Mac Pro 2,1 Working incredible well with Resolve 8.0 GTX285,GT120 combo

[Jonathon Lee]

LOL! I’m not a mole either… I bought a 285 from you… curb side service baby. Drove up, called, got my card. It looked way more nefarious then it was. At least there is an honest source for cards. I almost got ripped off buying two SAS chassis from some fool on ebay.. if it were not for the buyer protection I’d have been screwed out of $700.

With macvidecards you never have to worry about getting ripped off or having to jump through hoops.

Also… not really why people jump up each other’s bung-holes on this list. This is a fantastic, (almost always) friendly and generous group.

– Jonathon

[Alessandro Pinto]

Hi Matt,
I have a Mac Pro 2,1 ad I want to use Davinci Resolve on it.
I ‘ve found on Ebay two Davinci Resolve package from Macvidcards, but both are compatible with Mac Pro 3,1 and newer.
Please, can you confirm that if I can buy one of this package it works on my Mac Pro 2,1?
Thanks a lot.

[Matt Ryan]

Hi Alessandro,
Contact Dave at MacVidCards, he will make sure you get cards that work for the 2,1 specifically. My setup was the 1gb evga gtx285 and an evga gt120 512mb. He will walk you through which model will work and ship with the cards an installation disk with the required app as well as instructions to get your cards up an running. The 2,1 Mac has specific model of cards that it can accept so be safe and contact Dave, he’s the expert. Make sure you tell him it’s a 2,1 Mac pro.

Best of luck.

As a side note to anyone reading this thread. I never said my machine renders footage real time, I was merely claiming real time playback with multiple node corrections. As for rendering I was getting anywhere between 3fps and 12fps depending on the render settings. I know this isn’t a blazing fast setup but for me and for some others it will do until we can afford to upgrade our Mac pro’s.

[Alessandro Pinto]

Hi Matt,
thanks you very much for you answer.
On Macvidcards site I didn’t found a contact e-mail, so please could you give me the e-mail of Dave?
Thanks again.

[Matt Ryan]

Dave’s email is: dpart2@mac.com

Best,
Matt

[Paul Principe]

Hey Matt,

Just came across this post and wanted to thank you for the lead. I have the exact same Mac Pro configuration as you do with less ram. I’ve contacted Dave for more information on the cards via his ebay store.

I feel like a very black cloud has been lifted off of me. I really was very discouraged when I found out my Mac was bordering bone-yard-itis because it was EFI32. It will be nice to get some more mileage out of it before I have to pony up 3k+ for a newer model.

[Matt Ryan]

Hi Paul,

I too panicked at the realization that my tower i spent $5,000 on was now basically obsolete. Dave wrote an EFI32 Rom for the GT120 and the whole setup worked without issue from the start. I didnt need real time rendering from my machine but real time playback while coloring was essential. Dave warned me there was a possibility it wouldnt work, but i would rather spend $400 for cards that i could always resell and recoup my money than buy a new $5,000 tower which at the moment i cant afford.

Needless to say i gave it a try and had no hickups. The reason i posted this was for others in my similar situation and to confirm the setup will work. Would i like a new mac pro? Of course. But for now this works just fine for my needs.

Best of luck!

[Paul Principe]

Actually this begs a bigger question with regard to Apple.

It appears they’ve abandoned professionals in favor of consumer grade disposable devices and software. It’s for that reason, along with the ridiculous price, that I am resisting buying any more Apple hardware.

Since Resolve will soon have a windows based version, there is nothing I will be currently using that will require Apple hardware any more. I abandoned FCS for Avid Media Composer when FCPX was released and I’m not looking back. I learned to edit with Avid at the beginning of my career so it wasn’t a painful transition to go back.

I hate Microsoft products with a passion, but it almost certainly would be more economically viable when the time to upgrade comes to go back to windows based hardware. I’m positive I could build a machine that has more horsepower than a boned-out Mac Pro for way less than $5k.

This is a big decision (jumping OS) that hopefully I can put off for another 12 to 18 months. I want to wait and see if and what Apple is going to do to regain the confidence of the professional market.

[Dave Boampong]

I received the GT120 and GTX285 Davinci package for 1st gen Macs but the package came without the installation disc. Could you kindly send it?

Regards
Dave Boampong

[Suny Behar]

Hey Matt,

I just bought the cards, and have the exact same hardware config as you. But am not able to get anywhere close to realtime playback from 4K files in 1/2 Good. What other cards do you have running on your system?

I have a BM Extreme 2, and a HighPoint RAID.

The problem I am having I think is that the BM Card requires 4 Lanes, and so does the GT120. So I am left having to put my RAID card in the X1 Slot, which is getting me READ/WRITE speeds of 150MB/s instead of the 450MB/s I used to get in my 4X slot.

But short of an expansion chasis, I’m not sure what to do to increase my drive speed.

How fast are your drives running?

Thanks!