SLI & General Q

[EterNaL0pt1m1st]

Hi all,

I am a seasoned constructor, just not on the Mac.

I am in the planning stages of a new rig, which will be a powerhouse, and as such I am planning 2 or 3 Titan X in SLI.

I have found very old posts that indicate OSX cannot deal with SLI, however the new Mac Pro has two GPU's...

So the question is this, if OSX doesn't recognise SLI, can I still have the cards SLI'd for my windows app?

Due to app compatibility issues, I am planning a removable/swappable boot drive with windows 7.1, windows 8/10 and OSX.

Are there major BIOS changes that I would need to make, which would make this a tedious task? Or would it be just a case of swapping the drives and hitting the power button?

The basics would likely be a 5960X on a Asus Rampage V Extreme, Geil DDR4-3000 cl15, the Titan X's as mentioned, a PCIe Mushkin Scorpion Delux as scratch drive, a couple of SSD's which would be removable for the boot drives... A similar amount of HDD's for program installation and the data storage is on the 48TB Synology.

Is it worth trying to shoehorn OSX into this ?

Thanks for any opinions...

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

Your proposed motherboard uses the X99 chipset. Not only is this fairly new but you won't get 100% support for it in OSX. Thats not to say it won't work but there are things like power management which is not properly supported on that chipset. You would be wise to do a forum search to see if other users have it working and the issues they encountered.

The titan card you refer to has been made to work in Yosemite but putting 2 or 3 in the same build will more than likely give you issues as well. Apple just doesn't use SLI as such.

Search the forums in detail for your chosen hardware and think carefully before committing your $$$.

 

[EterNaL0pt1m1st]

Many thanks WonkeyDonkey,

I have been prowling religiously and have seen that some users have had success with the 99 chipset.

However, this build is not primarily for OSX, I just thought of using OSX for my photoshop etc, as I have been using it on my MBP for a while and have become used to it.

However, the 5K screen from Dell which will be my main monitor will mean I don't have to suffer on the laptop anymore!

If its not worth the hassles that will be a pity, however I need to rig to be as it is from a performance perspective. The 5k screen powered by the SLI Titans will allow me to work with 4k video and still have room for the toolbars etc...

Sigh. If only it was all so easy LOL!

Maybe I'll get a GA Brix i7 for Mac work...

Thanks again for your input!

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

Its not to say you can't get some of it to work, but I think you may well struggle thats all. If you consider what is in the Buyers Guide, it is there because the hardware has been tested and is known to work, and there are usually many examples of such builds in the forums.

It depends how badly you want OSX really.

As mentioned, research that chosen hardware in detail.

If you plan to buy it anyway, theres nothing stopping you trying out OSX. Buying it specifically for OSX might not be the wise route thats all.