Adobe CS6, MacPro, and Nvidia Quadro 6000

[Jules Bowman]

I’m curious about mac cards needed for cs6 so I’m posting this to subscribe to the thread. I have a 2011 mac pro (will add full specs when I’m back at the machine)

[Chris Borjis]

The quadro 4000 & 6000 are both supported.

I believe the 6000 would outperform the 4000.

I have the 4000 on CS 5.5 and it is quite powerful.

I would have bought the 6000 only it costs much much more.

[Todd Kopriva]

The Premiere Pro CS6 system requirements are already on the Adobe website:
https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/tech-specs.html

There’s a list of graphics cards that provide the CUDA/OpenCL GPU acceleration toward the bottom.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
product manager, professional video software
After Effects team blog
Premiere Pro team blog
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[Trevor Schrodt]

So the Quadro 6000 will not be supported in the future? Why is that? Also, why are so many cards only supported for WIndows? Is the new GeForce GTX 690 supported on Mac and would getting two make things super fast or be just plain dumb and useless?

Sorry for the 20 questions, I’m in a new position and actually get to pick the hardware/software my company uses.

Trevor

[Walter Soyka]

[Trevor Schrodt] “So the Quadro 6000 will not be supported in the future? Why is that? Also, why are so many cards only supported for WIndows?”

That’s up to NVIDIA and Apple to work out. I can’t blame Adobe for not supporting cards that the manufacturers themselves won’t support.

The Quadro 4000 is the only current card NVIDIA is officially shipping for the Mac.

[Trevor Schrodt] “Is the new GeForce GTX 690 supported on Mac and would getting two make things super fast or be just plain dumb and useless? “

Bit of a gray area here. From what I understand, the latest version of Lion has unofficial driver support for the Fermi-based GTX cards. That said, the GTX 690 (Kepler) card is not listed on Adobe’s supported cards list, so I’d stay away from it for now.

If you want a supported configuration, stick with a GTX 285, Quadro FX 4800, or Quadro 4000 on the Mac.

If you want to try running an unsupported configuration, you could try installing a GTX 580. The folks on the Resolve forums seem to be big fans of MacVidCards.

Alternately, you could run your Adobe apps on a PC so you can get support for all the cards that Apple/NVIDIA won’t support on Mac. I am running both Macs and PCs here seamlessly.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[David Pirinelli]

Hi, I run MacVidCards.

The Quadro 6000 has been supported in the drivers since somewhere back in 10.6.

That said, only 4 GB shows up for CUDA, 2 GB in System Profiler, and OpenCL so far is only place all 6 GB show up.

I have heard that all 6 GBs will eventually show up everywhere but…..

We have GTX470s and GTX480s that work in 10.6.8 and we just added GTX570 and GTX580 for 10.7.3.

The GTX570 2.5 GB card is turning out to be a real powerhouse for Adobe apps. In the Resolve forum and at MacRumours forums there have been posts about how well that specific card works for CS6. Apparently they are supported from the get go, no hacks needed. One guy compared performance to his Quadro 4000. Didn’t go well for the Quadro.

Our cards offer full boot screen support from first press of power button and can drive an Apple LED as well as a 30″ via DVI. The 570 with 2.5 GB is going to be “the” card to have for the near future.

We have the Quadro 5000 and 6000 for Mac, and they are currently DisplayPort and DVI as well, though I could probably set them up to run 2 @ Apple Displays if there was interest.

But for most people, the GTX570 with 2.5GB is hard to beat.

[Trevor Schrodt]

Ok thank you for the response and more info. We would be updating the OS when we get CS6. What about the 680 I saw nVidia’s website, would that be even better? Is it supported from the get-go? Will Autodesk Smoke 2013 take advantage of this card like CS6?
What’s the difference between PNY and nVidia brand cards? Is it like comparing a Ford and a Lincoln?

and i think that’s the end of my questioning for now.

[Matthew Cotter]

So… Im hoping you guys can clear something up for me… Currently speccing a system to go with CS6…

Is more CUDA Cores important? What would be the top of the line setup I could get? 4 GTX 690 cards SLI’d together OR the Quadro 6000.

Sorry, making the jump from MAC to PC for purely rendering Mercury Engine reasons… And I’m clueless on the PC side…

Matt

[David Pirinelli]

The Quadro cards only have an edge in software that uses Double Precision

Until someone points me at some, I don’t know if there is any for Macs.

So, the GTX cards will almost always outperform a Quadro 4000.

The 6000 is the only one of the family with real grunt behind it. And it is somewhere between a GTX470 and GTX480.

So for most Mac users, a GTX570 just became the best option. If you are running 10.7.3, a GTX570 2.5 GB will outperform a Quadro 6000 for most things.

[Trevor Schrodt]

First of all, thank you everyone for your opinions it’s helped a lot.
Is it an issue that the GTX 580 is not on Adobe’s list of supported cards for Macs? Or would i need to do a hack to make it work?

Supported Graphics Cards from Adobe’s website.

GeForce GTX 285 (Windows and Mac OS)
GeForce GTX 470 (Windows)
GeForce GTX 570 (Windows)
GeForce GTX 580 (Windows)
NVIDIA® Tesla C2075 card (Windows) when paired with a Quadro card as part of an NVIDIA Maximus™ configuration
Quadro FX 3700M (Windows)
Quadro FX 3800 (Windows)
Quadro FX 3800M (Windows)
Quadro FX 4800 (Windows and Mac OS)
Quadro FX 5800 (Windows)
Quadro 2000 (Windows)
Quadro 2000D (Windows)
Quadro 2000M (Windows)
Quadro 3000M (Windows)
Quadro 4000 (Windows and Mac OS)
Quadro 4000M (Windows)
Quadro 5000 (Windows)
Quadro 5000M (Windows)
Quadro 5010M (Windows)
Quadro 6000 (Windows)
Quadro CX (Windows)
Tesla C2075** (Windows)