EVGA's GeForce GTX 285 Mac Edition: The Best for OS X?

OS X Apps That Need a Fast GPU

There are a few OS X apps that do benefit from a powerful GPU, but as far as I can tell the numbers are still limited. There are a number of functions that are executed on the GPU, but very few applications are actually GPU bound. Photoshop only makes minimal use of the GPU, the real benefits there come from having more video memory than having more shader processing power.

I tried using Autodesk’s Mudbox 2009 to measure GPU performance under OS X. Mudbox is a 3D modeling application that depends heavily on the GPU and includes the ability to benchmark rendering your model in real time.

Mudbox 2009

I created two models in Mudbox, one more complex than the other and measured rendering performance on the GTX 285, Radeon HD 4870 512MB and my Mac Pro’s default GeForce GT120:

The performance improvement over the GT120 is clear, but the GTX 285 wasn’t actually any faster than the Radeon HD 4870. The only advantage here is that the 285 has a larger frame buffer and could thus handle more complex models.

Even Cinebench’s antiquated OpenGL benchmark had troubles showing the GTX 285 in a positive light under OS X

This test isn’t particularly representative of anything but it does showcase some potential driver deficiencies for the GTX 285 under OS X.

OpenCL to the Rescue, CUDA Available Today

Snow Leopard will change all of this of course as it brings full OpenCL support to the table. Applications written in OpenCL will be able to execute completely on the GTX 285 and that’s where this thing will really be useful. Snow Leopard will be available in September and who knows how long it will take for good OpenCL apps to see the light of day. In other words, you may be waiting a while for your investment to pay off unless you have a high end workstation need for the GTX 285 today.

There is one other option. NVIDIA has made CUDA available for OS X, so if you’re a CUDA developer or are interested in playing around CUDA OS X apps you can put the GTX 285 to use today.