Not enough Card Slots in a Mac Pro !!

[Greg Leuenberger]

Jeremiah is doing what many of us will try and do – and that’s leverage our current investment in hardware to take advantage of the DaVinci software.

One of my systems is based around the Decklink Extreme HD – I recently purchased an HP Dreamcolor (for another project) that I would like to use in conjunction with the HDLink Displayport to monitor color (originally in After FX….now I will be one of the thousands of people buying DaVinci software). It seems to me that the ideal situation would be to either use one of the new Fermi based NVidia cards (assuming it will be coming out for OS X….not that Apple has ever had their sh*t together regarding graphics cards…but we can hope) or use your existing card (ATI 4870’s in my case) in conjunction with a single slot Tesla card for the CUDA calculations (again…here we are dealing with Apple who is woefully behind the times…but we can always hope…I think the 16xxx gen Tesla is single slot). Quite frankly this would have been a better release on Win7..but I won’t get into that.

Barring a Fermi based card or adding in a single slot Tesla then we’re limited to a two-slot last gen card….(thanks Apple..)

So…a GTX 470/480 + RAID Card + Decklink would work….a single slot Tesla card (if it exists) + the gfx card you already have + RAID card + Decklink may be a better solution. There’s a number of 3D rendering apps that take advantage of CUDA processing…when they’re cranking away the UI is basically unresponsive since all the card’s processing is being used by CUDA. I’m not sure how that translates to DaVinci though – so 2 cards may not necessarily be better.

I’m guessing we will be seeing some new and/or updated control surfaces rather quickly – I’m guessing people won’t want to pay a lot more that 2-3K for a control surface in a boutique shop.

Looking forward to seeing the software.

best,

Greg

Greg Leuenberger
CEO
Sabertooth Productions, Inc.
http://www.sabpro.com

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jeremiah,

We’ve deliberately been non-specific about all of the Mac hardware requirements as we need more time to test a bunch of variables before publishing a definitive guide, which we will do.

I do know that Grant Petty was saying that Resolve will run on “the latest Mac Pro series” and I’m guessing our engineers simply haven’t had a chance to test older configurations. We have to balance the desire to use existing investment in computer hardware with the extra time that may take to release Resolve for Mac.

We’ve already managed to bring down the cost of Resolve by a huge amount even if new Mac and graphics hardware was needed. If we can work with older hardware, we’ll try to do that too but I really won’t know more until we get much closer to releasing Resolve for Mac. The primary aim will be provide a very solid first release on the Mac platform and I wouldn’t be surprised if we only certified current hardware for that release. We can then look at making many additional refinements including the use of lower cost hardware where possible.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Jeremiah Belt]

Hi Luke,

Thanks for your response and information. I look forward to reading that guide you speak of. And I understand the many facets and complexities of testing this and that hardware layout. Thanks for taking the time to respond and I’m excited to see DaVinci Resolve for Mac in action and all the future possibilities of that workflow. I have no problem upgrading my workstation if required, just wanted to get a feel for what was possible with my existing investments. Even with the price of a new workstation the DaVinci Resolve for Mac is surly a huge price drop, and as a freelance Colorist I am very excited.

Best Regards,
Jeremiah

[Paul Del vecchio]

I’m sorry, but when does this start shipping? I heard a rumored release of July but I’m not sure how truthful that is. I’ll be prepping and making the necessary hardware adjustments in order to run Resolve properly.

Paul Del Vecchio – Director
https://www.triple-e-productions.net
https://www.pauldv.net

[Kris Anderson]

The idea of a pcie expansion slot is a false economy. All you are doing it taking the finite lane allocation and dividing it into more slots. You might have more slots but you still have the same bandwidth. Most cards these days want at least a x4 slot. Start to split that up on an expansion chassis and you will start to notice the performance of your other cards slipping.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Just to confirm.

The GTX 285 that everyone here is referring to, for use with a MacOSX version Resolve. Is this the same card that sells on the Apple store, as EVGA GeForce GTX 285, like this one?

https://store.apple.com/us/product/TW387ZM/A

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Kristian Lam]

Hi Neil,

That’s the one and we used them on our demo booth at NAB.

regards

Kristian Lam
Blackmagic Design

[Benni Hoven]

Hi Jeremiah,

are there any news in here? Do you already use Resolve with your MacPro 2.1 + GTX285? Or have you bought a new Mac?

We do have the same problem: buy a new 5.1 machine or upgrade the 2.1 which seems to be strong enough though.

Would be nice if you reply or send me a message.

Kindly,
Ben