There’s a lot if Nvidia + Mac rumors floating around

[Jim Glickert]

Sorry if I sound like a noob, but if Apple used Nvidia cards, what exactly would that mean for us? Significantly faster rendering and encoding compared to ATI cards? Also, would it be more beneficial to FCPX users than to PPro or Avid users, or would everyone reap the benefits? Thanks in advance for any responses.

[Gary Huff]

[Jim Glickert]Sorry if I sound like a noob, but if Apple used Nvidia cards, what exactly would that mean for us?

It primarily means that Premiere Pro users would have a better option when it comes to the Mercury Playback Engine, which can currently only use NVIDIA hardware for GPU acceleration.

Sine FCPX uses OpenCL, it can take advantage of both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs.

[Rafael Amador]

This has been posted in the FCP forum:

https://micgadget.com/21980/apple-is-close-to-finally-updating-the-mac-pro/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+micgadget+(M.I.C.+Gadget)&utm_content=Google+Reader

rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Paul Dickin]

[Rafael Amador] “This has been posted…”
Hi
The move to Ivy Bridge Xeons is highly speculative – 8 core Sandy Bridge Xeon workstations have only just been announced by HP and Fujitsu now that Intel are finally shipping them after a 6 months delay.

Ivy Bridge Xeons aren’t even on Intel’s announced 2013 roadmap so far…

[Jeremy Garchow]

What Gary said.

It would give us better access to Resolve and allow CUDA processing to the applications that support it (Adobe being a big one).

Not sure what it would mean for FCPX quite yet, if anything. With 10.0.3, for me, things have slowed down a bit. I don’t know why. It has me reaching to get a new GPU. I don’t know if Nvidia will help as from what I have heard, their openCL support is not as good as ATI. Apple has been known to be working on different support platforms (i.e. the switch from PPC to intel) concurrently, so maybe there’ll be a surprise. Who knows. I still have hope that manufacturers want to make things better, not harder. I’m a sap, I guess.

With some other major video applications running CUDA, this seems to get a bit messy if FCPX is best with openCL.

I’m sure we will know sometime soon.

[Richard Cardonna]

https://micgadget.com/13052/the-upcoming-updates-for-apple-products/

Plus more mbp news
rc

[Paul Dickin]

[Richard Cardonna] “Mac mini will receive the Thunderbolt I/O”
Hi
LOL!
Hot news from June 2011…..

[Helmut Kobler]

For the record, Jeremy, I have an ATI Radeon 4870 with 512MB in my Mac Pro. It shipped with my Mac in early 2009.

A few months ago, when I was trying to figure out how to speed FCP X up (10.0.2), I ordered 32GB of ram for my machine (up from 12GB) and the best ATI card available, which is still the Radeon 5870 with 1GB of ram.

I installed the card, and for the life of me, couldn’t see any performance improvement in general FCP X operation over my nearly 3 year old card. I didn’t test exporting because it wasn’t that important to me, but I looked for any improvements in scrolling speed, in timeline rendering, in zoom in and out on the timeline, etc. Nothing improved. I ended up keeping the 32GB of ram because it was cheap and gave me more headroom for running multiple apps, but I returned the 5870.

So if you order a better ATI card, make sure you can return it in you have to!

——————-
Documentary Camera in Los Angeles
http://www.lacameraman.com

[Steve Connor]

[Helmut Kobler] “I installed the card, and for the life of me, couldn’t see any performance improvement in general FCP X operation over my nearly 3 year old card. I didn’t test exporting because it wasn’t that important to me, but I looked for any improvements in scrolling speed, in timeline rendering, in zoom in and out on the timeline, etc. Nothing improved. I ended up keeping the 32GB of ram because it was cheap and gave me more headroom for running multiple apps, but I returned the 5870. “

Great timing, I was just thinking of doing exactly the same!

Steve Connor
“FCPX Agitator”
Adrenalin Television

[Lance Bachelder]

Don’t forget about the CG guys – Maya uses the CUDA cores for rendering and previewing so having nVidia back is really good for all.

I would like to see more choices with both brands though – Mac users are always stuck with only a couple of outdated, underpowered and OVERpriced choices with graphics cards. ATI is introducing their 7000 series and nVidia gamer cards like the GTX580 are far more powerful and less expensive than the entry-level Quadro 4000 offered for the Mac. I hated paying $250 for my 5770 so I could run FCPX when the PC version is less than half that and a couple of generations behind.

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Irvine, California