Mercury Support for NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 (Mac)

[David Patterson]

Tim – Thanks for your thoughts on this. I’m hoping my current card will be more effective with the new version of CS “Next”. As it should be coming soon, waiting seems prudent.

[Gordon Modin]

After having an Nvidia 4800 graphics card in a mid 2010 2×2.4 GHz Quad Core Xeon Mac Pro (OS 10.8.3) I decided to get the Ge Force GTX 680 for Mac since it had 7 times the CUDA cores. The 4800 actually performed better, especially in rendering. The GTX is marketed towards gamers and must not have the same horsepower in the areas that Premiere needs. It’s not BAD, it just doesn’t beat the 4800. One nice aspect of the GTX 680 is the HDMI out. Unfortunately it’s not the output of Premiere (only the Mac desktop) so you can make presentations with it, but don’t buy the 680 thinking it’s the same output as an AJA card.

On a side note, I have tested Premiere Next on a Mac Pro with a Radeon card and it didn’t do as well as the Nvidia with CUDA cores. If you lower the pixel display to 1/2 it’s okay, though, but I didn’t see results as prompt and sharp as the Nvidia. Maybe it wasn’t the top of the line Radeon, but there is something to be said about CUDA technology combined with the Mercury Playback Engine.

A review of the Nvidia K5000 stated it was too far advanced for use in current Mac Pros, insinuating it was designed for a next-gen Mac. At $1,800 you can only image the horsepower on that card coupled with a fiber optic motherboard. Maybe next month…

[David Patterson]

Thanks, Gordin. As the next version of Premiere Pro may arrive soon, I will hold off and see how my current card (ATI HD 5870) holds up with the Mercury Playback engine in Premiere Pro.

[Andrew Saliga]

Sorry, I was out of pocket for awhile there…

Tim,
I appreciate all the info. Next time we upgrade one of the suites I may opt for another card and just modify the text file.

Gordon,
Thanks for sharing your 4800 experience. It definitely makes me feel better about going that route for the time being.

Now to get back to troubleshooting the original reason for this thread, Mercury Engine not recognizing the card. 🙂

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

[David Patterson]

I tried editing the text file for accepted cards, but my Radeon HD 5870 card is still not recognized. I have exchanged emails with Adobe support, and they insist that I will have to upgrade to a Nvidia card. I have a project coming up and need to buy SOMETHING, and may look for a used 4800 card and keep my fingers crossed that it will work with CC PP and AE. One never knows with Adobe.