Upgrade of graphics card

Hi everyone, before I start I'd just like say what a great help you guys and gals have been to my learning of fcpx, so thanks to you all.

Now I have a 3 Ghz 2.1 Macpro with 16gb of ram with currently an ATI radon 4770 card.
Would I see any benefit from upgrading to the 5770 with the 4 gb ram expansion pack and if so
Can you fit two and would there be a benefit. Or would I be better off getting a newer Macpro.

Pete

No point getting a new MP, they new ones won't outperform what you have already, honestly.

That GPU upgrade won't show any improvement, but if you went with the Radeon HD 5870, that would help. Dual cards only help if you have dual monitors.

Be sure your Events and Projects are on a secondary internal drive, not the OS drive.

That's about all the performance you'll get out of that MP at this time, and about all the performance you'll get out of any Mac model.

Thanks for that Ben, 5780 it is then, all my media is on two 500gb esata disks ( I think I learnt that from one of previous posts to another boarder ).

External SATA drives? Why not just use the internal SATA drive bays? A single 1TB, 7200 TB drive internally will be faster than two 500GB drives separately. Drives are the opposite of cars, the larger they are, the faster they spin.

BenB wrote: External SATA drives? Why not just use the internal SATA drive bays? A single 1TB, 7200 TB drive internally will be faster than two 500GB drives separately. Drives are the opposite of cars, the larger they are, the faster they spin.

Something else for the January sales, thanks Ben.

A single 1TB, 7200 TB drive internally will be faster than two 500GB drives separately. Drives are the opposite of cars, the larger they are, the faster they spin.

Can you elaborate on this Ben? If a drive is 7200rpm isn't that the spin speed regardless of size? If so basic engineering tells us that it would read the information around a single rotation at the centre faster than at the outside circumference, but with the distance being smaller it should be irrelevant as the amount of data held should be the same per inch at the centre as the outer edge.

Also, I was always under the impression that a number of small drives are faster than a single large drive as, assuming the computer knows which drive to look on and with it being smaller it can find the data quicker.

BenB wrote: That GPU upgrade won't show any improvement, but if you went with the Radeon HD 5870, that would help. Dual cards only help if you have dual monitors.

so as i have a dual monitor setup i could use a second gfx-card in my MP? and it would increase the FCP performance when i simply connect this second card to my second Monitor?

Also wich gfx- would be most powerful? Radeon 4870, 5870,6870 or maybe an nvidia?

right now i have a a nvida 8800 GT with 512 mb

5870 from Apple is the best.

The deal is when you plug two monitors into one graphics card, automatically that GPU's resources and time are divided between the two monitors. So FCP X only gets to access half of that GPU's power.

FCP X will access the main monitor GPU/resources. That's the monitor that has the main desktop and Finder menu bar at top. You can't tell FCP which GPU to use. That's just how it works.

So if your main GPU is a 5870 (in slot 1), FCP X will access that (best GPU to use in a MP). The other graphics card can power the second monitor all by itself and doesn't need to be so powerful.

ah thanks a lot for enlighten me !

So that would also mean if i put another 8800 GT for my second monitor, my existing one could be double as fast (FCPX can access all resources)?

edit: a new 8800GT is expensive as a Radeon 6870 (around 200€) :blink:

IF you running under ML 10.8.2, I hear the NVIDEA 2GB GTX 680 works quite well. I plan on upgrading to that in the near future.

there are a lot working gfx cards ... but only a few are available are EFI compatible - means they if they not EFI compatible they don't show a boot screen, wich can be dangerous as you need it not only for choosing a boot drive, also for hardware-check or the install-tool

but there is this tool
forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=877437
wich can flash some gfx cards to become EFI compatible ...

looks like the the ATI 6870 is already available .. more are coming as the database is growing

BenB wrote:
Also wich gfx- would be most powerful? Radeon 4870, 5870,6870 or maybe an nvidia?

For AMD, the 5870. For Nvidia, then the GTX 570 1.2GB, or even better the 570HD 2.5GB if you can find one. You also need to use 10.8 as OpenCL is disabled on Nvidia graphics cards in Lion.

A 580 is a little bit (10%) faster, but requires an aux GPU power supply ( www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817104054 ) unless you want to risk burning out your logic board.

