nVidia GTX 580

[Gabriele Turchi]

hi david ,
the regular (not flashed ) 580 don’t require extra power right on mac pro right?

thanks

g

Davinci Resolve Control Surface
MacPro
Cubix desktop 4
2 Red Rockets
GTX470+GTX470+GTX470
24GB RAM
HP Dreamcolor
Panasonic 58PF Plasma
Ultrascope

[Margus Voll]

gaming on grading station seems waste of money to me 😉

—

Margus

https://iconstudios.eu

DaVinci 8.2.1 OSX 10.7.3
MacPro 5.1 2×2,93 24GB
GTX 470 / Quadro 4000
Multibridge 2 Pro

[Rohit Gupta]

Hi Gabriele,

The GTX 580 (PC) version needs a 6-pin and a 8-pin power. The Mac Pro only has two 6-pin power cables for the GPUs.

You can easily just use a GTX 570 which only needs two 6-pin power cables. Pair it with a GT 120 and it gives you plenty of CUDA performance.

If you need more power, you can use Cubix with 3 NVIDIA GPUs, and a more powerful GUI card.

Regards,
Rohit

[Gabriele Turchi]

thanks rohit ,
i am asking because i actually have a 580 3GB ram on my resolve at home …
i am only using the 6 pin to 8 pin adaptor that comes with the card (EVGA) and nothing more … the system is stable ( have it since 3 weeks ) .

..and also , i removed the GT120 and the GTX580 (non flashed) it does boot OSX as well …

i think is the 590 that require extra power …or am i risking something here ?

PS: i have cubix , but at the office , still 3x GTX470 …waiting for you decklink 4k and a 4k monitor to upload that cubix with with 3 new GTX (hopefully 6 series …0

g

Davinci Resolve Control Surface
MacPro
Cubix desktop 4
2 Red Rockets
GTX470+GTX470+GTX470
24GB RAM
HP Dreamcolor
Panasonic 58PF Plasma
Ultrascope

[David Pirinelli]

You have to consider that Nvidia and AMD don’t put 8 pin plugs on their cards to try to look Macho.

They put them on there because they need more power than a 6 pin can provide.

A 6 pin is specced at 75W while an 8 pin is 150 Watts. So when you use one of those adapters, you are basically DOUBLING the juice going through the wire, and the traces on your Mac Pro logic board

It will probably be fine, just like you can get away with driving 80 MPH most of the time on the freeway.

HOWEVER….sooner or later you might get a citation and sooner or later you might be doing some heavy GPU computing in a warm room with a Mac full of 12 cores, 4 drives, 4 PCIE cards and bad airflow. And then there might be a little “pop” sound followed shortly by that awful smell of burned electronics. The smell that means “something is already dead”.

A Mac Pro logic board is like $1,000. An external PSU is $100. How much is a few days downtime worth while Apple puts in a new Logic Board? (But your clients will understand and wait patiently, right?) Or as Rohit notes, just use a 570 and you are within spec. There is a 2.5 GB 570…enough RAM for 4K and more speed than the 480 offered while using less power. We sell an EFI one that is fully Mac ready, or you can get a PC one and live with a few shortcomings.

I am including this picture from a 580 being killed. The guy who bought this used a few too many adapters and now the card is dead.

When I was young I had a nifty extension cord that rolled up inside a reel. I only needed to run power 6 feet so I only unrolled it that far and left the rest of the cable inside the reel. A few hours later I smelled burning plastic. The cable inside the reel had all melted together. Anytime you add wire, you are adding resistance. The electricity creates heat instead of being current available at the end of the line. The variety of adapters used here caused the 580 to die.

These are serious cards and need serious power. Trying to run the card this way is just like trying to power 17 strings of Christmas lights from the same outlet. Yes, you can buy adapters and plugs to do it, that doesn’t mean you should.

The dead card has yet to return to me but I believe he killed it. It was a 3GB model. The 3GB card is going to need more juice than a 1.5GB card. (the old “no free lunch” principle). Don’t try to power these cards with a string of Hinky Molex to PCIE 6 pin to PCIE 8 pin rigs. You are just going to burn something up.

[Jonathon Lee]

I had David P. flash my new egg EVGA GTX570 w/2.5 GB. I actually use this for resolve without a separate GUI card in a 12-core 2010 Mac Pro . I get 24fps with like 10-12 nodes with Pro Res HQ 1920×1080. Prior to the flash I got like 10-15 fps on pre-flashed card.

If you use resolve it seems to make a big diff. Power-wise it seems to run well. I’m even using a splitter for the power… a one into two… which if you don’t need it then connect it the “right way”. I have a Pro Tools HDX audio DSP card in the system which also requires a PCI-e power connection.

There’s also an LSI dual 4gb Fibre channel and a decklink cards + 4x enterprise HDD’ + 48gb ram. No issues yet.

Anyhow, the flash will run your card faster. DP is a cool dude. Use your second card in a cheap-o PC and make a resolve free DIT station.. that’s what I used my old 285 for. An HPz400 can be had for under 1k.

[Ryan Snook]

What do you charge to flash macvidcards sir?

[David Pirinelli]

It’s $100.

If it is a card I have done before it goes rather quickly.

If it isn’t, it might take me a day extra to write a custom firmware.

The 10.7.4 update drivers taught me something and I am now offering cards that do NOT need AGPM removed. All previous cards required this, but I have gained a better insight into how 10.8 works and have included this in roms starting today.

If you need the power cables for Mac Pro I charge $10/ea for them. If you want the DP to MDP adapter it is $15. (let’s you run Apple MDP 24″ and 27″, crucial for Premiere)

Since the card has to be disassembled for the EEPROM chip replacement, if it is old & dirty it gets cleaned, etc. Thermal pastes refreshed before reassembly. Card is then tested in a 4.1/5,1

[Ryan Snook]

Very cool and fair. How do you take in requests normally? I can’t imagine random cow posts that you may or may not read is the best way of requesting service on a card from you, is it?

[Graham Hutchins]

Hi David,

I too am curious about having my recently purchased GTX 570 flashed. There isn’t really any kind of contact info on MacVidCards.com, so I guess this forum could work.

Also, and I understand if this isn’t something you could or should answer, would flashing affect After Effects CS6 support (or lack thereof)? I’m thinking it wouldn’t, but it would be nice to know. Working in Windows is definitely nostalgic, but can be a little frustrating at times.

Please let me know the best way to contact you.

Thanks!

-Graham

OSX 10.7.4, Windows 7
Adobe CS6
FC Studio 3
Octo 2.26GB MacPro, 32 GB RAM