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Mac OS X 10.6.7 Adds Support for New AMD Graphics Cards
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Just realised I was being stupid yesterday.
I forgot about the Mac Pro's
when it said ATI 6970 I thought, Yay, finally an iMac that normal people will buy will be fitted into an iMac and make it a worthy competitor to a good spec PC.
Then it dawned on me, I'm stupid and probably none of the upper end models will find their way into iMac's will they?
Its unlikely they will fit in an imac case. They are about 30cm long and are all dual slot.
Because the Sandy Bridge IGP was not designed to do any sort of GPGPU work, point blank. We will have to wait for Ivy Bridge(next major release from Intel after Sandy Bridge) for GPGPU/OpenCL support on Intel's IGP.
I have an 850 watt PSU in my gaming rig with a 4870x2 and custom coolers all around on the CPU, GPU, and case. I think your calculations are pretty close to correct if you wanted to run everything in the case at once. But that's not typical to run everything at max all at once. I suppose Apple might not want to get in the business of telling people it's okay to buy this honking huge GPU as long as you're not running a lot of extra hard drives and extra PCI-E cards.
But, for people looking to simply drop in a fast GPU and not have a lot of extra bells and whistles (read: a gaming rig), they would be fine with 850 watts or so, even with a 6970. Or at least damn close.
The tricky part with GPU's is that the high end units commonly exceed rated specifications at max load, so these calculations are tricky. And your point about running too close to your max is also a good one. It's fair to say that when you add up all your max dissipation, add 20% or so, and that's the wattage your PSU needs.
While professionals can say bye bye to nVidia's CUDA processing and PhysX.
:-(
ATI/AMD is doing what they can, developing an OpenCL driven bullet physics port to Maya 2011, but they always seem to be one step behind - announcing a plugin for Maya 2011 in the same week that Autodesk announced that nVidia Physx is being integrated directly into Maya 2012 with real time physx cloth deformation, rigid body dynamics, and physx accelerated calculations for DMM destruction.
On the windows side, 3ds Max is getting Physx integration, too. Open CL is cool but it's got some ground to make up in the application world.
The cpus used in the dual-cpu MP are 80-95W parts (top is the 95W Xeon X5670 right now), so it's give or take ~190W.
Only the single cpu MP uses a 130W part (Xeon W3500/3600 series).
So it's either 130W, 160W or 190W for the cpus in a MP.
Well, to be fair, I was never expecting a PCI version of such a card to be fitted into an iMac.
Given Apple's money, I thought they would have gone to ATI, Worked with them, and allocated a space inside the frame of a high end iMac, with the aluminium to act as a cooling area, and ATI could have designed a custom layout for this area using the same GPU's as are in the PCI card version.
DDR3 DIMMs don't consume anything like 20W each. More like 20W for the whole 6 DIMMs you are talking about.
The 6970 uses around 190W at peak load from the reviews I've seen. People already have working 6970s, GTX 480s and GTX 580s on all models of Mac Pros - under windows, but that makes no difference. The power supply is enough to run these cards.
Anyway they still don't work in OS X on the Mac Pro, despite all these news stories: http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,804.0.html
The SB documentation says it supports Compute Shader 4, a subset of the DirectX 11 level Compute Shader 5.
What that means in terms of OpenCL, I don't know.
Intel said they'll continue to evaluate OpenCL during 2011.
That's not the correct answer. The possible answers concerning the documented hardware capabilities are:
- That's not enough for any OpenCL
- That's enough for OpenCL 1.0
- That's enough for OpenCL 1.1
Supposedly the 5870 won't work on Mac Pro 1,1 with specific firmware (MP11.005C.B08 won't work).
From a comment at store.apple.com:
That's not the correct answer? Lol, how much longer are you going to waste my time for? DirectX in it of itself is not related to OpenCL. They are once again, two separate entities. Support for OpenCL 1.0 means support for OpenCL 1.1. DirectCompute was introduced in DX11 but can be used on DX10 hardware.
I've been sitting here correcting your mis-information, false accusations and asking for you to post some OpenCL applications you've been using. Don't respond until you give me an example of your OpenCL workflow. You seem to love AMD's CPU's but likely have never used one seeing as you have said Windows doesn't cut it and Linux "doesn't have enough commercial applications".
Where I see ThunderBolt being useful is in scenarios where you want to use it at your desk and have all the advantages of a desktop machine. So you put your MBP on your desk and connect via ThunderBolt:
* A drive array with several 3.5" drives, possibly in RAID configuration
* An external video card that is driving a 30" 2560x1600 display with two 1200 x 1920 displays (rotated) on each side of the 30"
You wouldn't bother to use the laptop display for this configuration (I wouldn't at least).
Though, ThunderBolt supposedly allows for daisy-chaining at least 2 monitors, in which case you could run off the laptop's internal video card, but then you need compatible monitors that allow daisy-chaining.
