[SOLVED] GFX without Driver

[Matt_Dobbins]

I'm a PC guy newly working with an all Mac workflow and we are trying to update some older machines to add them as render farm nodes without much money. I'm building us a power PC to integrate into the farm but if we can get the unused machines to add to the farm for a reasonable price we'd love to.

My question is if we can run a gtx 1080 (which currently has no driver support to run on Mac) without the use of drivers as a processor only while another gfx card handles the display and real time screen rendering.

Will the card be able to work at all on a Mac without the drivers or is it simply the display interfacing that wouldn't be possible?

Any further information on upgrading 4,1 and 5,1 machines to become useful render farm nodes for AE and C4D would be appreciated as well.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[velocityg4]

I don't see how the cards would be of any use in a render farm without drivers. All the processing power in the world won't matter if the OS doesn't know how to talk to the card.

Does the rendering have to be on Mac? You'd be better off selling the Mac Pros. Then build PCs with the a Socket 2011 Motherboard (so you have 40 PCI-e lanes). Get ones with lots of PCI-e x16 slots, cheap XEON CPU, heavy duty PSU, and a large case with good air flow. Which shouldn't cost much more than you could sell a Mac Pro for. Then load it up with video cards with proper driver support and sufficient RAM for your needs.

You can also stuff more cards in one. A Mac Pro can fit say two double width cards. While a custom build can fit four. Ultimately it could be cheaper. As you could sell off two Mac Pros for the base components of one rendering station.

Here is an example of base parts to get you started. I don't know what your CPU, RAM or storage requirements are. But this should handle 4x GTX 1080. I would use cards with blower style fans. They have a high static pressure to help overcome how close the cards will be stacked. Pluse they intake cool are from the case and exhaust it out the rear. Those double or triple fan models which just circulate the air will have a lot of trouble being stacked so close together with all the heat of four cards building up. PCPartpicker only allows you to select two of these cards at a time. They are there for an example of the heatsink design.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/tkjMXH

 

[Matt_Dobbins]

content omitted for space

I figured as much lacking the drivers but I was trying to cover every possibility.

Rendering does not have to be on a mac, as I mentioned I am building a PC powerhouse to integrate into the farm, but those mac pros are 2008 and 2010 models so they would not fetch much to reinvest into cheap farms once sold. It would be better if we could simply integrate their power into the farm, led by a late 2013 mac pro, as we already have them. The 1080 (blower fan style) is being put into the PC with the second one we bought.

Thanks for the part picker link. Your suggestions confirm my ideas for the render machines when our budget begins to have excess again. For now we will be satisfied with the PC I am building/integrating tomorrow and whatever we can manage to add with the older machines around the office. We don't lack for power, I'm just trying to squeeze every bit of efficiency I can out of what we have for the lowest price possible.

Best,
Matt

 

[velocityg4]

content omitted for space

I figured as much lacking the drivers but I was trying to cover every possibility.

Rendering does not have to be on a mac, as I mentioned I am building a PC powerhouse to integrate into the farm, but those mac pros are 2008 and 2010 models so they would not fetch much to reinvest into cheap farms once sold. It would be better if we could simply integrate their power into the farm, led by a late 2013 mac pro, as we already have them. The 1080 (blower fan style) is being put into the PC with the second one we bought.

Thanks for the part picker link. Your suggestions confirm my ideas for the render machines when our budget begins to have excess again. For now we will be satisfied with the PC I am building/integrating tomorrow and whatever we can manage to add with the older machines around the office. We don't lack for power, I'm just trying to squeeze every bit of efficiency I can out of what we have for the lowest price possible.

Best,
Matt

I just had a thought when re-reading this. Can you do your rendering in Linux? Then you could drop the GTX 1080 in the Mac Pro. As there are Linux drivers.