Radeon 7970 in Mac Pro

[goMac]

I think the 7970 comes very close in performance to the 6990. See here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRT9rOOsb78

Right, but the 6990 is a dual GPU, while the 7970 is a single GPU. The rumored 7990 would be the next dual GPU board, and be the successor the 6990.

The 7990 would be the equivalent to the 6990 in the 7000 series.

Each board being faster than the last should be a given. 🙂

 

[ActionableMango]

Each board being faster than the last should be a given. 🙂

It should be, but AMD (and Nvidia) are largely responsible for confusing comparisons by screwing around with the model numbers.

 

[BigJohno]

Right, but the 6990 is a dual GPU, while the 7970 is a single GPU. The rumored 7990 would be the next dual GPU board, and be the successor the 6990.

The 7990 would be the equivalent to the 6990 in the 7000 series.

Each board being faster than the last should be a given. 🙂

Your right but you have to admit that the 7970 gives it a run for its money.

 

[derbothaus]

That should be expected as it has trashed SLI'd GTX460's and comes very close to SLI'd GTX560's in 1 chip form. No microstutter. No profile headaches. I never dual card anything these days. Waste of my uptime.

 

[goMac]

Your right but you have to admit that the 7970 gives it a run for its money.

Sure, it does. But that's to be expected. It's not surprised that the single GPU card of the new generation comes close to the dual GPU card of the old generation.

The 4970 and the 5870 were on similar terms, actually.

 

[Vapor matt]

But will we ever see a 7970 in a mac pro this year? and when we do will it be twice the price of its PC brother and already outdated.

The above is what winds me up about apple and the control they want over Mac user's world wide, hardware control, price control, wouldn't be so bad if it was supported at time of release, but no no thats way to easy, we will have the 7970 when its about to be outdated and i expect it will be +40% of the PC price.

Apple = Control, simple as that and its not all good, 27" led screen for example, very poor glossy screen, with poor input options yet stick an apple logo on it and charge a fortune and some mac fans will buy into it, even though its no good for any studio work, unless you want a make up mirror for your GF lol

we will be waiting for hacks so 7970 cards work in our mac pro's as useual.

 

[macz1]

I would say that it's quite probable to see a 7970 as High-end option for the Mac Pro.
And for a change, this time the Mac Pro refresh and the next-gen ATI GPU release seem to happen more or less at the same time.
Too often Apple adopted the most recent GPU generation just a month or two before the next one was announced...

 

[Cindori]

But will we ever see a 7970 in a mac pro this year?

yes.

and when we do will it be twice the price of its PC brother and already outdated.

Apple cards have never been released at a remarkably higher price then the PC version was. The issue has been that they don't lower the price over time, while the PC cards drop liek 10% in price every month. when Apple 5870 was released, it was pretty damn close to PC 5870 in price, you basically saved like only 20$ or so by buying a PC card + 2 macpro power cables. Interest in flashing was low.

The above is what winds me up about apple and the control they want over Mac user's world wide, hardware control, price control, wouldn't be so bad if it was supported at time of release, but no no thats way to easy, we will have the 7970 when its about to be outdated and i expect it will be +40% of the PC price.

can you guys stop being emo? apple doesn't WANT to release outdated cards, it is just (like many other bad things), a side effect of their principles.

Apple is alot about control, yes, but they have not, afaik, showed any control tendencies when it comes to GPU in Mac Pro. Any manufacturer can release any card they want. Problem is just that there's not a big enough market. EVGA released a Mac version of the 285GTX, and it surely stole alot of 4870 ("loose card" not BTO) sales from Apple.

we will be waiting for hacks so 7970 cards work in our mac pro's as useual.

problem is, no Apple 7970 = no full PC 7970 support

 

[DanielCoffey]

And how easily will a Mac Pro support the power demands of the 7970 without resorting to an external (or optical drive bay) PSU? It requires a 6+8-pin power feed.

 

[Cindori]

And how easily will a Mac Pro support the power demands of the 7970 without resorting to an external (or optical drive bay) PSU? It requires a 6+8-pin power feed.

read previous pages for discussion about this.
basically TDP for 7970 is around 250w, and people have been running cards like 4870x2 with those 2 power connectors, and that card has TDP around 300w.

 

[MacVidCards]

read previous pages for discussion about this.
basically TDP for 7970 is around 250w, and people have been running cards like 4870x2 with those 2 power connectors, and that card has TDP around 300w.

And I can specifically state that a 4870x2 running via the internal 6 pins will NOT work. With both this card and a 9800GX2 I experienced crashes during high graphic demands. These crashes were fixed by using external PCIE power supply.

That said, I think a 7970 could POSSIBLY work as it draws less than those.

The SMART thing would be for someone to make a special set of plugs where the 2 extra ground wires are run to the 2 different Apple 6 pin plugs. That way instead of one being tasked with 150W and the other 75W, it could be evenly split across them.

The crashes with the 4870x2 were on a Quad 3.0 2006 using all internal power. Very dramatic as once it happened when I blew up a gas station in "Crysis", made the explosion much more real as Mac & 30" display shut off with one loud "click" of relays snapping open in PSU, mid explosion. I do not believe that Dual GPU cards are going to be possible on internal only power.

The other question is whether the card actually REQUIRES the presence of 8 pins. The 8 pin input on a GPU can physically accept the usual 6 pin plug. Whether this allows card to work is decided by power sensing circuitry. While a GTX480 will not work using 2 @ 6pins, a Quadro 6000 has an 8 pin input, but if a 6 pin is plugged in, it still works. I seem to recall reading that some 4870s (Not the aforementioned Dual x2 variety) had 8 pin plugs but would work with just 6.

