subsystem , the Mx100s are inexpensive drives. You absolutely will be maxing out the SATA throughput on the mobo with four of them on the backplanes . That limit is 650 MB/s .

Installing two Mx100s on the sonnet card may not get you the speeds you think , if the Mx100s use compression to bump up the throughput of a single drive . Compression technology plays havoc with stripe raid arrays and was the reason I abandoned Sandisk Ultras and replaced them with the gorgeous Samsung 850 Pros .

As a side note, Samsung reported one of their test unit 128 GB 850 Pros in house has over 4 PB of writes on it and it still is going strong ! 4K raw editing will write minimum 3.5TB an hour on a drive , so it isn't a trivial concern .

SLI will do nothing in OS X – let me know how it works in Windows and cheers from the Fox Valley !

 

[A Hobo]

Hey Lucas ! I'm a bit jealous since your dual X5650 build looks so elegant with your dual 970s . Mine looks like the Borg grabbed hold of it .

But I build for the pro rendering crowd and stability and longevity are the primary concerns here . My rigs have to survive 3 years at load , so I'm conservative .

Please let me know how stable both your GPUs are at load and how much juice they draw . You might be facing a concern with slowly burning out your backplane board (motherboard) traces , if you don't grab power from a couple more points (like from the ODD mobo power connector or the SATA HDD backplanes .)

It also might be a good idea at the very least to spread the load from the two leads of each one of your splitter cables into one video card each .

Remember , Apple never intended a cMP to have two high end graphics installed simultaneously .

Max configuration from the factory was one 5870 and one 5770 .

Also, my build project was never about getting the highest Sala score, (both GPU and CPU) . It was about getting the highest GPU only score and also to determine which current rendering programs can utilize both of these Maxwells .

With regards to your drive subsystem , the Mx100s are inexpensive drives. You absolutely will be maxing out the SATA throughput on the mobo with four of them on the backplanes . That limit is 650 MB/s .

Installing two Mx100s on the sonnet card may not get you the speeds you think , if the Mx100s use compression to bump up the throughput of a single drive . Compression technology plays havoc with stripe raid arrays and was the reason I abandoned Sandisk Ultras and replaced them with the gorgeous Samsung 850 Pros .

As a side note, Samsung reported one of their test unit 128 GB 850 Pros in house has over 4 PB of writes on it and it still is going strong ! 4K raw editing will write minimum 3.5TB an hour on a drive , so it isn't a trivial concern .

SLI will do nothing in OS X – let me know how it works in Windows and cheers from the Fox Valley !

Hi there, I specifically went with the reference cards for two reasons, firstly the aesthetic matches the mac pro, and secondly the max tdp for the 970 is 146w a piece, which can be carried by the motherboard traces fine (in theory at least, in practice so far its been fine) by 75 being drawn through the pci slot, and 75 being drawn through the booster plugs.

Sli works fine in windows once I installed a program called HypserSLI, (i couldn't get the control panel for sli to appear without installing this) and defiantly gives about a 70-80% increase when gaming.

i also like that the ref cards have 3 native display ports and i use two cinema displays with some cheap display port/mini display port adapters for now until i pick up a third cinema display.

also, apple would only let you configure either a single 5870, or a single 5770 or dual 5770, not one of each

I do wish a Mac Rom will roll up soon though, either from EVGA making a mac card or by MVC releasing a rom to buy.. looking at the cards i have i don't think they would need any physical modification, juts a rom is needed..


And finally (for now) I'm not too worried about the issue with burning out a Mobo or PSU, I've literally got a limitless supply of replacement parts
That being said, i don't thing i will have power issues as I'm not technically over drawing any current for the 970s.

regards

 

[matthewtoney]

I do wish a Mac Rom will roll up soon though, either from EVGA making a mac card or by MVC releasing a rom to buy.. looking at the cards i have i don't think they would need any physical modification, juts a rom is needed..

I do believe he has said on another thread here that the intention is to do a rom for the 970 as well now that the 980 one is done and he's selling them.

You two guys are such sticklers for how it looks in there I'd be too embarrassed to ever post pics of my crazy wiring install with a Titan and external power - "pretty" it is not.

 

[A Hobo]

I do believe he has said on another thread here that the intention is to do a rom for the 970 as well now that the 980 one is done and he's selling them.

You two guys are such sticklers for how it looks in there I'd be too embarrassed to ever post pics of my crazy wiring install with a Titan and external power - "pretty" it is not.

