Phillip Todd
Forum Replies Created
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Looks like your card uses one 6 pin cable.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/opengl-workstation-graphics,1269-5.html
(open your case and verify for yourself)The GTX 570 uses two 6 pins Mini PCI to PCI cables. The longer ones, like these are easier to install:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/2-Pcs-Apple-Mac-Pro-Tower-PCIe-Graphics-Video-Card-Power-Cables-5870-285-/261163688310?_trksid=p3284.m263&_trkparms=algo%3DSIC%26its%3DI%26itu%3DUCI%252BIA%252BUA%252BFICS%252BUFI%26otn%3D21%26pmod%3D270862378214%26ps%3D54Kallan reported above that the GTX 660 uses only one. Check it out you might want to change your order?
Best
Phillip Todd
Cinematographer -
All those brand are fine. Many people choose EVGA. I have an MSI GTX570 which works perfectly. it has a pretty complex cooler on it, and it stays really cool as a result. I’d stay away from the lesser known brands like Sparkel and Galaxy.
Phillip Todd
Cinematographer -
Sounds like you are on the right path. Yes, you’ll need two power cables for any serious video card.
I assume the 660 you are looking at is a PC card. I see you are on 10.8.4. They work on 10.7.5 and above. Apple has the nvidia drivers in the OS, but, Nvidia always updates them a few days after every OS update.
You 1st need to install the Cuda driver (pref pane). 5.0.61 is the current version:
https://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-cuda-5.0.61-driver.html
This is a pref pane which will report which driver is available to the card.If the apple driver is giving you trouble in your cuda program of choice, try the up-to-date web driver. There is a way you can revert back to the apple drivers built into the Nvidia sw (google for the instructions) or you can back them up manually.
The web updates can be found on the Nvidia site, I believe you need to search for Quadro drivers for mac (I find it hard to find the link within the Nvidia site, so I use google instead):
https://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-313.01.02f01-driver.html
Your 660 card isn’t listed, but, is supported by these drivers. I think the GTX _70 cards (470, 570, 670) have been in the past easiest to install. I think those issues went away in 10.8.Regardless of the drivers, be aware using a PC card in a mac, you will lose the EFI boot screen you are accustomed to seeing. This only affects you if you need to boot at start up to another drive or use the recovery partition. You can use the pref pane “start up” disk and have a clone of your boot drive handy, should you need the recovery partition. Another recommendation is to hang onto the original mac card and if the machine is giving you trouble, swap back to your original EFI GFX card.
Best of luck. -Phillip
Phillip Todd
Cinematographer -
[charlotte kaufman] “but i found that once i did that, i no longer had access to changing the clips meta-data. Did you find the same issue?”
I have not gotten into metadata yet, but I’d like to, it’s on my to do list.
I just checked on my edit machine. Yes my XMP metadata fields are ineditible and there are no .xmp files created next to the original material as I have seen before.
I found this info which goes deeper but is inconclusive: https://forums.adobe.com/message/5306999
I suspect changing the AVCHD file folders to lowercase breaks XMP for PPro CS6.
Maybe another Cow Member can help us out?
Phillip Todd
Cinematographer -
Kallan, How did your vidcard search work out?
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How did it work out Charlotte?
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Hi Elizabeth, I don’t know what the “AVCHD converter” is that you are speaking of.
But, I did cover this topic for a few others 2 weeks ago: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/942907Please report back how you make out for the next person who comes along.
Phillip Todd
Cinematographer -
You are lucky to have such a service. I agree with your sentiments. Apple has left many people hanging.
Here in the USA whenever some 15 year old posts on Craigslist he’ll build you a Hackintosh, the ad is taken down within a day.
Good luck with it.
Phillip Todd
Cinematographer -
It’ll eat AVCHD for a light snack come back for more. You’ll never have to render or transcode.
I have seen a Hackintosh in action and if you can deal with the headaches of setting one up, and updating it, it’s another avenue, if you don’t want a computer with designed obsolescence from Apple.
Laptops and speed: Yes, I wanted to use my laptop on location and be able to review footage with a client and add markers, then bring it back to my edit machine with those notes intact. Anyway, it can be done in FCPx on my 2009 laptop. Just not in PPro.
Phillip Todd
Cinematographer -
[Sascha Engel] “GeForce 8600 M GT Card, 512 MB VRAM”
That’s not enough vram to meet the MPE spec. of 896 MB vram desktop or 1 GB laptop. See: https://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5-2.htm and look for Laptop GPUs 2/3 of the way down the page.
To edit smoothly you need to transcode to an editing codec. There are threads here about installing ProRes or the Avid codecs DNxHD. Discussion here: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/943008#943008
While that is not what you wanted to hear, the only other option is to upgrade your 5 yr old laptop. So maybe buying a 2TB drive to store all those transcoded files on is a cheaper route.
Off Topic: your 2008 MBP might not even meet the FCPx spec. ( https://support.apple.com/kb/SP624 ) it’s the only other option that can playback native formats like AVCHD. I tried FCPX on my 2009 MBP 17″ 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo w/ NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 512 MB gram specifically to edit AVCHD natively and FCPX ran, but, had a lot of lag to playback. In addition It was always generating big render files too, bloating my disks. In a last attempt I installed an SSD bootdrive in the optial bay (removed the DVD burner), replaced the 5400 HDD with a 7200 RPM 750 GB drive in the HDD bay and that helped. These upgrades helped a lot (it feels like a new laptop if I don’t try to edit AVCHD in FCPX on it), but, there was still lag when playing back AVCHD in FCPX. I also didn’t like the color correction tool in FCPX, that after making corrections, the next time you opened the program, it kept the correction but reset the controls to look like no correction was made. A deal breaker for me. So I upgraded to a new computer and went to PPro (I used to use FCP7 and PPro just makes more sense to me).
Once you are on PPro you could always look into using a desktop PC for editing AVCHD if funds are tight.
Phillip Todd
Cinematographer