Mercury Support for NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 (Mac)

[Ryan Holmes]

What’s the model identifier of the Mac Pro that’s giving you trouble? Is that Model supported by the FX 4800 card? If so, are the appropriate drivers installed for it (the latest and greatest may not be suitable for that model).

If it’s an older Mac Pro, it may not be able to accept the 4800.

Click on the Apple (upper left corner of your screen)–>About This Mac –> More Info –> System Report

In there you can see the Model Identifier number (1,1 or 2,1 or 3,1 etc)

Your Mac Pro needs to be a 3,1 or later for the Quadro FX 4800 to work.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Tim Kolb]

I haqven’t been a Mac guy for 10+ years, so Ryan’s info is something I didn’t know…

I assume you bought these cards used? (they’re a couple of ticks back in the Quadro lineage).

After you check on Ryan’s point, I’m wondering if you switched the cards just to see if the problem stays with the machine or follows the specific card…? Both machines have an adequate power supply, right? (I think I have a 4800 around here, but I can’t recall if it needs an extra power tap in addition to the slot or not…I think it does)…if the card wasn’t adequately powered due to a loose cable or something like that, you’d have issues, certainly.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor

[Andrew Saliga]

Thanks for the info Ryan, I should have posted that. Both Macs are 5,1.

Good call Tim. I’ll check to make sure I fully seated the aux power cable on the card, and if that fails I’ll swap cards with another editor this evening.

Hopefully it’s something that simple.

Andrew Saliga
I/O Specialist/Assistant Editor
Steelehouse Productions
http://www.steelehouse.com

[David Patterson]

Andrew – Did you get the video card issue sorted out? I’m looking to add a CUDA card to my Mac 5,1 machine, and see a lot of used Nvidia 4800 cards on ebay. Do you need to do any system hacks, or merely preinstall the appropriate Nvidia drivers to make the card work?

BTW, I have read that the Nvidia 4000 is a newer generation card, and more powerful than the FX 4800. Does anyone have experience with using this card on a Mac 5,1?

cheers,
Dave

[Ryan Holmes]

The 4000 has about twice as many CUDA cores as the 4800. Between those 2 cards I’d go with a 4000.

If I had to pick a card right now to add to my Mac it would be the GTX 680 as it has about 12X as many CUDA cores as a 4800 and about 6x as many as a 4000.

https://www.evga.com/products/Product.aspx?pn=02G-P4-3682-KR

COW thread talking it being installed:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/3/938566
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/277/15855

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[David Patterson]

Ryan – Thanks for your recommendations. My budget is pretty tight, but I’d like to get CUDA happening with Premiere Pro, as I have some editing projects coming up.

I currently have a ATI HD 5870 card in my 6-core 5,1 Mac (OS X 10.8.2, 32GB RAM). I’m concerned about replacing this card with one that has slower Open GL (CL?) performance. Any thoughts on what Nvidia card will give me comparable Open GL performance, plus the added benefit of CUDA?

FWIW, a friend has two Mac towers – one with a FX 4800 and the other with a GTX 680. I don’t know the age or model of his Macs, but he claims the FX 4800 is (slightly) faster than the GTX 680. Without knowing more about his machines, this info is of little use, other than to say he prefers his old 4800 card.

[Andrew Saliga]

David,

I haven’t had a chance to resolve the issue yet. Overnight renders and busy days in the middle of projects make it tough to break away for troubleshooting. 🙂

Ryan,

I’ve heard good things about GTX 680, but I’m in the same boat as David, and am wanting to utilize the Mercury Engine. I’ve heard that you can trick Premiere into accepting cards that are not officially supported. Any experience with this?

Andrew Saliga
I/O Specialist/Assistant Editor
Steelehouse Productions
http://www.steelehouse.com

[Tim Kolb]

[Andrew Saliga] “. I’ve heard that you can trick Premiere into accepting cards that are not officially supported. Any experience with this?”

It’s a matter of one text file…not even much of a trick or a hack. The key is that certain cards are less tested than others… With Premiere Pro fuuuutuuure, you will be able to use whatever GPU is in the system.

…but the 4800 is a good card. The newer 4000 has 256 CUDA cores vs the 4800’s 192, but the memory interface is actually wider on the 4800 with a 384 bit wide memory interface vs 256 on the 4000…max power consumption is an 8 watt difference between them.

If the 4800s need updating, NVIDIA does pretty well with driver updates, etc. I would wait and see how the 4800s work for you before you jump immediately to something else. The cards will only get cheaper and more will be supported, so it’s not like you’re losing ground in that sense..

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor

[David Patterson]

Tim – The link below, which I found somewhere on this Premiere Pro forum, mentions what you refer to:

https://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5.htm

If the info is correct, we will soon be able to use ATI cards for Mercury Playback, and non-certified Nvidia cards will be easier to work with.

I’m wondering if its wise to invest in a Nvidia card or wait to see if my ATI HD 5870 will be more effective when the next CS Premiere Pro arrives.

[Tim Kolb]

I think if you are already sitting on a big GPU card, I’d hang tight until PPro next hits and we know more.

AMD has done some tests that they’re pretty proud of…though the results are charted in only relative terms (…shorter bars are best, smaller numbers are better, etc) but I’ve not seen any charts yet where they define their scale as seconds, days, degrees the office went up in temperature during the test, pounds, liters, rads…no clue.

Of course AMD cards are typically less expensive than NVIDIA cards, so that makes testing interesting as well…you can test against specifications, or price.

…I’m just not one to tel somebody to go out and spend money until it’s clear what it should be spent on.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor