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Nvidia Quadro 4000 appears on Apple Online Store (USA) [EDIT 3 Nov 12: Pulled again!]

I stopped getting Xserves for HPC precisely because they do not have the power or space to allow a decent GPU to be slotted in - at least the Mac Pro allows one or two good ones, especially with some power re-routing..

Given the dire state of Ati computation drivers within OpenCL (people I know are writing their own low level code to get close to the theoretical performance) it's hard to see them catching up with Nvidia on the HPC front, whatever the balance of performance and power is on the games side. Frankly I am getting bored with the rather uninformed "house fire" drivel - it was dumb in the "480 in a Mac Pro" thread (my 480+285 has not exploded, for the record) and is even less relevant to the Quadro 4000 and Tesla discussion.

Jack Dongarra, who most people trust for informed comment on HPC sci-comp issues, has gone on the record saying the Tianhe-1A in China, with over 7000 Teslas, blows away the current no 1 world supercomputer. You can read his comments in the NY Times at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/technology/28compute.html?_r=1

For the rest of us, what we all REALLY need is the stuff on the CD that ships with the 4000, because then we can try out the netkas injector with the 480/470, Quadro and Tesla cards not yet made Mac-native.
 
10THzMac said:
I stopped getting Xserves for HPC precisely because they do not have the power or space to allow a decent GPU to be slotted in - at least the Mac Pro allows one or two good ones, especially with some power re-routing..

Given the dire state of Ati computation drivers within OpenCL (people I know are writing their own low level code to get close to the theoretical performance) it's hard to see them catching up with Nvidia on the HPC front, whatever the balance of performance and power is on the games side. Frankly I am getting bored with the rather uninformed "house fire" drivel - it was dumb in the "480 in a Mac Pro" thread (my 480+285 has not exploded, for the record) and is even less relevant to the Quadro 4000 and Tesla discussion.

Jack Dongarra, who most people trust for informed comment on HPC sci-comp issues, has gone on the record saying the Tianhe-1A in China, with over 7000 Teslas, blows away the current no 1 world supercomputer. You can read his comments in the NY Times at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/technology/28compute.html?_r=1

For the rest of us, what we all REALLY need is the stuff on the CD that ships with the 4000, because then we can try out the netkas injector with the 480/470, Quadro and Tesla cards not yet made Mac-native.
Click to expand...

Well thank jav6454 for those rather dumb comments, maybe he's just one of those S.P.E.C.I.A.L guys, asperger maybe? Lol rocket gtx480, lol house burning...

If you need cuda and open cl, in current benchmarks, the gtx285 completely blows the hd5870. But now that nvidia is crippling it on gaming lvl cards, at least on mac, now, the quadro 4000 seems like the only way and you can have 2 of them since each card uses a single 6pin connector. Too bad that the mac version of it at moment retails for more $420 than it's pc counterpart and drivers most likely will be the usual crap.

About the xserve, something actually came to my mind, could apple be offering in the future a deskside cluster like cray cx1 and sgi octane 3?

Yeah I knew about china's new supercomputer, just couldn't find the exact amount of tesla cards it had, now I know, cheers.
 
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I'm having a bit of trouble understanding which gfx card I should get (5870 or Quadro 4000).

My primary focus is visual effects. I work mainly in Maya (lot of dynamic, lighting, and rendering), Vue, and Nuke. I'm looking at getting into stereo workflows as well if I get the Quadro 4000.

I also use Final Cut, photoshop, and After Effects frequently (perhaps when Apple finally does a good update on Final Cut, it will be comparable to Premiere in terms of cpu and gpu performance?)

Any feedback would be helpful. Also price isn't an issue.
 
highdefw said:
I'm having a bit of trouble understanding which gfx card I should get (5870 or Quadro 4000).

My primary focus is visual effects. I work mainly in Maya (lot of dynamic, lighting, and rendering), Vue, and Nuke. I'm looking at getting into stereo workflows as well if I get the Quadro 4000.

I also use Final Cut, photoshop, and After Effects frequently (perhaps when Apple finally does a good update on Final Cut, it will be comparable to Premiere in terms of cpu and gpu performance?)

Any feedback would be helpful. Also price isn't an issue.
Click to expand...

Wait until someone reviews the quadro 4000, arstechnica reviewed the quadro fx4800, back when it was launched, and proved of it being a disappointment and simply not worth it on osX.
 
10THzMac said:
I stopped getting Xserves for HPC precisely because they do not have the power or space to allow a decent GPU to be slotted in - at least the Mac Pro allows one or two good ones, especially with some power re-routing..
Click to expand...

Which is exactly the other reason this is a stupid argument. As far as I can tell, the Quadro 4000 is the first Quadro that would even fit in an XServe. The Quadro really has nothing to do with the XServe... Every HPC cluster I've seen uses 2U servers at least... Dunno... Maybe Apple has a 2U or 3U up their sleeves.

