• Adobe After Effects

  4K compositing MacPro 5,1 – which GPU

  Posted by Simon Robbrecht on August 30, 2015 at 10:49 am

  Hi all,

  I need to do some 4K green screen work and I am fairly sure my ATI Radeon 5870 won’t do the trick.
  So I am looking for a new GPU for my MacPro 5,1.

  Most of my work is After Effects and Resolve. Lots of Photoshop and some Premiere too. So I guess Nvidia is the way to go (CUDA).

  I suspect the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 to be the most powerful GPU that is natively OSX supported, correct?
  Is this a viable option for 4K work in AE/Resolve?

  I am not too keen on messing with / replacing power supply, so I guess my choices of modded cards are limited to:

  – Nvidia GTX 780 3GB
  – Nvidia GTX 980 4GB
  – Nvidia GTX 980ti 6GB

  Is this correct? Any other options?

  Since I am on a budget, I tend to go for the 780. Is this a sensible option? Would this card do the 4K trick? Is it future proof?
  And what with the 980’s? Are they overkill?

  Any thoughts? Articles?

  And also what reliable suppliers do you guys know of (preferably in Europe / UK)? So far I am only aware of macvidcards and create.pro.

  Thanks for your help and advice!

  Simon

  Walter Soyka replied 10 years, 11 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Walter Soyka

  August 30, 2015 at 9:01 pm

  Ae only uses the GPU in a few circumstances — mainly the ray-tracing renderer introduced in CS6, or several GPU-accelerated plugins like Element 3D. I’d look to a Resolve forum for guidance as to what GPU to get, as it won’t make much difference in Ae outside of those circumstances.

  Walter Soyka
  Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
  Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
  @keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

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