OTOY Forums

Hi!

Anyone uses the most recent Imac 27" 3,5-GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4 GB GDDR5??

I have been waiting for the new Mac Pro for months/years.
Now it's almost available but the video cards aren't CUDA oriented....

For me it's better to go for the new Imacs.

I was hoping to meet someone here that already uses this Imac with this specific Card, because it's the fastest I can choose from on the Apple website.

Thanks in advance!!

Joe Piler wrote:I have been waiting for the new Mac Pro for months/years.
Now it's almost available but the video cards aren't CUDA oriented....

it's a pitty Apple gone for AMD GPUs..

if You love MACs, Have You ever thought buying a let's say Apple screen, but building a Hackintosh?

Might be a bit more flexible, with greater uprgradability - You can invest as You go. Small nice rig in something like bitfenex prodigy case with MITX would allow You to have two cards - up to four GPUs (if You go for Dual cards) & 32 GB of RAM on a mATX mobo with all the other components You choose to fit Your needs =)

It's a bit tricky to get everything right building those =).. but it isn't impossible.

Thanks for your reply.

I'm not a computer builder...
So building a Hackintosch will be a big problem for me.

Maybe I can use an external Graphic card on a loaded Imac based on Thunderbolt.
But maybe this isn't the way to go because the 780M is fast enough...

But I don't know it yet....

Joe Piler wrote:
I'm not a computer builder...
So building a Hackintosch will be a big problem for me.

well there's a lot of Guys around who would help You with list of parts & putting all together is not so hard =)

Joe Piler wrote:
Maybe I can use an external Graphic card on a loaded Imac based on Thunderbolt.

there's a problem with GPUs conected via Thunderbolt. Don't know what is exactly that causing that, but keep in mind that this plan might be 'a bit' tricky =)

Joe Piler wrote:
But maybe this isn't the way to go because the 780M is fast enough...

But I don't know it yet....

780M is based on GK104 - that explains why it has more of VRAM (Good thing), however compared to desktop card GTX780 it will have less of render power..I gues You should probably expect performance around ~760 or so (check to be sure before making any decitions)

Is it enough? well it depends on what You do & that You should know best =) Overall I'd go to apple store and ask a chance to install a demo =) drop few scenes & try it out =) - personally I don't see it being a great value, but it might be different case from Your standpoint.

Joe Piler wrote: But maybe this isn't the way to go because the 780M is fast enough...

But I don't know it yet....

Here's a link to testing that Barefeats did: http://www.barefeats.com/haswel1.html

Scroll down to the Octane section to see the results. Oddly, the new 780M performed worse in Octane than the 2012 iMac cards. Doesn't mean it won't work for you, but just to help add some info.