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Upgrade heavy duty graphics card for mid 2010 Mac Pro or get iMac 5K
Yes. My mid 2010 Mac Pro is still in use and I can’t justify spending another $7-$10K on a beefed up 2015 Mac Pro model when the 2010 can still do a lot of useful 1080p. My issue now is the lack of VRAM needed for Red Giant Products. Running on dual monitors at 1920x1080r, 1Gb VRAM is constantly causing flickering problems during rendering. That 2010 Mac Pro is bundled with the ATI Raedon 5870. Any recommendations for at least a 2 Gb VRAM card that will work with all Apple and Adobe products? I have up to $1K to spend for a decent VRAM. But unsure if I’ll be better off getting the 32 Gb RAM 5K Retina iMac for $3.5K. It has 2 Gb VRAM in it already on that beautiful Retina screen.
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6 Replies
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A $3000 retina iMac completely maxed out with $250 of crucial 32mb ram should smoke the 2010 Mac pro even with a souped up graphics card because the processors and mother board don’t have h264 hardware acceleration and some other piece of tech I forget the name of (grand central?) that are both utilized by FCP X. Plus you get a 27″ retina display built in!
I may have convinced myself to go buy one right now….
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Also, check out barefeats for this. They ran some good comparisons on that matter lately…
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I was faced with a similar problem. I searched on Amazon and found a refurbished ATI Radeon HD 5870 with 1gig of memory for $399. I bought it and installed it with no issues and now I have all the power I need to run the new version with all features and bought a little more life of my MacPro. A new one is in my future but this was a cheaper way to keep working and using the new features.
Harry -
I just picked up an Sapphire HD 7950 Mac Edition w/3GB VRAM at OWC for my Mid-2010 Mac Pro 12-Core and it works great. That should solve your VRAM issue but it cost a premium at $477 because you simply can’t find them anymore. It supports the Mac Boot screen (unlike it’s PC counterpart) and works fine with Yosemite. I’m really happy with it.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
I just took a dicey risk by getting a Radeon 7950 non-Mac version for half the cost. Don’t mind about being able to see it shows up during boot. Will know by next week. 3 Gb VRAM should hopefully solve the annoying flicker bug with various Red Giant apps. 1 Gb VRAM is not enough for multi layered 1080p sequences.
iMac 5K is nice but I still feel it’s just doesn’t have the raw horse power and may over heat on big projects. This interim solution should last couple more years before getting the latest generation of Mac Pro is a must. FCP X may stop supporting older 2010 Nehalem gen CPUs. I noticed that the exact same project I created in the 2010 Mac Pro will not open in a 2008 3,1 Mac Pro. It is simply too big and complex in size even I have the exact same Radeon 5870 video card in the 2008 3,1 Mac Pro model. But when I bring the hdds to the 2010, open w/ out any issues. No error message on “not enough resources at this time”.
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Think yourself lucky to have the 2010. mine is 2008 🙁 And I really can’t afford a new machine 🙁
Different financial situation to when I bought it
Currently running a 1GB 4870 and a a 512mb 8800
I’d buy any chuck outs any ones has if they are better than my current cards. ..I’ll buy them of course
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