10THzMac said:
Given the dire state of Ati computation drivers within OpenCL (people I know are writing their own low level code to get close to the theoretical performance) it's hard to see them catching up with Nvidia on the HPC front, whatever the balance of performance and power is on the games side. Frankly I am getting bored with the rather uninformed "house fire" drivel - it was dumb in the "480 in a Mac Pro" thread (my 480+285 has not exploded, for the record) and is even less relevant to the Quadro 4000 and Tesla discussion.
Click to expand...

This really disappoints me, and I've heard comments from certain ATI engineers that were very anti GPGPU. I was both extremely surprised by this, and disappointed. I would have thought ATI would have been all over this business. NVidia is doing a much better job supporting GPGPU, even if they are trying to push proprietary standards like CUDA.
 
I do not know why ATi have not pushed harder on HPC. After all, despite my rather ranty earlier mail, there certainly was a period when the HPC folk were hacked off with Nvidia for the Fermi delays and power use. However, instead of seizing a golden opportunity to take the lead, ATi seem to have let the opportunity slip (on HPC). Meanwhile, Nvidia have got on with releasing all kinds of software dev tools and worked with server providers to create solutions, despite the power greed of the newer cards. The ATi hardware is certainly capable of some high Flops numbers, but it is hard to get at it. Meanwhile both Matlab and Mathematica are providing CUDA support.

Anybody got their paws on a GF10x kext later than the summer temporary release? I can still only get CUDA up under bootcamp on my 480. SnowLeopard drives a monitor but no CUDA...
 
goMac said:
That said, I really don't see [xserve] this as having anything to do with the Pro market.
Click to expand...
Not directly arguing with xserve vs pro market... you can't help but take notice of moves like these. I mean...

Apple announces snow leopard to have 64 bit carbon, then secretly rids it. This move hurt us Maya users, Photoshop users, and more pro users.

Then lets not forget that even though Jobs was pointing fingers at Adobe for being the last developer to make the switch to Cocoa 64 bit... Apple didn't even have FCP done yet marking them "the last developer". They kind of dropped the ball on this and the FCS updates have been a bit stale compared to what they used to be.

Same as Aperture.

Apple stopped selling Raid

Apple stopped selling Xserve

Apple dropped the #1 VFX compositing software Shake for no reason while promising a replacement super app basically that never happened. It now has a link pointing to Motion or FCS (not even comparable).

It just seems more and more that Apple is tip-toeing out the backdoor of the Pro users. I'm not saying that they are and everyone should be paranoid... I'm just stating that the trend is not what I'd like it to be for my own comfort zone.


As for the Quadro 4000. I inquired about these from Silverado for my own system. They have them available here:

http://silverado.cc/shop/product.php?productid=1511

Just thought I'd share the link for those like me that avoid buying direct from Apple. I've got all my pro gear from this VAR for years and never looked back.
 
John-S said:
Not directly arguing with xserve vs pro market... you can't help but take notice of moves like these. I mean...

Apple announces snow leopard to have 64 bit carbon, then secretly rids it. This move hurt us Maya users, Photoshop users, and more pro users.

Then lets not forget that even though Jobs was pointing fingers at Adobe for being the last developer to make the switch to Cocoa 64 bit... Apple didn't even have FCP done yet marking them "the last developer". They kind of dropped the ball on this and the FCS updates have been a bit stale compared to what they used to be.

Same as Aperture.

Apple stopped selling Raid

Apple stopped selling Xserve

Apple dropped the #1 VFX compositing software Shake for no reason while promising a replacement super app basically that never happened. It now has a link pointing to Motion or FCS (not even comparable).

It just seems more and more that Apple is tip-toeing out the backdoor of the Pro users. I'm not saying that they are and everyone should be paranoid... I'm just stating that the trend is not what I'd like it to be for my own comfort zone.
Click to expand...

So true. Apple is too focused on it's iOS and consumer platforms. I will always have a Mac around, but these days Windows workstations are a must...
 
Need advice here...

This card isn't even listed in several european apple stores, but the GTX 285 has suddenly reappeared!!

Obviously the thing is horrendously overpriced (450 € for a card this old sounds more like theft), but still it is half the price of the Quadro 4000.

I'm thinking of buying an nVidia card, mainly for use with CS5. My question is, will the GTX 285 work with the 2010 Mac Pro? And while we're at it, is the price difference worth the expense of getting the new Quadro over the old GTX 285? I know that the sensible thing to do is waiting for the reviews, but maybe by the time the Quadro 4000 for Mac gets reviewed the GTX 285 will be again out of the store.

Thanks in advance.
 
Fermi 4000 coming next week

Have heard through a couple of channels that the cards will be available in normal distribution chains when the next OS X update is released. Should be early next week. (Should also show up as shippable in the Apple store)
One vendor has it listed for $783 on their site already...