Also, just for clarify, the 6000 series Radeons and 600 series GeForce cards are all considerably slower than their prior generation couterparts (AMD 5000, GTX 500). Unless they are all that is available in your area, it's worthwhile to find an older card, even if it's only available used, as the performance difference is pretty dramatic.

"BenB wrote:

Also wich gfx- would be most powerful? Radeon 4870, 5870,6870 or maybe an nvidia?"

No, I never wrote this.

NocoDave wrote: Can you elaborate on this Ben? If a drive is 7200rpm isn't that the spin speed regardless of size? If so basic engineering tells us that it would read the information around a single rotation at the centre faster than at the outside circumference, but with the distance being smaller it should be irrelevant as the amount of data held should be the same per inch at the centre as the outer edge.

Also, I was always under the impression that a number of small drives are faster than a single large drive as, assuming the computer knows which drive to look on and with it being smaller it can find the data quicker.

Smaller drives have fewer platters inside, and slower arm swings on the read/write heads. Larger drives have more platters, and faster arm swings on the read/write head. Only in a RAID configuration do multiple drives out perform a single drive. Multiple drives means more work for the CPU and data bus to traffic cop the data from various sources.

Basic engineering, as a professional engineer, and real world experience tells us that larger capacity drives out perform smaller drives, and a single larger drive out performs several smaller drives. It's very logical, if you really understand the inner workings of hard drives and their controller cards, as an engineer, which I am.

I'm a time served mechanical engineer too Ben, I've never taken the time to study the inner workings of hard drives though, that's why I was asking you to elaborate.

But I did know larger drives had multiple plates, that slipped my mind. So all plates are the same diameter regardless of capacity, it's just multiple plates that make for the larger drives?

Even if so, I've read in multiple sources in the past that a computer can find data on a smaller capacity drive faster than it can on a larger capacity drive, which always made sense to me. So your comment came as a big surprise.

When I get time later on I'll look up some sources.

I've not had a chance to look yet but I just remembered somewhere I heard it kind of recently, I seen the video on the FCP.co homepage but I couldn't find it scrolling through so here's a direct YouTube link.

Michael Cioni prepping for a 4 K World

I don't know where your getting your data jmyres but all the reviews I've seen show the GTX 680 out performing the GTX 570 on all the specs. I'm comparing the GTX 570 to the GTX 680 as they both use about the same power and use 2x6 pin power cables attached to the mother board.

NocoDave wrote: So all plates are the same diameter regardless of capacity, it's just multiple plates that make for the larger drives?

...I've read in multiple sources in the past that a computer can find data on a smaller capacity drive faster than it can on a larger capacity drive, which always made sense to me.

Number of platters plus the density of the sectors and blocks, etc. Never forget, there is an assembly of arms holding the read/write heads, and larger drives are built more robust to swing that arm assembly faster.

Small drive, large drive, doesn't matter. They "find data" via the "Directory", they don't scan the platters looking for things. That sort of misinformed thinking is what start these amateur rumors. Larger drives usually format with more dense blocks and sectors, which means the directory is faster to search. Then when the index of the needed data is found, the read/write arms in larger drives are faster to access it.

May as well believe that a hard drive's life span is reduced greatly by turning it on and off a lot. HA! That was true a decade and a half ago, but today it doesn't hold a drop of water. Yet, there are still amateurs who believe that crud today.

Again, multiple drives is data coming from multiple, uncoordinated sources. The data bus has to manage all of that traffic, which causes latency. The CPU has to let data from each take a turn being processed independently of each other, more latency. Read/write from each drive is done without coordination, nothing gained from that. Only in a RAID do multiple drives run faster, as they all talk to one controller card that coordinates everything and allows for faster throughput.

It is easier for you to plan an event talking to just one single coordinator, or to 12 assistants doing separate things and talking all at once? Which will get your work orders out faster?

They "find data" via the "Directory", they don't scan the platters looking for things.

That makes sense Ben, perhaps it's the larger directory taking longer to read that causes the thought. But if its a directory it has to be structured and regardless of where the info is on the drive the directory field (for lack of a better word coming to mind) should take the same time to locate.

I've been meaning to look into the workings of SSD's for a while now. I think I'll take a deeper look deeper into both, you have me curious.

Maybe you could put in a 1TB internal drive and use the 2 external dives as Backup