Hello World!
I want to share my experience with high end gaming on new Mac Pro (nMP D500 6 core);
For the past few days i’ve been trying to make the game play of Far Cry 4 & Battlefield Hardline smoother on my new mac.
In the absence of information on this matter i decided to post my expirience for additional input or to help other people who may be on the same issue.
Update: I recently upgraded to D700's. I did some brief testing.
Briefly, everything runs much smoother on basic setting then it did on D500; Valley Benchmark scored 2474 which is equal what I got OCking D500 to over 1000mhz, but visually everything was running a bit smoother.
I can only OC D700 to ~900mhz core, anything above will cause a crash at init. With 900mhz Valley scores at 2639 but temps get 5-6deg higher.
Games run smoother as well, especially BFH. With overclock I had a thermal crash at one occasion on BFH;
So far I archived the following:
Metal Gear Solid V: the Phantom Pain, On High runs smooth with light overclock at 50-60FPS; 2560x1600; Can't get Crossfire to work, just one card is used. On my old Mac Pro 5.1 with GTX 980 runs great on 4k;
Battlefield Hardline, all ultra, light AA, 2560x1600, fullscreen: 75-85 FPS, smooth;
Far Cry 4,all ultra, no AA, 2560x1600, fullscreen: 70-85 FPS, smooth; It seems disabling of HT (I'm doing it through task manager) and clocking cores to 4ghz helps with occasional FPS drops that appears to be a know issue with this game.
GTAV, mostly on max, 2560x1600, fullscreen v-synced: 60+, its OK but it seems it needs more VRAM to max everything. It seems this game benefits from higher clock speeds more than the others do.
Valley Benchmark Ultra Settings 2560x1600 fullscreen, PowerPlay and ULPS are off; PL+10%; 1000mhz core 1500mhz mem 3700mhz CPU
Min FPS: 30.2; Max FPS: 110.7 (yay!); Average FPS: 60.4; Score: 2545
These are considerably better numbers compared to what I had with last boot camp driver and is very playable but one can always do it better.
4K Performance (3840x2160)
Metal Gear Solid V: the Phantom Pain, Didn't try as Crossfire isn't working for me ATM.
On my old Mac Pro 5.1 with GTX 980 runs (and looks) great on 4k;
Valley Benchmark:
without Overclock: 16.5low 48.3 high 1211 score; feels like 28-32 fps average, Ultra
with light Overclock: 17.1low 56.1 high 1345 score; feels like 31-36 fps average, Ultra
with light Overclock: 18.9low 78.6 high 1671 score; feels like 50 fps average, High
GTA V:
ran without issues everything maxed out, no AA; (I dropped some settings to High, had black screen initially every few seconds at 60 HZ); FPS 55-65; May go down to ~48 especially when driving
Mix of normal/high/ultra results in 65-70 average;
Very smooth;
Battlefield Hardline:
ran without issues everything maxed out, no AA; Did 60 person conquest on complex map, FPS 52-70; Around 60 mostly; Goes down when heavy particles are present.
Very smooth; Feel much better then on 2560x for some reason; Picture is gorgeous;
Far Cry 4: tried with light overclock, with everything maxed, no AA and that other hungry thing, FPS under 50; With everything on HIGH or higher 51-60 FPS with occasional drop to 40 area. Thermal Shutdown 10 minutes into the game.
Texture on VERY HIGH or ULTRA: lag.
Looks ok. More playable then 2560x. No sudden drops in FPS.
Other stuff I tried:
Overclocking: over clocks well with MSI Afterburner, with ULPS & PowerPlay Disabled. Initially i thought there was a protection from OC but it seems PowerPlay was responsible for frequency drop. Pending more testing.
Seems like over clocking limits for D500 systems are: 1000-1010mhz Core, 1500-1510 mhz Memory
FAN ON MAX!!!
CPU Speed: core speed jumps to 3599 and fluctuates between that and 3699, so it appears that turbo boost is working under the bootcamp. I didn’t not notice utilization of any core hitting cap during the game play, so it appears to be ok.
Note on PowerPlay and Temperature: Running slight higher clocks, I'm getting sustained 69C temps with fan manually set to 85%; With fan on automatic, temps get over 80C and it really feels hot, system only cranks up fans to ~1200rpm; It also seems that if you down clock core speed to like 700, you will still get better output as long as PP is off.
Any ideas what to try next?
I want to share my experience with high end gaming on new Mac Pro (nMP D500 6 core);
For the past few days i’ve been trying to make the game play of Far Cry 4 & Battlefield Hardline smoother on my new mac.
In the absence of information on this matter i decided to post my expirience for additional input or to help other people who may be on the same issue.
Update: I recently upgraded to D700's. I did some brief testing.
Briefly, everything runs much smoother on basic setting then it did on D500; Valley Benchmark scored 2474 which is equal what I got OCking D500 to over 1000mhz, but visually everything was running a bit smoother.
I can only OC D700 to ~900mhz core, anything above will cause a crash at init. With 900mhz Valley scores at 2639 but temps get 5-6deg higher.