I believe MVC has plans to sell a flashing service, so far he hasn't been into the whole "giving away roms" thing much.

and frankly, I'm not shipping my cards to the US, to get them flashed for $180 apiece and then pay shipping and 20% customs on the way back.

Id quite happily pay for the roms to flash myself mind you.

 

[Machines]

Hi there, I specifically went with the reference cards for two reasons, firstly the aesthetic matches the mac pro, and secondly the max tdp for the 970 is 146w a piece, which can be carried by the motherboard traces fine (in theory at least, in practice so far its been fine) by 75 being drawn through the pci slot, and 75 being drawn through the booster plugs.

Thank you for that very important piece of info ! I was not even aware . All I saw were those two 6 pin PCIe connectors and got excited . I deduced from my build the TDP or peak actual was between 133 and 153 W per card . I went with the EVGAs because I like their build quality, awesome warranty policies and I want to reward their past support for the Mac community . The cards also look pretty ))) I'm not too worried about ports since these are Compute cards , not UI cards . Still , 146 W is really close to the bone for the 150 W provided by the (75W) PCIe slot and a single 6 pin (75W) PCIe power booster cable .

I have a vivid memory of building a dream 2012 Mac Pro at the US Online Apple Store and the max video card configuration choice was one 5870 and one 5770 , but I'm not certain how they would have wired it . I didn't buy it , of course . Was the online choice an error ? I haven't bought a brand new Apple computer since 1983 lol . In the wild here, I've seen only dual 5770 cMP from the factory .

MVC has an EFI GTX 980 at his eBay store for 1500 bucks … which intriguingly lacks Cuda Core support .

My pair of GTX 970s has both Open CL and Cuda Core support with the specific pair of nVidia drivers I listed in the post here . Tested with Luxmark (Open CL) and Blender (CUDA) .

I have an unlimited supply of parts too … I just have to pay for them :-D .

 

[MacVidCards]

Hi guys !

Fun stuff from the UK !

I schooled in Grantham for a bit so always happy to hear from you guys.

The 980 add mentioned is a placeholder, don't expect anyone to buy it, hence the price. Believe it or not there are unscrupulous types who like to lay claim to things they had nothing to do with.

Our cards have same CUDA as anyone else's, which isn't compleye yet. (Try Ray tracing...)

Will get to 970s and 960s soon. Still getting 3,1 support ironed out. All EFI 980s so far have been 4,1/5,1 only.

 

[Machines]

Fun stuff from the UK !

Very funny ... considering I've never visited the U.K.

Try closer to home , MVC .

Some gentlemen from a Chi-town studio associated with Warner Bros are trying to schedule a visit to me this week to look over the GPU array . They're a bunch of Creatives , who are also interested in buying four editing and one business administration rig from me .

I'm just the hardware tech . Do these cards do well in FCPX ?

I just build the race cars ... dunno how to drive them lol .

 

[MacVidCards]

let me know how it works in Windows and cheers from the Fox Valley !

Sorry, just assumed that "Fox Valley" was somewhere far from here in LA as I had never heard of it.

Both 970s I have here are on much smaller PCBs than the 980s, easy to imagine them needing little power.

 

[Pressure]

Sorry, just assumed that "Fox Valley" was somewhere far from here in LA as I had never heard of it.

Both 970s I have here are on much smaller PCBs than the 980s, easy to imagine them needing little power.

The Power Target Limit of the card should be fairly easy to find in the BIOS/EFI.

Probably set at 180 Watt like all Geforce GTX 980/970s.

 

[squig01]

Some gentlemen from a Chi-town studio associated with Warner Bros are trying to schedule a visit to me this week to look over the GPU array . They're a bunch of Creatives , who are also interested in buying four editing and one business administration rig from me .

I'm just the hardware tech . Do these cards do well in FCPX ?

Should do.

I'm a filmmaker. I was about to buy a 2013 Mac Pro 6 core to edit & grade a feature on; when I heard the GTX 980 was working on macs I bought a 6 core 5,1 and a sonnet tempo pro instead. I'm just waiting on another 6 pin power cable, the GTX 980 won't work with one. Running FCPX, Resolve, and AE, I expect it to be on par speed wise with a 2013 6 core. The great thing is I can always throw in another GTX 980 if I need to.

http://liftgammagain.com/forum/inde...resolve-benchmarks-d700-vs-d500-vs-2010.2256/ Resolve benchmarks on 2010/2013 Mac Pros with dual Nvidia and AMD cards.