I'm looking forward to having a card that should behave better with Solidworks since the Quadro 4000 is an approved card and the 5870 is not. ATI's drivers tend to suck when it comes to Solidworks.
Will post my experience once it's installed.
 
goMac said:
Which is exactly the other reason this is a stupid argument. As far as I can tell, the Quadro 4000 is the first Quadro that would even fit in an XServe. The Quadro really has nothing to do with the XServe... Every HPC cluster I've seen uses 2U servers at least... Dunno... Maybe Apple has a 2U or 3U up their sleeves.
Click to expand...

Funny, most of the ones I see these days are 1u, blades+chassis, or custom for HPC (IBM).

Guess it depends on where you are.

I'll say this though, I'll be at SC10 in a few days... I go every year and over the past few years I've seen fewer and fewer 2u boxes on display on the conference floor and more and more blade-based systems.

(On topic: thinking about grabbing this card since the teslas arent supported under osx, itd be nice to have decent CUDA support at my desk)
 
I have to say I love this line from the highlights section of the apple page selling this car

Experience native Quadro professional 3D graphics performance when running Windows based applications using Boot Camp
Click to expand...

Does that not just say to you "hey buy this really expensive card from us, but don't bother using it in OSX because it will run like crap compared to windows"
 
maghemi said:
I have to say I love this line from the highlights section of the apple page selling this car



Does that not just say to you "hey buy this really expensive card from us, but don't bother using it in OSX because it will run like crap compared to windows"
Click to expand...

At least they're acknowledging it.
 
doubt that anyone will buy this for Gaming first it of all, its way to expensive and its intended for professional market ... I might be wrong.
 
maghemi said:
I
Does that not just say to you "hey buy this really expensive card from us, but don't bother using it in OSX because it will run like crap compared to windows"
Click to expand...
That's a bit harsh! My CUDA apps will probably run just as fast under OS X as they do under Windows, judging by past experience with 285 and 4800. So CUDA links for tools like Mathematica will be similary equal.

I agree that the presence of Quadro-optimized drivers for certain Windows apps but not for similar Mac apps will remain a sore point though. The more developers who create platform-independent but CUDA/OpenCL aware apps the less the problem will be.

I will not and would not buy this card for games - a 285 or an injected 580 (experiments TBD on that) is likely to be better, much better resp.
 
I'm thinking of buying an nVidia card, mainly for use with CS5. My question is, will the GTX 285 work with the 2010 Mac Pro? And while we're at it, is the price difference worth the expense of getting the new Quadro over the old GTX 285? I know that the sensible thing to do is waiting for the reviews, but maybe by the time the Quadro 4000 for Mac gets reviewed the GTX 285 will be again out of the store.
Click to expand...

There's no reason why it wouldn't work. In fact, the GTX 285 is the only non-Quadro card that's officially compatible with Mercury Engine's (Premiere CS5) CUDA acceleration, though some have been successful hacking the libraries so other CUDA cards (namely, ones with >512MB of VRAM) will work.
 
I wonder if it is a foulup in relation to 10.6.5 update? I say this because my GTX 480, which was at least driving a 23in ACD under 10.6.4 (no CUDA unless I went over to bootcamp), no longer drives my monitor under 10.6.5. It's no big deal for me, and was a hack with the netkas injector and the June GF100 kext release, but makes me wonder if 10.6.5 broke something with the Fermi cards. The might be doing an "oh **** we broke it again" fix. Or maybe Apple and Nvidia have had another fight.
 
CaptainChunk said:
There's no reason why it wouldn't work. In fact, the GTX 285 is the only non-Quadro card that's officially compatible with Mercury Engine's (Premiere CS5) CUDA acceleration, though some have been successful hacking the libraries so other CUDA cards (namely, ones with >512MB of VRAM) will work.
Click to expand...

Yes, I know it will work with CS5 (I have it working in a laptop tricking the supported cards list), my concerns were more about the computer itself. None of this matters, it has been pulled off the store again.

By the way, Apple is really pissing me off with all of this nonsense. If you're selling the damn cards, put them on the store, and if you're not, then don't. Are we supposed to take them seriously? The announce the 5870 four months ago and they still are not available, and then they offer the Quadro 4000 every other week.

Way to treat your pro customers, Mr. Jobs!
 
Well the card may not be out, but the drivers are and Fermi is now working without any additional fixes. My 480 is running without Vsync issues and the GTX 460 is reportedly working as well!

http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-macosx-256.01.00f03-driver.html

index.php
 
well now that nvidia is providing drivers.... we need a rom of this card (if/when it becomes widely available) to see the true performance in osx and the viability of flashing a pc one... I wonder if one could flash a quadro 5000 to work.... hmmmm
 
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