So the numbers I looked up showed 7970 using less power than GTX470, which CAN run on internal 2 @ 6pin. SO possible it can work, but best if someone comes up with new power adapter that spreads additional grounding over more wires.

 

[goMac]

Or of course Apple could add an 8 pin power lead to the new Mac Pro. We are talking about a new machine here... It's not like Apple has ever cared about new cards on old machines.

🙄

 

[slughead]

Why do they need to add an 8 pin? why can't they just have a cable that goes from the 6 pin to 8 pin?

It's just 12 volts + ground like the 6 pin, right?

 

[goMac]

Why do they need to add an 8 pin? why can't they just have a cable that goes from the 6 pin to 8 pin?

It's just 12 volts + ground like the 6 pin, right?

The 8 pin is higher amperage, otherwise they wouldn't have had to change the cable. 🙂

I'm sure the Mac Pro can push that through a 6 pin, but I don't think it would make Apple feel warm and fuzzy. They do seem to make 6 pin to 8 pin full cables though (not adaptors.)

 

[derbothaus]

I've burned up connectors running really hot like that with 6pin to 8pin. Never failed on me but was fairly scorched.

 

[MacVidCards]

Why do they need to add an 8 pin? why can't they just have a cable that goes from the 6 pin to 8 pin?

It's just 12 volts + ground like the 6 pin, right?

That's funny.

This is very much like thinking that if you have a 20ft garden hose and aren't getting enough water out of it, that adding another 20ft of FIRE HOSE at the end is going to somehow let more water through. You can "adapt" your way up to a 72" sewer pipe and STILL the limiting factor is the width of the garden hose.

THINK.

 

[slughead]

That's funny.

This is very much like thinking that if you have a 20ft garden hose and aren't getting enough water out of it, that adding another 20ft of FIRE HOSE at the end is going to somehow let more water through. You can "adapt" your way up to a 72" sewer pipe and STILL the limiting factor is the width of the garden hose.

THINK.

Yeah thanks for the physics lesson, I also read the thread 😛. :

read previous pages for discussion about this.
basically TDP for 7970 is around 250w, and people have been running cards like 4870x2 with those 2 power connectors, and that card has TDP around 300w.

And from reading your post (where you had different luck), we can infer that it's still possible as the power demands are lower with this card as opposed to other, more power-hungry configurations (like the crossfire'd 4870x2) that only had trouble during extreme power draw. In short, an adapter to change 6 pin miniplug to 8 pin might work in this case.

 

[MacOG728893]

Well I think the year 2012 is the best! I don't how any of you know what 7970 is going to be like? 🙄

In all honesty though, if I were going to go back (currently have an iMac) to a standard desktop I would almost certainly just build a PC with better hardware for about $2000-$3000 less.

With that said, I am very pleased with what Apple has done in the past couple years giving the iMac some beef to actually be somewhat practical editing machines.

For me, the Mac Pro line is just too expensive for what I would get, let alone I can't think any of my software that even utilizes 12 cores or 32GB of RAM.

That 7970 had me drooling and almost felt like building a PC for the sake of old times. Time to dust off that 360 slim 😉

Just my 2 cents..

 

[moleonmars]

And I can specifically state that a 4870x2 running via the internal 6 pins will NOT work. With both this card and a 9800GX2 I experienced crashes during high graphic demands. These crashes were fixed by using external PCIE power supply.

I'm successfully running a Sapphire 5870 (PC version) in my MacPro (2x6 pins internal) without any Problems (OS X & Win7 Bootcamp). Now I'm planning to add a 7970 (only for Windows), and I would like to know more about your external Power Supply solution. Do you power on the external power supply first and then power up the Mac? Are there no electrical problems?
If you got any information about using such a High-Performance GPU with a Quad-Core Xeon in terms of the CPU influence in FPS would be great also 🙂
Thanks!

 

[MacVidCards]

I'm successfully running a Sapphire 5870 (PC version) in my MacPro (2x6 pins internal) without any Problems (OS X & Win7 Bootcamp). Now I'm planning to add a 7970 (only for Windows), and I would like to know more about your external Power Supply solution. Do you power on the external power supply first and then power up the Mac? Are there no electrical problems?
If you got any information about using such a High-Performance GPU with a Quad-Core Xeon in terms of the CPU influence in FPS would be great also 🙂
Thanks!

There is a thread here about running 2 @ 5870s in a Mac Pro.

He uses an extra PSU, that would be good place to start

 

[allbald]

I've burned up connectors running really hot like that with 6pin to 8pin. Never failed on me but was fairly scorched.

1) Has anyone replaced the PSU in the Mac Pro itself with something that has the right power supply pin outs?

2) If you ran windows only could you, with the right power supply, get a dual GPU setup to work without the 6 pin - 8 pin conversion/

The 5870 in the Mac Pro I have is getting long in the tooth and I am getting anxious to upgrade even if it mean running windows only on the Mac.

 

[MacVidCards]

The PSU has plenty of power. The issue is with the wires and traces that run this power to the outputs on PSB.

 

[aldontsv]

Is it possible to upgrade radeon 7970 on mac pro mid 2010. The guy in computer shop says, that radeon 7970 sells only with whole new Mac Pro. It’s isn’t selling separately? ( EU, Estonia )

 

[Draeconis]

Not currently, no.

The best card the current Mac Pro comes with is the ATI Radeon HD 5870.

 

[Cindori]

Is it possible to upgrade radeon 7970 on mac pro mid 2010. The guy in computer shop says, that radeon 7970 sells only with whole new Mac Pro. It’s isn’t selling separately? ( EU, Estonia )

there is no new mac pro