Need help building a PC for the HTC Vive

[Pemalite]

fatslob-:O said:

Pemalite said:

Mac's typically don't have class-leading graphics performance.
I.E.  Their most powerful GPU in the Mac Pro is a M395X. - Which is roughly equivalent to the desktop Radeon R9 380X/280X/7970 GPU's.
But that is for their $5000 beast, the majority of Mac's have Integrated Intel graphics... Like the PC.
The difference between the PC and Mac is... Whilst 10% of Mac users might be conuted in hundreds of thousands... On the PC it is counted in the 10's of millions with high-end graphics.

So they aren't wrong in their claim that the Mac isn't powerful enough, you would think Apple would get serious about GPU's by now considering more games are starting to support it.

Their most powerful Mac can have TWO AMD Radeon FirePro D700 (optional) so there's at least one SKU that has enough GPU power for VR ... 

Single GPU wise, their right but in the case of dual GPUs their statement can't be justified. I dislike Apple but even I can give their dues ...

More games are starting to support Mac now ? I thought that supporting Mac was more popular almost a decade ago ... 

Apple honestly has no reason to get serious about GPU support and it's become really apparent as they are STILL stuck on OpenGL 4.1 while BOTH AMD AND NVIDIA have drivers for OpenGL 4.5 along with Vulkan! Metal ISN'T EVEN FEATURE COMPLETE as it lacks GEOMETRY SHADER AND HARDWARE ACCELERATED TESSELLATION whereas Microsoft and the IHVs (AMD/Intel/Nvidia) are going to be exploring new limits with Shader Model 6 and new HLSL extensions! 

It's bad enough that Apple has bad value when it comes to desktops but their software support is sad to say the least ... 

AMD "fire" cards aren't geared for gaming though as the drivers sacrifice performance for quality and professional uses thanks to the focus being on things like CAD.
Dual FirePro D700 would be in only a tiny tiny tiny percentage of an already tiny percentage who opt for a high-end mac.

However... The FirePro D700 is Taihiti based, rebadged FirePro W9000, released 4 years ago.
Aka. A "professional" Radeon 7970, it's performance will be lower in gaming scenario's.
It would likely handle VR just fine... BUT. The amount of machines equipped with that hardware would be inconsiquentual, probably loose money for VR devs to bother with.

Anyway. AMD doesn't have VR compatible drivers... Yet. And Apple lags behind AMD's current driver sets anyway, by months if not more... So Dual GPU's are useless. (Windows will of course support it before release via Beta, who knows with Apple... You get what you pay for. Oh wait.)