MacPro5,1 with ATI 5770
15 Apr 2018 15:07:09 UTC
Topic 214548
(moderation:
After a 4-year hiatus I'm trying a make a comeback. I've got a Mac Pro with ATI 5770 on offer. The machine is 8 years old, will it still make a decent GPU crunching machine...?
Anyone else here still using ATI 5770...?
Your computers are hidden so
)
Your computers are hidden so it's not possible to see the details needed to give you an answer.
Unless it has at least 1GB of VRAM, it will not be able to receive GPU tasks. Even then, that model is likely to be a fairly poor performer by today's standards. According to the wikipedia entry, that particular model doesn't have double precision capability. This means that even if the server would send GPU tasks for it, and even if you had a driver capable of supporting OpenCL, the final (followup) stages of the crunching would have to be performed on a CPU core rather than the GPU and this would likely add quite a considerable amount to the overall crunch time.
The first question to answer - Does it have at least 1GB VRAM?
Cheers,
Gary.
I have not acquire that Mac
)
I have not acquire that Mac Pro yet, just got an offer. That's why I'm asking if it is feasible.
The ATI 5770 has 1GB VRAM. If it's poor performer, I might bump it up to an RX 560 with 4GB VRAM...
I read your initial message
)
I read your initial message as saying that, after a long break from crunching, you had decided to offer the services of your machine(s) once again. Sorry for not reading more carefully.
I remember that you used Macs last time you were active so it just seemed natural to assume you were talking about something you already owned. Unless you are getting it at a bargain basement price, I'd be worried about the suitability of hardware that old for the stresses of crunching. What sort of previous life it had would be quite important.
I quite like the idea of using an RX 560. I run a number of 2GB cards and they perform quite well. I run them under Linux, not Red Hat or Ubuntu, so I had to jump through a few hoops in order to get the OpenCL capability to work. If you intend to run Mac OS, I have no idea about the OpenCL support in those drivers. I'd also be a bit worried about how good the PSU is in an 8 year old machine.
My 560s do around the 270 - 290K RAC mark. I would guess this might be around 3-4 times what you might get from a 5770. Just check the specs carefully for the RX 560. When first released these had 16CUs. There is a newer version with the same model name around now with only 14CUs enabled. This is exactly what the earlier RX 460s have. See the final note at the bottom of the RX 500 series cards as listed on this page.
Buying a 560 with 4GB VRAM is overkill for crunching. You need 2GB if you want to run 2 concurrent GPU tasks. This gives a significant improvement in throughput over a single task at the expense of a bit more power consumption and a bit more heat output. There is very little extra (if any) to be had by running more than 2x. Now if you were talking about an RX 570 then it would be different :-). They run quite nicely at 3x and produce around 560K RAC.
Cheers,
Gary.