Gaming benchmarks and cores

[theBigD23]

Have there been any benchmarks released for the D300 vs the D500? I'd really like to see some official gaming benchmarks. I'm also assuming the D300 can easily run at least two 4K monitors.

Also, price aside, if I'm going to use th nMP without the need all the time for more cores, is it better to get the 4 core or the 6 core? Or is the loss of 200 MHz not that much?

Thanks!

 

[Dranix]

Which loss of 200MHz? The 6 core is exactly as fast as the 4 core as long as it uses max 4 of it cores. It only gets slower per core when utilizing 5 or 6 cores.

 

[Quash]

All gpu's can run up to 3 4k monitors.
But none of them will be able to run games at 4k on high settings.

If you wanna game on 4K with high settings you need to have an absurd amount of GPU power. Like Nvidia Titan in SLI config.

If you're gonna buy a mac pro to play games then you might as well buy the quad cores. As far as i know there are no games using more then 4 cores. Quad with D700s is best for gaming.

 

[antonis]

Have there been any benchmarks released for the D300 vs the D500? I'd really like to see some official gaming benchmarks. I'm also assuming the D300 can easily run at least two 4K monitors.

Also, price aside, if I'm going to use th nMP without the need all the time for more cores, is it better to get the 4 core or the 6 core? Or is the loss of 200 MHz not that much?

Thanks!

I'm one of the people that have been waiting to see if the new Mac Pro can actually stand even decently on gaming section. The news are bad; It cannot. Games cannot take advantage (now, and I'm sure in the near future also) of the 2 GPUs. Now, each one of these GPUs are not made for games, they perform very poorly even with today standards. nVidia desktop-class cards can run circles around these Dxxx, and that's only the current status.

They seem to be equivalent to medium-range radeon desktop cards (there are more relative threads already in this forum). They will be nearly useless for any demanding games in 2014 (good luck to anyone who tries to run e.g. The Witcher 3 or anything similarly demanding on this machine).

Bottom line, this machine seems to be very powerful for video editing professionals (and even that is only for specific applications that can take advantage of the dual GPUs), but if gaming plays an important role for your computer, look elsewhere. This is not a job that the nMP shines, not even close.

 

[Quash]

It's not now nor has it ever been the best option for gaming.
No one in their right mind claims that.

But if you need a fast mac for your work, it's still nice if you can game on that same computer in the evenings. You might as well spend a couple hundred $ on faster graphics instead of buying a gaming rig which is much more expensive. Not to mention a lot messier.

 

[theBigD23]

Which loss of 200MHz? The 6 core is exactly as fast as the 4 core as long as it uses max 4 of it cores. It only gets slower per core when utilizing 5 or 6 cores.

Are you sure? Macworld is specifically saying that if you don't use multi core then you should get the 4 core.

----------

I'm one of the people that have been waiting to see if the new Mac Pro can actually stand even decently on gaming section. The news are bad; It cannot. Games cannot take advantage (now, and I'm sure in the near future also) of the 2 GPUs. Now, each one of these GPUs are not made for games, they perform very poorly even with today standards. nVidia desktop-class cards can run circles around these Dxxx, and that's only the current status.

They seem to be equivalent to medium-range radeon desktop cards (there are more relative threads already in this forum). They will be nearly useless for any demanding games in 2014 (good luck to anyone who tries to run e.g. The Witcher 3 or anything similarly demanding on this machine).

Bottom line, this machine seems to be very powerful for video editing professionals (and even that is only for specific applications that can take advantage of the dual GPUs), but if gaming plays an important role for your computer, look elsewhere. This is not a job that the nMP shines, not even close.

Thanks for the info. For me, gaming is not number 1 at all. I've had the 2008 Mac Pro and like you said, gaming in the evening would be good, but not too important. I guess steam box or something along those lines would make sense for me.

I also don't really have a choice for a machine. If I get the iMac I'm stuck with that monitor and looks odd in a dual monitor setup, unless I wait for a 4K iMac. Don't know when that'll realistically be. Mac mini is too weak. There are my desktop options.

I'm thinking of just switching to a 4 core system with the D300 and upgrading sooner. Sucks that the graphics cards don't perform as well as I'd hoped. I understand it's not the target though.

 

[goMac]

I'm one of the people that have been waiting to see if the new Mac Pro can actually stand even decently on gaming section. The news are bad; It cannot. Games cannot take advantage (now, and I'm sure in the near future also) of the 2 GPUs. Now, each one of these GPUs are not made for games, they perform very poorly even with today standards. nVidia desktop-class cards can run circles around these Dxxx, and that's only the current status.

Boot Camp + Crossfire is the solution to the dual GPU problem.

I have not seen a benchmark in this configuration yet. All of them have been single GPU in OS X.

