best video card for Mac Pro

[David Roth weiss]

Call macvid.com, they are pretty much the only game in years en now, because no one is manufacturing cards for the legacy mac pros any more. Macvid know how to flash PC Cards to work on macs.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Shane Ross]

Yup, sad to say that because Apple stopped making towers with PCIe slots, you can’t really get graphics cards for them. The last one I was able to get had a whopping 1GB of RAM on it, and Resolve laughs at that. You need at least 2GB JUST to get it working…4GB to use it safely. And for that, yeah, you need PC GPUs that have been flashed to work with Mac.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Singleton Makin]

Get a TitanX used on ebay the maxwell version is very cheap now since the new Pascal versions Are whetting everyone’s whistles

But I bought two TitanX for a great deal
Then sold one on ebay and made a little extra to offset my cards cost

I bought two for $1200

Sold it for around $790

And no I do not recommend flashing the cards!
You do not need the boot screen
Plus it will damage the value of you want to resell it or put it into a PC for color grading purposes

Macvidcards does have the great list of web drivers for the particular OSX that you are running

I am currently at 10.10.5
I will verify my web driver tonight
The number is long and I have a few versions on my harddrive
I do not want to give you the wrong one

But that said!
Be very careful and turn off Apple updates automatic function

I just got screwed through the drive through on 9/2/2016 security update
My mac tower 5,1 was normally not plugged into the Internet
But I plugged it into the router to exchange files

Some how the autopilot was on and I went for a coffee break
Came back and my web drivers had become obsolete!!!! Incompatible!

So be careful!

Singleton Makin
\”observe the masses and do the opposite!\”

[Laurent Fluttert]

I had a MacPro with the same configuration and had a GTX285 in it. It was a bit tricky to get it to work with Resolve, you’ll have to find the right cuda driver for it. Color grading goes well up to HD, maybe 2K but for Ultra HD it’s too slow.
Downside is that the GTX285 works up to Resolve 12.0, from 12.5 on the card is no longer supported and does not work.

Laurent

[Singleton Makin]

Based upon your Mac rom you should be able to find like the genius above says with less words on Macvidcards.com

You could buy a card from them to get you quickly up am running

But again you do not need to flash your card for Mac
That is just for the boot screen

I have it working using another cheap nvidia card 512mb just to see the install
Or you can use VNC from another Mac and share screen that works too

But once you install the CUDA drivers and the web drivers

It will work you just will not see the Apple boot screen if you take out the 512mb nvidia card.

The TitanX boots up a few seconds after

Singleton Makin
\”observe the masses and do the opposite!\”

[Singleton Makin]

https://www.macvidcards.com/store/p44/Nvidia_GTX_Titan_X_12_GB_%282014%29.html

this is the same card i have installedin my 5,1
i was not sure if it would work on your 3,1 so I looked it up on their site…

it is a grand but they are including the mac flashing service which might be worth it because I have had headaches and downtime dealing with webdrivers and not being able to see the screen because my webdrivers got wiped out by the security update

but that said…
I have a GeForce GT 120 with only 512mb I useto get the system up and running with….

then you can either leave it in or pull it out once the Titan X web drivers and cuda drivers are installed.
note
turn on AUTOMATIC LOG IN from the USERS LOG IN WINDOW to bypass the password screen.
I have had a problem with it defaulting back to the gt 120 card even though I re-arranged it to be the 2nd monitor and have no tool bar….

with Yosemite you have tool bar on both…..once you are logged in

but if for some reason you leave it to LOG IN WINDOW list USERS and expect to have to put in a password?
With the gt120 installed it picks it first by default…

But ONCE I take that card out of the tower

I replace it with my eSATA pcie card.

Then I just have to wait until the system boots which is only 30secs!!!!!! because of the flash drive pcie card 512GB I have installed for OSX

So I do not see an APPLE Screen….but I do see the Yosemite Background and my desktop once it has booted.

This is with a TITAN X 12GB VRAM and no MAC FLASHING on the card…..
in other words I can use it on this mac 5,1

then pull it out and put it into the PC if I need it for COLOR GRADING and CUDA CORES on that system…..

Hybrid is best in my opinion…

but less headaches is worth the money buying from MACVIDCARDS.com

just saying…

Singleton Makin
\”observe the masses and do the opposite!\”

[Dave Carnegie]

thanks to everybody for help. really has changed the face of editing from the days of crunching ones fingers in a moviloa.

will not be doing anything above 1080p,
source will be getting will be all over the place so just want to keep it simple

still have not worked out what to do

live in UK half way east coast..

dave