Will GPU rendering work with new iMacs?
They have a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2GB GDDR5 graphics card?
Yes, it should work - but don’t expect miracles in terms of performance.
Also: When figuring out in which forum to post, keep the following in mind: If it is a question, it’s not “Latest News”.
the 6XX series arent as fast as the 5XX series and the mobile GPU’s like in an iMAC
are slower than than regular desktop GPU’s
Geforce 680mx(mobile like in the imac)
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-gtx-680mx/specifications
Desktop 680
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-680/specifications
Look at the base clock and memory bandwidth differences, and texture fill rate
Moved from “General Forums > Latest News” to “Support > Technical Support”
thanks for the info
Listen, everyone should know this by now…
Nvidia as far back as the 8800gt works with blender cycles…everything nvidia for mobile devices since(not sure since) works with blender cycles except that they are not as good as there desktop counterparts…5xx perform better in cycles than the 6xx series…unless Nvidia decide to cripple there cuda performance for consumer cards…
Workstation cards are not as good as consumer cards and cost 1000s of pounds, which is not effective for blender cycles unless you plan to use 3dsmax,maya, cad, or other comercially used cards…
WARNING: AMD GPUS WORK GREAT FOR OPENGL PERFORMANCE COMPARED TO NVIDIA BUT DO NOT WORK(AT ALL) IN CYCLES…UNLESS AMD USERS GET A PRESENT FOR CHRISTMAS(*)(THEY@VE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR YEARS)…IF YOU WANT AMD TO WORK THE 12.8 CCC WORKS ONLY WITH BLENDER 2.62(NO TEXTURES AND OTHER PROBLEMS)…
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN STOP ASKING THESE QUESTIONS UNLESS THE CARD IN QUESTION IS A NEW ARCHITECTURE i.e. 7xx SERIES ETC
please moderator set this as sticky and stop people from asking such questions
Thanks for the info,
I am surprised at your tone however…
This is NOT common knowledge at all and hard to find accurate info on.
As a commercial designer the choice of next computer is VERY important, it effects your job.
If people are asking “such questions” it shows there is a problem finding information.
What will and wont work on a given computer is very important and often with computers there are hidden surprises that make a large difference. How can one know if a certain card work differently between Mac’s and PC’s? Or is even really the same card?
Hia…
Sorry
If you really want something worth the cash don’t bother with a iMac or anything thats Apple(exluding iphone,ipad,ipod), instead spend that hard earned cash on the following system:
AMD FX8350(OR even an Intel i7-3960/70x)
Asus Crosshair V Formula AMD 990FX OR ASRock X79 Extreme 11 Socket 201143gb 580OR2gb680 in a quad sli configuration
or even 690x2
32gb ram modules
SSD the fastest one available
and a RAVEN Case
2 or three nice 24/24 inch monitors,
the system would either be powered by a hackintosh(mac osx)
or windows 7 or even your favourite linux OS
thats what my cash would be spent on
thanks for the advice, but as always things ain’t that simple, there a host of other programmes I need to run and switch back and forth between at the same time as rendering or working on blender etc.
These are all Mac based ( and paid for ), in addition to that I work faster on OSX regardless of render processors speeds…
I’ve tried using 2 computers before, one for blender one for other stuff but it just doesn’t work for me, theres always something I need on the other computer that takes ages to transfer or just doesn’t work…though i suppose i could work on the MAc and port over to a PC just for renders…thats a thought.
A new computer solution needs to take care of workflow as well as render speed, so i’m pretty tied to MAc’s for now.
I need to decide between 12 power mac cores but AMD graphics or iMAc with Nividia GeForce GTX 680MX 2GB GDDR5 GPU, I know this will not take me to the level i can get with a standalone render optimised computer, but hopefully will be faster than my current set up of i-core7 iMac with a AMD graphics card.
Consider investing in Windows versions of your proprietary software. It doesn’t look like apple will ever make another pro level computer they just aren’t interested in your market anymore (as proven by the current mac pro using hardware that is more than two years old and still costing an astronomical amount).
I have an iMac that I purchased 2months ago. It has a 1GB AMD Radeon Graphics card and every time I switch cycles to gnu rendering every object and the background turns white and is washed out. Even scenes that I made in the past don’t work when I switch to GPU rendering. I don’t know how to fix the problem.
Gpu rendering only works with Nvidia CUDA cards.
amd hasn’t worked with cycles for a long time
Nvidia as far back as the 8800gt works with blender cycles
This is not True. I have a nVidia 9500 and it falls below the compute requirement for Cycles. I also have a 9800 (sitting in the the closet) because it no longer works with the Blender 2.64 official release of Cycles either.
I have the 680MX and got CUDA Cycles working after installing 4.2 CUDA drivers and 4.2 toolkit AND XCode command line tools (for gcc).
The mobile 680 has the same amount of CUDA Cores as the desktop one, so its pretty decent for cycles.
Pixu…how did you get CUDA working. I have tried every driver for CUDA from 4.2. the toolkit 4.2 and gcc but nothing. Infact if I have the CUDA 4.2 driver installed then blender will not even realize that CUDA driver is installed and the GPU render option in unavailable.
By the way I got CUDA and GPU render working in mac osx Mountain lion with blender 2.65
Now it’s my turn!!
How do You made it??
I’ve GTX 675MX on my iMac, I’ve installed cudatoolkit_4.2.9, devdriver_4.2.10 and Blender 2.65a but I’ve only CPU rendering.
Please Help!