Games run smoother as well, especially BFH. With overclock I had a thermal crash at one occasion on BFH;
So far I archived the following:
Metal Gear Solid V: the Phantom Pain, On High runs smooth with light overclock at 50-60FPS; 2560x1600; Can't get Crossfire to work, just one card is used. On my old Mac Pro 5.1 with GTX 980 runs great on 4k;
Battlefield Hardline, all ultra, light AA, 2560x1600, fullscreen: 75-85 FPS, smooth;
Far Cry 4,all ultra, no AA, 2560x1600, fullscreen: 70-85 FPS, smooth; It seems disabling of HT (I'm doing it through task manager) and clocking cores to 4ghz helps with occasional FPS drops that appears to be a know issue with this game.
GTAV, mostly on max, 2560x1600, fullscreen v-synced: 60+, its OK but it seems it needs more VRAM to max everything. It seems this game benefits from higher clock speeds more than the others do.
Valley Benchmark Ultra Settings 2560x1600 fullscreen, PowerPlay and ULPS are off; PL+10%; 1000mhz core 1500mhz mem 3700mhz CPU
Min FPS: 30.2; Max FPS: 110.7 (yay!); Average FPS: 60.4; Score: 2545
These are considerably better numbers compared to what I had with last boot camp driver and is very playable but one can always do it better.
4K Performance (3840x2160)
Metal Gear Solid V: the Phantom Pain, Didn't try as Crossfire isn't working for me ATM.
On my old Mac Pro 5.1 with GTX 980 runs (and looks) great on 4k;
Valley Benchmark:
without Overclock: 16.5low 48.3 high 1211 score; feels like 28-32 fps average, Ultra
with light Overclock: 17.1low 56.1 high 1345 score; feels like 31-36 fps average, Ultra
with light Overclock: 18.9low 78.6 high 1671 score; feels like 50 fps average, High
GTA V:
ran without issues everything maxed out, no AA; (I dropped some settings to High, had black screen initially every few seconds at 60 HZ); FPS 55-65; May go down to ~48 especially when driving
Mix of normal/high/ultra results in 65-70 average;
Very smooth;
Battlefield Hardline:
ran without issues everything maxed out, no AA; Did 60 person conquest on complex map, FPS 52-70; Around 60 mostly; Goes down when heavy particles are present.
Very smooth; Feel much better then on 2560x for some reason; Picture is gorgeous;
Far Cry 4: tried with light overclock, with everything maxed, no AA and that other hungry thing, FPS under 50; With everything on HIGH or higher 51-60 FPS with occasional drop to 40 area. Thermal Shutdown 10 minutes into the game.
Texture on VERY HIGH or ULTRA: lag.
Looks ok. More playable then 2560x. No sudden drops in FPS.
Here is the configuration:
(1) Catalyst Beta Driver 15.4 modded per instructions on this forum
(2) MSI Afterburner for: over-clocking, core frequency (speed) drop fix, disable ULPS and PowerPlay; ( Running 940 core, 1440 memory speeds atm, no issues;
Note: Overclocking is a dangerous business. Numbers posted here are my personal experience. Do at your own risk. If something breaks, you will be the one responsible
. Be sure you know what ya doing and pay attention to your temps. Changing clocks may reduce the life of the equipment or kill it instantly.
(3) Win 8.1 9600
(4) Macs Fan Control to throttle up fan speeds; It is going to get a very hot trash can unless you max fan speed.
(5) Intel Extreme Tuning utility to clock CPU;
It appears the PowerPlay and ULPS are behind performance issues with Cat 15.4, turning these down improve performance greatly and allow over clocking.
Got it better? Please share how ….
(1) Catalyst Beta Driver 15.4 modded per instructions on this forum
(2) MSI Afterburner for: over-clocking, core frequency (speed) drop fix, disable ULPS and PowerPlay; ( Running 940 core, 1440 memory speeds atm, no issues;
Note: Overclocking is a dangerous business. Numbers posted here are my personal experience. Do at your own risk. If something breaks, you will be the one responsible
. Be sure you know what ya doing and pay attention to your temps. Changing clocks may reduce the life of the equipment or kill it instantly. (3) Win 8.1 9600
(4) Macs Fan Control to throttle up fan speeds; It is going to get a very hot trash can unless you max fan speed.
(5) Intel Extreme Tuning utility to clock CPU;
It appears the PowerPlay and ULPS are behind performance issues with Cat 15.4, turning these down improve performance greatly and allow over clocking.
Got it better? Please share how ….
Other stuff I tried:
Overclocking: over clocks well with MSI Afterburner, with ULPS & PowerPlay Disabled. Initially i thought there was a protection from OC but it seems PowerPlay was responsible for frequency drop. Pending more testing.
Seems like over clocking limits for D500 systems are: 1000-1010mhz Core, 1500-1510 mhz Memory
FAN ON MAX!!!
CPU Speed: core speed jumps to 3599 and fluctuates between that and 3699, so it appears that turbo boost is working under the bootcamp. I didn’t not notice utilization of any core hitting cap during the game play, so it appears to be ok.
Note on PowerPlay and Temperature: Running slight higher clocks, I'm getting sustained 69C temps with fan manually set to 85%; With fan on automatic, temps get over 80C and it really feels hot, system only cranks up fans to ~1200rpm; It also seems that if you down clock core speed to like 700, you will still get better output as long as PP is off.
Any ideas what to try next?
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