Eric Fiegehen
Forum Replies Created
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Chris,
I’ve been steering clients towards the 16-channel GPU-Xpander Desktop & Rackmount configurations ever since Resolve 8 was released. There are several new GPU-accelerated features in Resolve 8 which seem to saturate the PCIe bus very quickly. Not even an 8-channel, 40Gbps PCIe connection is enough bandwidth for many users.
Thunderbolt’s current 10Gbps performance spec appears to be more than adequate for a variety of OSX applications, including Resolve Lite. I recommend contacting Blackmagic Design first before attempting to run the full version of Resolve on a Thunderbolt-equiped Macbook Pro or iMac.
Eric Fiegehen
Cubix Corporation -
🙂 just a matter of plugging in a big enough power supply & exhaust fan, but I’ll make sure Engineering hears your request Sascha.
Eric
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Hi Everyone,
The Cubix Xpander Mobile will feature 1x 16-channel (physical) slot + 1x 8-channel (physical) slot. Purpose of this is that we don’t want people trying to do multi-GPU configurations under T-Bolt v.1.0. The intent is to provide a slot for a Quadro 4000 + whatever else you want.
There are 3rd party applications other than Resolve out there that we believe this product will also benefit. Autodesk Maya 2012 and Adobe CS 5.5 are just a couple of them.
Once t-bolt is released on Windows hardware next year, the applications expand (no pun intended) to included Autodesk 3ds Max + GPU-based rendering with iray and derivatives of it. Plenty of others out there as well.
Eric
Eric Fiegehen
Director, Visualization & GPU Compute Solutions
Cubix Corporation
ericc@cubix.com
https://www.cubixgpu.com -
You might be able to find a good motherboard with 7 PCIe Gen2 x16 slots (physical), but you won’t find one with 16 PCIe Gen2 x16 slots (electrical and physical). Cubix has a 16-slot solution.
Eric
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Also keep in mind that Cubix part no.XPDT-X16-4QF-INT (or -OSV) is configured for Quadro 4000 for Mac or Quadro FX 4800 for Mac, not multiple GTX cards. For flashed 470 / 480 cards, you will need to order the hi-capacity exhaust fan unit version, XPDT-X16-4-INT, which is also louder than -4QF by 8-10 decibels.
Eric
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An informal way to put it is, “If the drivers are there, we don’t care”. However, this doesn’t take into account support issues. Cubix (and every other vendor) has no way of opening a support ticket with NVIDIA if you run into problems while using the flashed 470/480 product with Cubix GPU-Xpander.
However, the performance increase that Sascha and others see using the flashed GTX cards makes me scratch my head wondering why NVIDIA & Apple don’t get together and roll-out a successor to the GTX285 for Mac. Seems like a no-brainer.
Eric
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Just to clarify, I’ve got a Quadro FX 4800 which will run inside my PC workstation, or inside a GPU-Xpander connected to my PC workstation. It will not work if installed in a Mac Pro, or if installed into a GPU-Xpander attached to the Mac Pro. OS-X requires a version of these cards with firmware specific to OS-X (or if you’re fortunate, a flashed GTX 470).
Like others in this thread, I’ve also heard that the OS-X specific NVIDIA cards can be installed into Windows or Linux machines with the proper drivers loaded and run just fine.
Eric
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Hi Cris,
I think what they’re getting at is you need an OpenGL 2.0 GUI card, and another 1 or more DaVinci-certified graphics cards for GPU acceleration purposes. For example, if you have 3 NVIDIA graphics cards installed in your computer, 2 will be used by Resolve for hardware acceleration purposes.
For Adobe products which feature Mercury Engine hardware acceleration (CS5 included, of course), you need an OpenGL 2.0 GUI graphics card plus another Adobe-certified NVIDIA graphics card specifically for hardware acceleration purposes.
For Autodesk Maya 2012, the recommended graphics configuration is an NVIDIA graphics card for the OpenGL 2.0 GUI plus an additional card (NVIDIA GeForce 330m, Quadro 4000, or Quadro FX 4800 for OS-X) specifically for hardware acceleration purposes. In this case, it would be for Autodesk’s Viewport 2.0 feature.
Eric
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I agree. A Windows version introduces a whole host of new issues, both on the development side and post-sales support side, which I doubt BMD/DaVinci would want to tackle.
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For what it’s worth, keep in mind PCIe 3.0 is out and already discussion of a competing standard to Thunderbolt with way more bandwidth for external connectivity. Tom’s Hardware article I read recently indicated a 40Gbps chipset for external connectivity will be available later this year or early next year.
If Steve Jobs is willing to kiss-off the professional markets by eliminating PCIe slots, adobe and avid will be laughing all the way to the bank.
Eric