 

[PmattF]

Are you sure? Macworld is specifically saying that if you don't use multi core then you should get the 4 core.

Previous poster is correct -- you will not pay any speed penalty until you get to the 12 core, because of the Intel Turbo Boost. See this article...
http://www.marco.org/2013/11/26/new-mac-pro-cpus

 

[Dranix]

Great, just wanted to post the same link

 

[iBug2]

I'm one of the people that have been waiting to see if the new Mac Pro can actually stand even decently on gaming section. The news are bad; It cannot. Games cannot take advantage (now, and I'm sure in the near future also) of the 2 GPUs. Now, each one of these GPUs are not made for games, they perform very poorly even with today standards. nVidia desktop-class cards can run circles around these Dxxx, and that's only the current status.

Actually the D700 scores around the same as GTX 680 Mac edition on Open GL tests. So unless you are considering of getting a flashed Titan or GTX 780, which actually don't really improve on 680 on the Mac side so far, D700 is as good a performance as you can get on OS X.

 

[Dranix]

And even the D300 will be fully gameable. Just no hardcore gaming.

 

[macrumorsuser10]

All gpu's can run up to 3 4k monitors.
But none of them will be able to run games at 4k on high settings.

If you wanna game on 4K with high settings you need to have an absurd amount of GPU power. Like Nvidia Titan in SLI config.

If you're gonna buy a mac pro to play games then you might as well buy the quad cores. As far as i know there are no games using more then 4 cores. Quad with D700s is best for gaming.

What about gaming at 2560x1440 (e.g. the current Thunderbolt Display)? Will the lowest GPU configuration be able to handle that?

 

[Dranix]

Stupid question - What for? Ist FullHD or even 720p nor enough for games? Haven't problems with 720p games even on my 47" tv...

 

[chfilm]

Stupid question - What for? Ist FullHD or even 720p nor enough for games? Haven't problems with 720p games even on my 47" tv...

because the upscaling looks crappy!

 

[Dranix]

because the upscaling looks crappy!

It does? I only have a 1680*1050 tft, but I always though such expensive displays would at least scale as good as my el cheapo Panasonic TV.

 

[antonis]

Actually the D700 scores around the same as GTX 680 Mac edition on Open GL tests. So unless you are considering of getting a flashed Titan or GTX 780, which actually don't really improve on 680 on the Mac side so far, D700 is as good a performance as you can get on OS X.

Your post made me realize a factor I have ignored: I was looking at benchmarks from gpubenchmarks.com that they should refer exclusively to DirectX (is this true?).

So, in OpenGL, these FirePro cards will stand in much higher ranking ? I mean, does the performance difference with the standard gaming cards closes a lot when context is brought to OpenGL ?

To be more specific: will the iMac's 780M be a much better choice ?

 

[iBug2]

Your post made me realize a factor I have ignored: I was looking at benchmarks from gpubenchmarks.com that they should refer exclusively to DirectX (is this true?).

So, in OpenGL, these FirePro cards will stand in much higher ranking ? I mean, does the performance difference with the standard gaming cards closes a lot when context is brought to OpenGL ?

To be more specific: will the iMac's 780M be a much better choice ?

It's not about Directx vs OpenGL. You must look at OS X benchmarks on OpenGL to compare these cards. iMac's 780M will be slower than D700 but I don't know how it'll compare against D500 or D300.

 

[antonis]

It's not about Directx vs OpenGL. You must look at OS X benchmarks on OpenGL to compare these cards. iMac's 780M will be slower than D700 but I don't know how it'll compare against D500 or D300.

Thank you very much for your replies. You helped me get more straight some facts about the possibility of buying the nMP. As more benchmarks surface in the next days, I'm sure we'll have a more specific view of the "other-than-pro" capabilities of nMP. Surely, though, it becomes more and more obvious that this machine will not perform well on the gaming section.

 

[kaellar]

Crossfire doesn't work under OS X, so it's basically "single D700 vs 780m" comparison. Assuming the fact of 780m being gaming-oriented card with proper drivers, while D700 isn't, the fact that nVidia is historically doing better in OpenGL, and the fact that both do have almost identical TDP (108w vs 100w, to be precise), I'm pretty sure it's gonna be a tie, or even 780m will do a bit better.

 

[iBug2]

Crossfire doesn't work under OS X, so it's basically "single D700 vs 780m" comparison. Assuming the fact of 780m being gaming-oriented card with proper drivers, while D700 isn't, the fact that nVidia is historically doing better in OpenGL, and the fact that both do have almost identical TDP (108w vs 100w, to be precise), I'm pretty sure it's gonna be a tie, or even 780m will do a bit better.

It's not. The results are already out. Check the macworld benchmarks. D700 performs better than 780M on Open GL tests. It scores similar to GTX 680 Mac edition. You can't simply compare two cards on TDP. D700 has 2K stream processors, GT780M has 1.5K.