Personally I'd love to see external video cards compatible with ThunderBolt (I use my laptop mostly at my desk), or possibly an enclosure you can put a regular desktop video card in.
Intel's TDPs are not actual power consumed. So yes, the 130 W scenario still kicks.
Like I said, yes it is, but under a certain level of strain you do not want to run it. Also, we are not talking about a DIMM, we are talking about the capacity of RAM per module. It's a safe assumption to assume 20W per each 1GB of RAM. So if a module has 2GBs, then its 40 W. Now you can also say 10W, but 20W is much better for maximum scenarios. If your PSU can handle a maximum scenario it will not be strained.
Not. Even. Close.
You probably don't work in the 3D world if you're saying that. ATI blows for Maya currently. There's also the issue of GPU support. While OpenCL is promising for agnostic GPU support, the CUDA offering from Nvidia is showing real world support. DaVinci can use the Nvidia 4000 in multiple cards to dramatically speed up the application.
I'd be more impressed to see Apple support the off the shelf offerings of Nvidia, too. That way we'd have a choice and further the adoption of OpenCL in a variety of applications.
Correct, the power consumed is less than any of the TDP ratings.
No you're just overestimating the power required for the GPU and are very wrong about the memory. DDR3 is around 4-5W per DIMM, not 10W-20W per GB.
This is great news and all but I still don't get why people keep comparing an iMac (All in One) to a PC Tower and not something like the Gateway One or those Sony AIO computers. Its comparing apples to oranges.
The iMac isn't crippled anymore than those PC AIO computers from Sony, Dell, HP, or Gateway. In fact, the iMac is the fastest AIO you can buy, at the moment. I don't get it. People seem to think the iMac is "underpowered" because it isn't the speed of a tower computer. Well, duh. Instead of comparing an AIO to a tower, compare it to another AIO. THEN you'll see that the iMac isn't "underpowered" or anything close to the meaning of the word.
The iMac isn't crippled anymore than those PC AIO computers from Sony, Dell, HP, or Gateway. In fact, the iMac is the fastest AIO you can buy, at the moment. I don't get it. People seem to think the iMac is "underpowered" because it isn't the speed of a tower computer. Well, duh. Instead of comparing an AIO to a tower, compare it to another AIO. THEN you'll see that the iMac isn't "underpowered" or anything close to the meaning of the word.
Umbongo said:
Then why "2x CPUs 130W rated. So thats 260W, right there."?
If the power consumption is less than the TDP, it should be: 2x CPUs 95W rated. So that's 190W max, anyway.
If you want an example of power consumption from a similar computer, go here. The maximum power consumption is 570W for 2x Xeon X5570 (TDP=2x95W), 12GB RAM, FX4800 gpu (TDP=150W), 2x 1TB HDD, ODD, Ethernet, on a 650W 80PLUS® BRONZE PSU.
If you change the gpu for one with a 300W TDP, and if the power consumption is still less than the TDP, then a 800W PSU would do the trick. No?
Macrumors needs to seriously consider using this tonymacx86 as a reliable source. As I stated before he gets info from other sources, and this is often highlighted by others
See this quote ex Netkas...
6950 AND 6970 DO NOT WORK IN ANY CURRENTLY AVAILABLE VERSION OF OSX FOR MACS OR HACKS !!!!
THE NEWS STORIES THAT WERE LIFTED FROM HERE ARE INCORRECT !!!!!
DON'T BUY A 69XX CARD UNLESS YOU CAN AFFORD TO WAIT A FEW WEEKS (OR MONTHS) TO USE IT IN OSX !!!!!
OK, done my part. And if you still think they work, go ask your buddy "Tony" how to make them work.
Sad but macrumors - please take more care.
If you refer to my prior post in this thread, I too am a professional 3D content creator. As things stand currently, all software I use take better advantage of nVidia compared to ATI. Most of what I use prefer "CUDA" cores and eventually more "PhysX" integration.
This is why I can no longer use Apple at all in my work, I can not come close to getting what I can from a pair of 580 GTX factory OC cards in SLI for a Mac Pro. In fact, most of what Apple offers is still behind the curve.
It is the single area where Apple fails and I know from attending conferences that most of the big names simply don't care because they do not have enough users on that platform to matter. Don't get me wrong, I still think Apple is great for most all other areas and I recommend them to family and friends. But for the 3D professional market, there is no way I can use Apple without making many sacrifices.
Where can I see a comparative of all cards? Or do a comparison of select cards?
Is this confirmed or still ...?
this is AWESOME news for all the hackintosh people out there.
Although, my Radeon HD5570 isn't on this 'supported' list, I still got it to work... all resolutions including quartz extreme enabled.
Nice
What version of OS are you using? I'd like external video cards as well
Hmm.. Interesting conflict of information.