Upgrading 2008 MacPro 3,1 to edit RAW using DaVinci – Advice???

[Peter Chamberlain]

Have a look at the config guides, links on the BMD support pages. You should plan 16GB CPU ram and if u go for the gtx680, get the brand with the max GPU RAM. That may be 3GB or more.

[Margus Voll]

I have pretty similar machine at home.

You gave me idea to test it out with faster gpu.

—

Margus

https://iconstudios.eu
https://vimeo.com/iconstudioseu/videos

DaVinci 10, OSX 10.8.5
MacPro 5.1 2×2,93 24GB
GUI 4000 / GPU GTX 780
DL 4K
Eizo Color
Scope Box
Full Ligthspace CMS

[Warren Eig]

I have that machine with a Quadra 4000. Works ok here. I’m sure a faster GPU would give a higher frame rate.

Warren Eig
O 310-470-0905

email: warren@babyboompictures.com
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[Joseph Owens]

[RuPaul Robbin] ” upgrading my video card to a GeForce GTX680 (advice so far is that this is my best option for a video card upgrade for my MacPro 3,1″

Sounds good on paper, –> big issue is that the Nvidia GPUs (non-flashed for MacOS) will only be recognized by later Mac Pros — 4,1 and 5,1. For this reason I am planning a dedicated PC workstation to continue on in the UHD world, as the MacMini in the coffee can is not going to allow any customization.

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[John Sellars]

Unfortunately, memory is expensive for that box now, but add 8GB if you can. 8GB will run you $200. I used to have that model, and I had no problem adding 8GB to the 4GB for a total of 12GB. Check online or call OWC for optimum slot placement.

ML raw files are about 85MB/s, which is high for a single drive. Add 3 drives internal and RAID 0. Partition your current boot drive, and/or replace it with an SSD. I put my SSD boot drive in the lower optical bay, and had a 4 drive RAID 0 (450MB/s), but you also have the option of putting your user folder on a spinner and have the 3 drive RAID.

If you are considering the GTX 680 Mac Edition with 2GB, check out the macvidcards 4GB on eBay.

[Ericbowen]

Ram Profile for GPU acceleration applications is large especially with resolutions over 2K. 16GB of ram by itself is really bare minimum and will still limit the GPU acceleration performance. the 680GTX for Mac or any of the flashed video cards would help significantly but will be limited by the ram space. The CPU performance is also key to GPU acceleration so that will limit the GPU acceleration performance as well. If this workflow is going to be common at this point you really may want to consider a new system since upgrading that one for Raw is going to have limited results.

Eric-ADK
Tech Manager
support@adkvideoediting.com

[John Sellars]

I believe that buying RAM for the OP’s rig is the only thing that is throwing good money after bad. I had 12GB on my 2012 12 core for quite a while and never had an issue with it. Just don’t have many programs open at once. Sounds like he just needs to play nice with HD for now.

Buying a new GPU and hard drives, OTOH, can be moved to a 2010-2012 Mac Pro, if he decides to go that route…

[Ericbowen]

A new GPU with that much ram is a complete waste with GPU acceleration. The ram space required just for the gpu acceleration alone is 1 to 2x the vram on the card and that is completely outside the application usage. If you upgrade 1 then the other needs upgraded. This is not about only using 1 application only.

Eric-ADK
Tech Manager
support@adkvideoediting.com

[John Sellars]

I have never seen Resolve use more than 8GB of RAM. I just did a test where I loaded up a 5K Epic job in a 4K timeline at full debayer and this is the result:

I realize this is comparing a 2012 memory usage to a 2008, but on my ’08 I never saw Resolve (v10) use more than 8 GB. Also this test is with a few nodes and no OFX.

Is there something I’m missing here? I have enclosed my cuda-z report below if it helps. Eric, I would defer to your superior technical knowledge here, but I just don’t see the advantage of that much expensive ($400 for 16GB) RAM for this old rig…

2012 12 core
24GB RAM
GTX 780 6GB (flashed)
10.9.4
Resolve 11.0.0b.049

CUDA-Z Report
=============
Version: 0.8.207 https://cuda-z.sf.net/
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.9.4 13E28
Driver Version: 8.26.26 310.40.45f01
Driver Dll Version: 6.0
Runtime Dll Version: 5.50

Core Information
—————-
Name: GeForce GTX 780
Compute Capability: 3.5
Clock Rate: 1019.5 MHz
PCI Location: 0:8:0
Multiprocessors: 12 (2304 Cores)
Therds Per Multiproc.: 2048
Warp Size: 32
Regs Per Block: 65536
Threads Per Block: 1024
Threads Dimensions: 1024 x 1024 x 64
Grid Dimensions: 2147483647 x 65535 x 65535
Watchdog Enabled: Yes
Integrated GPU: No
Concurrent Kernels: Yes
Compute Mode: Default
Stream Priorities: No

Memory Information
——————
Total Global: 4096 MiB
Bus Width: 384 bits
Clock Rate: 3004 MHz
Error Correction: No
L2 Cache Size: 48 KiB
Shared Per Block: 48 KiB
Pitch: 2048 MiB
Total Constant: 64 KiB
Texture Alignment: 512 B
Texture 1D Size: 65536
Texture 2D Size: 65536 x 65536
Texture 3D Size: 4096 x 4096 x 4096
GPU Overlap: Yes
Map Host Memory: Yes
Unified Addressing: No
Async Engine: Yes, Unidirectional

Performance Information
———————–
Memory Copy
Host Pinned to Device: 5716.71 MiB/s
Host Pageable to Device: 2275.52 MiB/s
Device to Host Pinned: 6157.85 MiB/s
Device to Host Pageable: 2256.33 MiB/s
Device to Device: 99.8607 GiB/s
GPU Core Performance
Single-precision Float: 2911.24 Gflop/s
Double-precision Float: 208.966 Gflop/s
32-bit Integer: 826.645 Giop/s
24-bit Integer: 836.694 Giop/s

Generated: Fri Sep 5 11:54:28 2014

[Ericbowen]

I have used resolve and dealt with clients using resolve where it uses far more than that for 4K+ and that is with 3GB Vram cards. Resolve will use the caching models for number of frames based on the system ram available for the application player and what is required for the GPU acceleration to cache from system ram to vram. Frame rate of media will also play into this. 1 project does not equate to all resolve will use. The caching model changes as projects change caching requirements along with frame rate changes. 5K media will cache differently than 4K media. 24GB of ram is what you want atleast for a 6GB card. You would also have to ask Blackmagic btw if the application ram usage also tracks the GPU acceleration usage required by the video driver? BTW ram usage now days especially in GPU acceleration applications is completely dynamic. The applications are built to try and work with in the available ram space. However there is a point where performance starts to degrade and errors have a much higher chance of occurring.

Eric-ADK
Tech Manager
support@adkvideoediting.com