 

[kaellar]

It's not. The results are already out. Check the macworld benchmarks. D700 performs better than 780M on Open GL tests. It scores similar to GTX 680 Mac edition. You can't simply compare two cards on TDP. D700 has 2K stream processors, GT780M has 1.5K.

Yeah, we'd better be comparing the GPUs by the number of streaming processors that belong to different architectures from different manufacturers

 

[iBug2]

Yeah, we'd better be comparing the GPUs by the number of streaming processors that belong to different architectures from different manufacturers

So I don't really understand what your angle is here. You criticise me for pointing out the stream processor difference yet you did a comparison by TDP alone, which is nonsense. And I didn't conclude that one is better than the other by the stream processor difference. You did that by comparing TDP. I just said they are different GPU's so we need to look at real world results, which show that D700 is faster than GT780M, at least on one Open GL test Macworld ran.

Not to mention you are using the base clock TDP for the D700. We don't know what the boost clock TDP's are and when you are gaming, you are going to be using the boost clock since the other GPU will be completely idle.

 

[wildmac]

Ok, two things...

1) What games? If you are a diehard of a few different titles, or one, you may well get the performance you need, since many titles on the Mac side are not that demanding really. (Especially Blizzard ones).

2) If however, you are the type that buys every latest game from Steam, and are also trying out the latest, then build a hackitosh with an i7 and stick a GTX780 or better in there, and you'll be fine...

All depends on what you are using the machine for.

 

[kaellar]

So I don't really understand what your angle is here. You criticise me for pointing out the stream processor difference yet you did a comparison by TDP alone, which is nonsense. And I didn't conclude that one is better than the other by the stream processor difference. You did that by comparing TDP. I just said they are different GPU's so we need to look at real world results, which show that D700 is faster than GT780M, at least on one Open GL test Macworld ran.

Not to mention you are using the base clock TDP for the D700. We don't know what the boost clock TDP's are and when you are gaming, you are going to be using the boost clock since the other GPU will be completely idle.

1. Could you please point me to that macworld article, or better, to benches, since I couldn't find any of them at macworld website.

2. I guess, my standpoint needs some more detailed explanation. GK104 (680/770/780m) and TahitiXT (7970/R9-280x/D700) initially pretty much tie in gaming. 680 had the TDP of 200w and performed similar (if not a bit better) to 7970 that had 250w TDP. 770 vs R9 280X is the same story. I see zero reason, why 780m vs D700 shouldn't fit that scenario, since their TDP difference is even smaller (100w vs 108w).

3. What is "base clock TDP"? What the hell is "boost clock TDP"?? The particular card has the only one TDP (108w in D700's case). If the card stays within its TDP while under load, it will boost its clocks. If it doesn't - it lowers them. No way it will magically become a 150w+ GPU under load. It's as simple as that.

 

[iBug2]

1. Could you please point me to that macworld article, or better, to benches, since I couldn't find any of them at macworld website.

2. I guess, my standpoint needs some more detailed explanation. GK104 (680/770/780m) and TahitiXT (7970/R9-280x/D700) initially pretty much tie in gaming. 680 had the TDP of 200w and performed similar (if not a bit better) to 7970 that had 250w TDP. 770 vs R9 280X is the same story. I see zero reason, why 780m vs D700 shouldn't fit that scenario, since their TDP difference is even smaller (100w vs 108w).

3. What is "base clock TDP"? What the hell is "boost clock TDP"?? The particular card has the only one TDP (108w in D700's case). If the card stays within its TDP while under load, it will boost its clocks. If it doesn't - it lowers them. No way it will magically become a 150w+ GPU under load. It's as simple as that.

1. Unigine Heaven and Valley 1280-by-720

Mac Pro 8-Core/3.0GHz (Late 2013) 103.70 80.30
27-inch iMac quad-core/3.5GHz CTO (Late 2013) 90.46 80.84


Unigine Heaven and Valley 1920-by-1080

Mac Pro 8-Core/3.0GHz (Late 2013) 31.50 31.70
27-inch iMac quad-core/3.5GHz CTO (Late 2013) 24.62 26.98


Unigine Heaven and Valley 2560-by-1600

Mac Pro 8-Core/3.0GHz (Late 2013) 14.40 18.20
27-inch iMac quad-core/3.5GHz CTO (Late 2013) 11.91 14.98


So in Heaven and Valley D700 is 14 to 20% faster than GT780M. Also GT 780M is not comparable to GTX 680. That card is 20%ish faster than GT 780M both on Windows and OS X.


About TDP, the GPU's in Mac Pro seem to go well above the 108W since they measured 435W during the Luxmark Open CL test which pushes both GPU's to the extreme. The question is for how long can they keep that up.