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Internal Card Querie
Hey all,
At the moment I have been running a gt120 and gtx 285 internally and swapping the monitors from one to the other depending on what I’m doing. BUT I’ve just got a pci expansion box for my Mac Pro 4,1 and get the feeling that the best thing to put in that is a couple of GTX580 3gb cards (they can be any pc version correct?)
I still want to have an internal GUI card that will still be kick ass for running FCP/FCPX/After Effects/Motion ETC. I don’t want to run external power for it so no 580, so the question is what would be the best single card to have in my machine?
Cheers,
Toby
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7 Replies
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I had the same setup on one of my mac systems, and swapped the GT120 for my GTX285 as gui, and put 2 GTX580’s (3gb) in the cubix. gets pretty solid performance and the 285 does well with other apps with its 240 cuda cores.
Chris Hall
Colorist – Basher Films
Pasadena, CA -
Hi Toby,
If you have a few weeks that you can wait, the GTX680 drivers will be released with 10.8 and 10.7.5… it might become the best card that can be powered with the six-pin power cables in the Mac Pro… or it could be buggy and useless, but that should be apparent soon enough…
Rohit said in another thread that their tests with the 680 in a PC were promising. I’m holding on to see how it works and what BM says before rearranging cards.
Cheers,
KC
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So are you suggesting holding off on getting any 580’s in favour of 680’s all throughout?
Toby Angwin
Director
Soup Kitchen Films
https://www.soupkitchenfilms.net -
That’s what I’m doing right now, mostly because I want to work with 4K grading and monitoring on a Mac Pro as soon as possible, and I think having 4GB of RAM and PCI 3.0 is the smarter long-term investment. So if the cards have similar CUDA performance to the 580 and are supported by BM, I will opt for them in the Cubix for GPU processing.
But possible that they will have only the same (or worse) CUDA performance than the 580. Here’s the best info I have seen so far about benchmarking the CUDA performance (on a PC):
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/277/17967
But I’m hoping BM will advise, when Mountain Lion is released or perhaps earlier.
KC
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3gb cards (they can be any pc version correct?)
Not so sure about that, depending on OS – you might be OK with. Mountain Lion, but if you’re in Snow Leopard, you might be waiting for a flash mod.
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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“That’s what I’m doing right now, mostly because I want to work with 4K grading and monitoring on a Mac Pro as soon as possible, and I think having 4GB of RAM and PCI 3.0 is the smarter long-term investment.”
Just to add something to Kevin’s comment on PCIe 3.0, Cubix will be able to offer upgrade backplanes for current Xpander Desktop 4+ products once we’re shipping Gen3 products late Q4 2012 or early Q1 2013. In other words, purchase a new PCIe backplane instead of an entirely new Xpander if you own a Desktop 4, Xpander Desktop Series II, or later rack mount models – and save some money! (we’ll offer factory upgrades for an additional service fee, as well as the field upgrade option)
Eric Fiegehen
Director, Visualization & GPU Compute Solutions
Cubix Corporation
ericc@cubix.com
https://www.cubixgpu.com -
Thanks for the update Eric!
Since 680s for Mac kind of went official today, that’s one step forward on the PCI 3.0 roadmap… If we can update the Desktop 4 eventually, that will be the next step. Probably would to that right before I have a PCI 3.0 machine to put it in… Whether that’s the 2013 Mac Pro or a Windows machine.
Cheers,
KC
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