 

[A Hobo]

Still , 146 W is really close to the bone for the 150 W provided by the (75W) PCIe slot and a single 6 pin (75W) PCIe power booster cable .

I have a vivid memory of building a dream 2012 Mac Pro at the US Online Apple Store and the max video card configuration choice was one 5870 and one 5770 , but I'm not certain how they would have wired it . I didn't buy it , of course . Was the online choice an error ? I haven't bought a brand new Apple computer since 1983 lol . In the wild here, I've seen only dual 5770 cMP from the factory .

Nah. 150w is what it can draw, continuously with no issues. thats how the spec has been ratified. it should be able to draw 150w 24-7 from the slot/socket with no issues, and each card is a few watts under that at MAX draw.
The cards are actually only ever pulling 10-15w at idle, and less then 146w (292 out of 300w max) each when playing FC4 or Crysis 3.

In fact id be willing to bet that the TDP of the slots has been under stated, as i was using a 780 in this machine for about 8 months with no issues either.

I can't speak for non reference cards or super clocked variants, but for the reference 970s I'm using, i have no issues at all. (besides no efi rom.. yet.)
---

Theres never been a way to have 5780 and another card besides the raid card in a mac pro from the factory, so your memory is a bit cloudy


Regards

 

[Pending]

Hi guys !

Fun stuff from the UK !

I schooled in Grantham for a bit so always happy to hear from you guys.

The 980 add mentioned is a placeholder, don't expect anyone to buy it, hence the price. Believe it or not there are unscrupulous types who like to lay claim to things they had nothing to do with.

Our cards have same CUDA as anyone else's, which isn't compleye yet. (Try Ray tracing...)

Will get to 970s and 960s soon. Still getting 3,1 support ironed out. All EFI 980s so far have been 4,1/5,1 only.

Hi MVC, just wondering how things are coming along with your Euro/UK reseller?

 

[Machines]

Should do.

I'm a filmmaker. I was about to buy a 2013 Mac Pro 6 core to edit & grade a feature on; when I heard the GTX 980 was working on macs I bought a 6 core 5,1 and a sonnet tempo pro instead. I'm just waiting on another 6 pin power cable, the GTX 980 won't work with one. Running FCPX, Resolve, and AE, I expect it to be on par speed wise with a 2013 6 core. The great thing is I can always throw in another GTX 980 if I need to.

http://liftgammagain.com/forum/inde...resolve-benchmarks-d700-vs-d500-vs-2010.2256/ Resolve benchmarks on 2010/2013 Mac Pros with dual Nvidia and AMD cards.

Thank you very much and an awesome article . I registered to access the chart of the test results . Funny , I recognize many of the contributor's names from other forums ... my world is getting smaller it seems .

 

[Machines]

I can't speak for non reference cards or super clocked variants, but for the reference 970s I'm using, i have no issues at all. (besides no efi rom.. yet.)
---

Regards

I just ordered a pair of power booster splitter cables like yours and will test them at load with my EVGA SC cards . I'm pretty certain I'm at around 135 W for each card , at load . Not using the SATA backplanes as an additional power source is a pretty radical move for me, as I've build around 4 or 5 Dual 7950 GPGPU Mac Pros for the Creatives in the greater Chicago-land area . I've had no problems with overheated cables , yet . Your reference cards look just like Titans Did you take off the shroud and heatsink yet and look under the hood ? Before recently, I grabbed used 7950s from eBay and they were likely from the bit mining crowd . The thermal paste was as dry as the Sahara after just two years at load , so I had to rebuild them right away before re-installation in the Compute arrays .

 

[squig01]

According to this review the 970 SC draws 353 W under full load http://www.hardwareluxx.com/index.p...d-970-with-maxwell-architecture.html?start=13

More power figures for the 970 and 980 at the bottom of the page here http://www.hardwareluxx.com/index.p...d-970-with-maxwell-architecture.html?start=13

 

[squig01]

Thank you very much and an awesome article . I registered to access the chart of the test results . Funny , I recognize many of the contributor's names from other forums ... my world is getting smaller it seems .

You're welcome. Yeah it was really helpful for me trying to decide what system to go with. I'm a mod on a couple of filmmaking forums so I recognised a few of the usual suspects there too. I saved about $4000 AUD going with the 6 core 5,1 GTX 980 vs a 6 core 2013 D700.

 

[Executor]

no scores yet, because I'm at work, but i think my machine might just have you beat

dual X5890s with dual 970s, on Internal power. with no hackery.

