[SOLVED] Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080/1070

[nunziantimo]

No one can say one way or another. Answers could legitimately start with "Maybe, if... " or "No, but..." ...

Right now though, the rule of thumb seems to be "Make alternate plans".

I know that no one can say for sure.

But if I should bet, I would bet on "no drivers".

 

[Dyphen]

I have a quick question if anyone can help - I currently have Windows running on one SSD and a blank SSD I was waiting to install MacOS on whenever the pascal drivers dropped. If I went ahead and setup MacOS to use my integrated graphics, would it be a hassle on the mac side to update if I later decided to downgrade to 9xx (or if 10xx drivers were to be released)?

 

[thedocbwarren]

If it's anything like what we have it will be a RX-460 or such for the 27", maybe Kaby. Likely they go with iGPU for lower-end.
I guess no machine learning or nice CUDA acceleration in apps for Mac. OpenCL is really not that impressive since it's not widely supported. A shame really. I don't understand how Apple expects to -develop- there iOS cute kids with lower end stuff. Not that you need a GTX-1080 for software dev, be somebody's working on Siri I assume and working on data science. Or then maybe not considering how behind it is.

The head of Swift Dev going to Tesla honestly tells a lot. I feels like a rough patch for Apple (not necessarily non-profitable short-term.) I don't blame Nvidia for ignoring this gen, frankly they really don't have a healthy market in Apple to care about. Nvidia cares about linux for data-science like the Unix market and little else. But at least it gets some attention. And considering you can't use "high-end" AMD cards on macOS property due to lack of support is shocking as well. I really don't expect much for support for even the new AMD Vega cards frankly, again it's in a market Apple could care less about (desktop.)

I don't like being negative, it's painful. I hope it gets better, really. I wish I know how they recover or if they really want to. I mean, it's shocking and kind of sad that my upgraded 5.1 geekbenchs right up there with the 2013 MacPro (right under the top-end 19K version) and I can add hardware to it.

Whatever happens, I think the next gen iMacs will tell us a lot, good or bad. At least we will have a better idea of our future graphics direction.

 

[XanderW]

I just went ahead and bought a second hand 970 for €175. Hope Pascal support will land one day so I can finally upgrade

 

[shampoo]

I am in the same boat as the rest of you.. I have a 750ti now.. but my fear is if we don't get Pascal drivers, we might be out of luck for high end cards..

I have been scanning the market locally and finding a 980 ti (for instance) isn't easy. You'd think with that card being end of life the prices would go down. But no, they are crazy expensive. It just seems like a lot of money for a GPU.. Especially since the 10 series cards, which are of the same speed, (give or take) of the 980ti are often much cheaper !

So every day I check Amazon and I debate about forking over all the money for a GPU and every day I convince myself it's not worth it.. ;-)

So c'mon Nvidia, throw us a bone already.

 

[thedocbwarren]

There are not the same speed. the 980 ti is under the 1070 and doesn't support the latest APIs nor is it close in power consumption. It's not in the same league as 1080s or Titan Xs. But it depends on the usage.

In fact I'm actually wondering what people are using these cards for on the Mac. I had assumed people were deep learning or using for CUDA with creative apps. Also Apple prefers OpenCL (and that performs half on NVidia cards vs AMD.) Granted these are wildly powerful cards compute wise.

I am in the same boat as the rest of you.. I have a 750ti now.. but my fear is if we don't get Pascal drivers, we might be out of luck for high end cards..

I have been scanning the market locally and finding a 980 ti (for instance) isn't easy. You'd think with that card being end of life the prices would go down. But no, they are crazy expensive. It just seems like a lot of money for a GPU.. Especially since the 10 series cards, which are of the same speed, (give or take) of the 980ti are often much cheaper !

So every day I check Amazon and I debate about forking over all the money for a GPU and every day I convince myself it's not worth it.. ;-)

So c'mon Nvidia, throw us a bone already.

 

[shampoo]

In fact I'm actually wondering what people are using these cards for on the Mac. I had assumed people were deep learning or using for CUDA with creative apps. Also Apple prefers OpenCL (and that performs half on NVidia cards vs AMD.) Granted these are wildly powerful cards compute wise.

I can't speak for the others, but I don't need it for the Mac. I need it for gaming on Windows.

Nvidia is coming out with their Nvidia GeForce Now.. which is a gaming streaming service. It's not cheap. But given how much I play (not often), it might be a better alternative for me then getting a new GPU.

 

[thedocbwarren]

I get the sense a lot of users here use it like a bootcamp style situation where it's general day-to-day in Mac and gaming in Windows. I guess it's easy for Nvidia to just say, "...it's a gaming only card." which makes it of no use in Mac, but the other use cases would have limited support. But given deep learning is more popular on Linux really and CUDA is more widely supported by Linux-based tools and Windows creative stuff (Adobe) I'd say they have pretty much no Mac market. When 5.1 was discontinued and next year obsolete it closed all opportunities. eGPU isn't fully working on Mac so it's not an option really.

In fact it didn't occur to me at the time when Sierra was released what happened with the dropped hardware. As in I didn't understand what a in[pact that had until I made a hackintosh. What I'm getting at is losing a lot of hardware support mean the window to make these machines is closing. If they drop desktops in favor of laptops and embedded stuff it's going to get more and more difficult to run macOS on something other than a thin sheet of aluminum with an Apple logo on it (which would make sense to Apple.)

At this point I'm hoping they open source Xcode or bring macOS/iOS software tools to Linux. That way Developers like myself can use our powerful Ubuntu machines and run 1080s and Titans for accelerated work in creative and deep learning.

Hopefully pushing for at least an definitive strategy from NVidia will help because frankly I don't see anything coming from Apple and AMD being worth it for needs outside general in Mac and maybe light gaming. Again OpenCL is pretty weak.

I can't speak for the others, but I don't need it for the Mac. I need it for gaming on Windows.

Nvidia is coming out with their Nvidia GeForce Now.. which is a gaming streaming service. It's not cheap. But given how much I play (not often), it might be a better alternative for me then getting a new GPU.

 

[baladev]

Hello knowledgeable people!

Have read a few last pages of this thread and it seems if I get it right that Apple is winding down on using powerful GPU cores on their platform. Does it mean they are killing their desktop part of ecosystem? How about all those pro photographers and videographers/special effects people out there who swear by MAC platform? Are they going to abandon the pro market? I mean these applications need powerful cards.

On another topic - I've read somewhere that one can install CUDA driver without installing the nvidia web driver. Does it mean that the 10xx cards could run cuda even though there's no driver for them?

 

[Fl0r!an]

CUDA isn't usable without the WebDriver.

As for Apple's current "strategy": I don't have the impression that "pro users" are important to them. I doubt Apple will update the Mac Pro again, so their line up will most likely max out with the Retina iMacs, limiting the GPU range to "upper mainstream".