Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Nvidia Titan in Sonnet Thunderbolt External?

Marc Dunham

Marc Dunham

Well-known member
Joined
May 10, 2012
Messages
140
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Location
Los Angeles
With the new RED Cine-X out and CUDA becoming even more useful I was thinking about getting a Titan and using it in my Sonnet Thunderbolt External on my Imac. I know the speeds aren't as much as it should be but I was wondering if this was possible? Is there anything extra that has to be done or should it be plug and play (other then installing the driver). I've tried searching around but can't find a clear answer on that combo.
 
Marc Dunham said:
With the new RED Cine-X out and CUDA becoming even more useful I was thinking about getting a Titan and using it in my Sonnet Thunderbolt External on my Imac. I know the speeds aren't as much as it should be but I was wondering if this was possible? Is there anything extra that has to be done or should it be plug and play (other then installing the driver). I've tried searching around but can't find a clear answer on that combo.
Click to expand...
No GPU over Thunderbolt. I have heard rumors that Apple might be able to make it work with TB2 - we shall see.
 
Derek Morrison said:
thunderbolterizer?
Click to expand...

Thunderbolterizer might work with a Titan but it's a long shot. Even if it does you're likely going to get lousy GPU to CPU memory reads and writes similar to these:

master%20heavy%20load%20comparison%20copy.jpg


It's a long shot because Thunderbolterizer is only officially supported with OSX 10.8.2 and the 10.8.2 Nvidia drivers. Those Nvidia drivers only officially support these GPUs:

GTX 285 for Mac, GT 120, 8800 GT, Quadro 4000 for Mac, Quadro FX 5600, and Quadro FX 4800 for Mac.

Also, I don't have a Sonnet TB enclosure (only a Magma 3T) but I don't think you'd have enough power for the Titan in any current Thunderbolt expansion chassis. It's going to need 300W minimum. The Sonnet Echo Express III does have a 300W PSU but that's pushing it. The Magma Expressbox 3T has a 250W PSU.

I've created a guide for getting Thunderbolterizer to run on 10.8.3 (found here) but you might have to modify the drivers to recognize a Titan. I don't have one to test myself.

There is a chance of course that an officially supported OSX / Intel Thunderbolt 2 GPU solution would perform 2 or more times faster than this hacked workaround. Noone knows for sure - as others have pointed out it doesn't exist yet. FWIW, the current max. speeds using Thunderbolterizer of around 750MB/s are not too far off of the fastest tested Thunderbolt RAID transfer speeds of 1100MB/s (found here) keeping in mind that is to and from a RAID, not a GPU which communicates bi-directionally more frequently than RAID benchmark test reads and writes.

Depending on which TB controller you have will likely affect TB GPU performance as well. My 17" Macbook Pro I used for testing Thunderbolterizer has a Light Ridge controller and links to a PCH (Platform Control Hub) first before accessing the CPU and system memory. Some newer TB controllers (Cactus Ridge, Falcon Ridge) have direct access to CPU PCIe lanes bypassing the PCH. BTW, gaming benchmark GPU tests at x4 vs. x16 PCIe speeds do not apply to Thunderbolt. x4 does not always equal x4.
 
I would think providing adequate power for the Titan card would be more problematic with a TB chassis. For the price of a Magma or Sonnet III case, you could almost build a decent hackintosh/win system (minus the Titan card), and then run a Titan card at x16 or x8 lanes.
 
Corey, What kind of performance did you get, not statistically, when using the quadro 4000 over Tbolt? Did premiere or davinci seem sped up at all? or not much of a performance boost to be noteworthy?
 
this should be working soon....sonnet announced their TB2 box...and the next upcoming macs will have TB2....i don't think trying this over TB1 is even worth it...
 
Derek Morrison said:
Corey, What kind of performance did you get, not statistically, when using the quadro 4000 over Tbolt? Did premiere or davinci seem sped up at all? or not much of a performance boost to be noteworthy?
Click to expand...

The Quadro 4000 varied between 1-3 FPS slower than my Macbook Pro's Radeon HD 6750M GPU for Resolve GPU renders. Wish I was kidding. Premiere CS6 timeline playback did feel slightly faster when using Cuda effects (luma curve, proc amp, & RGB colour corrector mainly) but not by much. Definitely not missing out on anything by going with onboard graphics instead, for now anyway.
 
Sonnet also said the newer chassis won't have TB2 right off the bat, they put a voucher in the box, in Jan/Feb when the TB2 cards are available, ship the old TB1 interface card plus voucher back to Sonnet for a free upgrade to a TB2 interface card.
 
thanks for the info guys. I was thinking the power would probably be my biggest issue next to speed. I'm going to be stuck with Thunderbolt1 due to my Imac regardless for a bit. My RED rocket took a crap on me so was hoping for a cheaper solution to speed things up. Oh well.
 
The replacement TB2 interface card should be available in the fall soon after a certain eagerly-awaited TB2 host ships. ;)
 
Will a flashed nvidia card for Mac works with the sonnett echo t2?
 
I'm surprised they havent released GPU with a Thunderbolt interface.

They just need two-three models to accelerate your mac.

Well Thunderbolt 3.0 will drop end of the year which will be finally a decent speed to use say a Titan or Rocket.
 
The Mac OS specifically limits the use of GPU's over TB, but if you install Windows then it will work, although limited to either x4 or x8 pci-e lanes.
 
Doesn't seem like much people have had much luck even now with Mavericks and Yosemite.

There are folk who use Titans in a Mac Pro and yes MacVidCard will Flash your card to boot in OSX and have all the drivers needed to run one in a Titan or other cards they have listed.

Thunderbolt is a great idea in theory but the speeds aren't there to take full advantage, x4 & x8 simply is not enough especially once we enter 7k or 8k territory in the short years.

Enclosures are such a rip off you can get a Quad-Core 2012 Mac Pro with Dual x16 lanes for $1400 on eBay. $500 more than a Sonnet Enclosure.

New USB 3.1 and Thunderbolt 3.0 on the Horizon, we are getting there. But at the moment a Mac Pro is your best value to horse power. iMac and rMBP wont cut it if your moving big files.
 
The Mac OS prohibits the use of GPU's over thunderbolt, it does not merely lack support for it, the Mac OS restricts the GPU from working over thunderbolt. It has nothing to do with drivers or support, the actual OS prevents the GPU from working over a thunderbolt interface.

The hardware is perfectly fine, and several people that have installed Windows on a Macbook air have utilized an external GPU over thunderbolt without any problems.
 
Not sure if Apple will change this. They have said they are aware people want it and there's something about the way their GDI and PCI layers within the OS interact that makes it problematic, so it's specifically restricted. For now. That said, I've played with a few GPUs via TB2 in Windows and I have to say that I don't really see the point or any advantage here. Something decent like a 780 or 980 connected to a Macbook Pro would indeed offer a noticeable, even significant, boost. OTOH, it doesn't cost much more than the Sonnet box to put together a little PC that would smoke the laptop/TB2 GPU combo. Just sayin'
 
Would love to hear an answer to above question. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top