Posted September 2nd, 2016 by rob-ART morgan, mad scientist

In the past, Geekbench has tested CPU (integer, floating point, memory speed). Geekbench 4 adds a GPU computation. We decided to compare a collection GPUs. Some of the featured GPUs don't yet run under Mac OS X or macOS Sierra but they ALL run under Windows. So, since Geekbench 4 is a cross platform app, we decided to use the Razer Blade Stealth laptop and Razer Core running Windows 10 for this shootout.

GPU GRAPH LEGEND
GTX 1080 = NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition (8G)
GTX 1070 = ASUS NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition (8G)
GTX 980 Ti = eVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti (6G)
R9 Fury = Sapphire Nitro Radeon R9 Fury (4G)
RX 480 = ASUS ROG Radeon RX 480 STRIX (8G)
GTX 980 = NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 (4G)
HD 7950 = Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 Mac Edition (3G)
GTX 680 = eVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition (2G)

All GPUs were installed in the Razer Core Thunderbolt 3 GPU expander connected via Thunderbolt 3 cable to the Razer Blade Stealth running Windows 10. A Dell UltraSharp 27 Ultra HD 5K (UP2715K) display running at 3940x2160 was connected directly to the Razer Core GPU expander.

OPENCL COMPUTE

The OpenCL score combines the results of eight GPU intensive computations including Sobel, Gaussian Blur, Face Detection, Depth of Field, and Particle Physics. (HIGHEST score = FASTEST)

CUDA COMPUTE

The same eight GPU intensive computations are made use CUDA, but as you can see, only NVIDIA GPUs support CUDA. (HIGHEST score = FASTEST)

ANALYSIS
The 'baseline' GPUs for the Geekbench 4 Compute test were the 'Mac Editions' of the GTX 680 and HD 7950. Those along with the Quadro K5000 'for Mac' were the last best Mac Pro tower GPUs officially supported by Apple. They are not in the same league as more recent desktop GPUs like the GTX 980 Ti which, thanks to the efforts of NVIDIA engineering, is supported under various versions of OS X. The 'web' drivers can download from NVIDIA's driver update web pages (search Quadro drivers for 'K5000 For Mac').

The newest 'Pascal' class of NVIDIA GPUs (GeForce GTX 1070 and 1080) dominated in both OpenCL and CUDA compute tests. We fervently hope web drivers will soon appear from NVIDIA that enable us to run them under macOS Sierra and/or OS X El Capitan.

Though the AMD Radeon R9 Fury and RX 480 were not the fastest, they do produce more FPS per Watt than GPUs like the 980 Ti. And they have the added advantage of running under macOS Sierra by simply adding their device ID to the AMDX4000 driver plist.

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copyright 2016 Rob Art Morgan
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