4x 512gb SSDs (mx100) are installed in the drive sleds but I'm picking up a sonnet card to get them on the PCIe bus asap. (i am aware that the sonnet pro only has 2 slots, it will have to do.)

I'll need to take some pics when i get home to show the Sli cable installed and to and to get the scores so ill remind myself to look at this thread then.

Amazing work Lucas. Could you please tell me where I can purchase the PCI power connectors?. Love the clean look of your setup.

 

[Machines]

Amazing work Lucas. Could you please tell me where I can purchase the PCI power connectors?. Love the clean look of your setup.

Lucas is in the UK and I'm in the Midwest (USA) . I don't know where he grabbed his PCIe booster cables , but I just ordered a pair of them from an eBay seller located in the state of Indiana . They have not arrived yet , so i don't know their quality . They are long (14.5 inches / 37cm) and made of proper guage wire and should be usable for a wide varity of card lengths . I've had rejects from this seller before with other cables , so carefully examine the cable connector ends to verify they've been made properly . Problem is, not many firms make custom cables for our cMP . Ones approved in my builds are always good .

Here's the link : http://www.ebay.com/itm/141446625803?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

eBay item number 141446625803 if the link is dead .

 

[A Hobo]

Machines is right, thats the exact place i ordered from. $20 shipping is a joke though..

 

[h9826790]

I'm pretty certain I'm at around 135 W for each card

It's about how the load distributed. Hardware Monitor sometimes not naming the monitoring source correctly.

From your post, if it read everything correctly, that means a card may draw up to 95.3W from the aux power cables, and only 41.5 from the slot itself. So, if you use a Y-splitter, you may end up drawing 95W from a single 75W source.

However, in my own experience, Hardware Monitor may falsely ident the PCIe slot as the boost line. If that's the case, then the slot itself will provide up to 63.3W to your card, and only 73.6W from the aux power cable, which just below the 75W rating.

 

[Machines]

It's about how the load distributed. Hardware Monitor sometimes not naming the monitoring source correctly.

Precisely so . It's not just about total wattage . That's why the cards won't fire up without the sense pins signaling a connection on all three power points (PCIe slot and the two 6 pin boosters .)

With regards to HM not identifying sensors properly , I've seen this before and I think I'll shoot off an email to Marcel the next time it happens . There's too much at risk here to be cavalier with these subsystems at load . I worry about case fires all the time and I closely listen to the advice of bitcoin miners who have more experience than anyone else with video card arrays .

 

[Machines]

From your post, if it read everything correctly, that means a card may draw up to 95.3W from the aux power cables, and only 41.5 from the slot itself. So, if you use a Y-splitter, you may end up drawing 95W from a single 75W source.

However, in my own experience, Hardware Monitor may falsely ident the PCIe slot as the boost line. If that's the case, then the slot itself will provide up to 63.3W to your card, and only 73.6W from the aux power cable, which just below the 75W rating.

Well, we could get some indication that a booster cable has exceeded its safety rating by simply touching it when the video card is at load . Hot means too much juice going through .

Or, I could specially modify one of the booster cables to have exposed wiring to provide contact areas for multimeter leads and get some readings at video card load .

I'm warning everyone , I've got an awesome hand-held Chinese made Fluke and I'm not afraid to use it !

My last boss made the mistake of tearing down a disconnected Mac Pro PSU and touching a power cap . He got knocked onto his heinie and started making intermittent buzzing noises thereafter like Waspinator from Beast Wars :-O

----------

According to this review the 970 SC draws 353 W under full load http://www.hardwareluxx.com/index.p...d-970-with-maxwell-architecture.html?start=13

those figures are for system draws at load , not for just the video card .

 

[Executor]

Lucas is in the UK and I'm in the Midwest (USA) . I don't know where he grabbed his PCIe booster cables , but I just ordered a pair of them from an eBay seller located in the state of Indiana . They have not arrived yet , so i don't know their quality . They are long (14.5 inches / 37cm) and made of proper guage wire and should be usable for a wide varity of card lengths . I've had rejects from this seller before with other cables , so carefully examine the cable connector ends to verify they've been made properly . Problem is, not many firms make custom cables for our cMP . Ones approved in my builds are always good .

Here's the link : http://www.ebay.com/itm/141446625803?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

eBay item number 141446625803 if the link is dead .

Thank You so much for the information. I am going to try emulating your setup. Too bad Dual GTX 980's is not possible using internal power.