NVIDIA’s Vicious Titan Xp Outperforms Even A GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, Pascal Gets macOS Support

With the launch of the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti last month, NVIDIA for the most part surpassed the performance of the Pascal-based Titan X while undercutting the graphics card’s price point by hundreds. Unfortunately for the GTX 1080 Ti, its reign at the top didn’t last long as NVIDIA is ratcheting up the performance potential of Pascal yet again with the new Titan Xp.

If you’re looking for the ultimate in graphics performance in a single card on the PC, it doesn’t any better than this. The Titan Xp is more potent than both the original Pascal-based Titan X and the GTX 1080 Ti, as it represent the Pascal GP102 core fully "unlocked". When it comes to specs, you’ll find:

• 12GB GDDR5X memory operating at 11.4 Gbps
• Maximum memory bandwidth of 548Gbps
• 3,840 CUDA cores running at a clock speed of 1.6GHz
• 12 TFLOPs of compute power
• Available direct from NVIDIA with an MSRP of $1,200

While PC enthusiasts are definitely salivating over the prospects of the Titan Xp, NVIDIA has also thrown a bone to Mac users. If you’re still clinging on to a first-generation Apple Mac Pro for your development needs, NVIDIA has announced that the Titan Xp will be fully supported on macOS. According to NVIDIA, Mac Pro users will be able to plug the Titan Xp into a free PCIe port on a first-generation Mac Pro and will have full driver support (currently in beta) for use in macOS 10.12 Sierra. 

This is definitely welcome news for macOS developers that have so far been limited to NVIDIA’s Maxwell architecture and it also bodes well for those with Hackintosh systems. Mac owners that want to use a Pascal-based graphics cards in an external graphics enclosure, either for use with a MacBook Pro or the second-generation Mac Pro, are also in luck. That’s right, NVIDIA has confirmed that upcoming drivers will add full support for any Pascal-based GPU in macOS.

So, if you’d like to add one of NVIDIA’s new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti to your brand new 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, that avenue has now been opened.

While the immediate benefits of Pascal support in macOS is readily apparent, there are also future implications as well. Apple has already acknowledged design flaws in its current Mac Pro design that prevented it from using today’s most potent single-GPU graphics cards. However, the company will correct those issues with a modular Mac Pro design that is set to launch in 2018.