Hi,
I have been waiting for years for a new Mac pro, finally it arrives and seems wonderful except i can't use it.
The main reason is lack of OpenCL support for 3D render engines like Cycles in Blender.
Why can't Apple and AMD put together a team and get OpenCl up to speed so we won't have to depend on nVidia and CUDA?
Lots of people would drop their nVidia cards in a heartbeat if the AMD OpenCL would be in pair with CUDA.
Regards
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Hi Linc,
I haven't bought it yet, i just wanted to cry out to Apple and AMD to seriously start push the OpenCl development to catch up with CUDA.
The reason i was wining was because i've been waiting so long to upgrade my old MP 1.1 and when the nMP finally comes it's AMD graphics only which makes GPU rendering in my case useless.
I'd like to see Apple, AMD and others join efforts to get OpenCl to where it needs to be.
I don't want to "have to" buy a PC just so i can use nVidia for GPU rendering :-(
Crying out to Apple here is a waste of time.
So maybe a 2010 or 2012 is ideal for you and put in a GTX 770 (or two) along with an add'l small 450 PSU.
Thunderbolt allows for direct memory access (which is also a huge security backdoor the size of a barn)
| GTX 770 GPU Engine Specs: | |
|---|---|
| CUDA Cores | 1536 |
| Base Clock (MHz) | 1046 |
| Boost Clock (MHz) | 1085 |
| Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec) | 134 |
| GTX 770 Memory Specs: | |
|---|---|
| Memory Speed | 7.0 Gbps |
| Standard Memory Config | 2048 MB |
| Memory Interface | GDDR5 |
| Memory Interface Width | 256-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) | 224.3 |
http://www.nvidia.com/gtx-700-graphics-cards/gtx-770/
Dual AMD FirePro™ D700 graphics processors with 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM each
http://www.amd.com/us/solutions/workstation/Pages/apple-mac-pro.aspx
I DO own a new Mac Pro, and I love it. Unfortunately, for 3D rendering, I have to ship files off to a PC running an Nvidia card -- and it's not just Blender Cycles. The folks at Otoy are exclusively CUDA as well.
What I don't understand is Apple restricting the cards in the MacPro to AMD when OpenCL is an Apple supported project, and AMD doesn't supoort it nearly as well as Nvidia.
What gives Apple? Is Linc Davis right? Does Apple not listen to us in these forums?
C'mon guys, beat up on AMD so they fix this.
Graphics glitches are worse than you probably imagine if you haven't seen this:
http://www.macperformanceguide.com/blog/2014/20140310_4-Photoshop-crashes.html
,,, or run Windows on your nMP... but that won't help one bit if you need Quadro or GTX and CUDA.
Well, I don't need Photoshop. I can run Pixelmator on my Mac or GIMP on a virtual Linux system for any photo work I need, and use MangaStudio 5 on the Mac and MyPaint or Krita on Linux for drawing/painting.
Even so, there are a bunch of pros out there who do use Photoshop, and one would think Apple would be all over this. It's the best commercial system out there for graphics, sound and video (imo), Apple sure should be working hard to keep that position.
Just one guy's feelings, anyway. Interestingly, on my MacBook Pro (15" with retina display) and an nVidia card, when I render with Blender and Cycles, ussing the cpu is actually a touch faster than using CUDA with the gpu. Go figure!
new MacPro OpenCL for Blender/Cycles
