Best graphics card upgrade

i'm a tech geek. used to build PC's many years ago but for me i just didnt want to get into flashing cards. i just need to pop it in, edit, and go. i researched for three months and went with the AMD 7970 from a suggestion off creativecow. the guy recommended a retailer off ebay. i havent used ebay in over two years since amazon has been so great. but i gave it a shot, asked the retailer a lot of questions, etc. and my only concern was the card was OEM. just felt weird not having the nice box and cards but for 479 it was in my budget. The sapphire card had sweet specs but sales and tech support dont exist. i'll admit i overlooked the 7950. just didnt see it. i was locked on sapphire & the nvidia gtx680. i was told the AMD 7970 was an official mac card and not flashed. when my mid 2010 mac boots i get the apple logo. all good so far

If you're doing this as a business, you would benefit from decreased production time, and be able to get more jobs in the next year, in order for it to pay for itself. Clients must always pay for your gear, hard or soft, otherwise you lose money.

If you're not making a living off of this, well, yeah, it is expensive. The decision is, do you want to tinker with the guts of your hardware, or not? Is that money worth the time and headache you save?

No one is going to make Apple change their pricing strategy. Especially since they're giving away OS updates and iWorks for free now.

tedtv, how are you powering your 7970?

No eBay APP ID and/or Cert ID defined in Kunena configurationThe 7970 I bought comes with two power cables. A 6 to 6 pin and a 6 to 8 pin. The ATI 5770 I had in it previously only needed one power cable, not this one. If anyone is interested in the 7970 the link to it on Ebay is below. This is no endorsement of the seller or the product. Just a link. And on another note, the description says it will power up to 4 monitors simultaneously. LOL I'll have to test that soon and report back. Getting three monitors with my 7950 was horrific so my trust in having four displays isn't that high. But tomorrow i'll be conducting those 4 monitor tests as well as AE and Motion tests.

freeform wrote: Otherwise go buy the PC version which TODAY is a measly 50 dollars less.

On eBay the PC version is around $200 less. $50 isn't worth moaning much about. Not like I'm truly interested in buying either or since there is no guarantee that even the Mac version will work with my 2006 Mac Pro.

EDIT: Those that can run Mavs should buy two since Mavs supports dual GPUs even on older Mac Pros.

Redifer wrote:

freeform wrote:

Not like I'm truly interested in buying either or since there is no guarantee that even the Mac version will work with my 2006 Mac Pro

The "64 on 32" script makes running mavericks really simple on the 2006. Running two is a challenge because of the wiring and power.

What about dual ATI 5870s? I've got one in my 2009 mac pro tower. Can I add another and will FCPX 10.1 on Mavericks take advantage of it? That would deliver 2gb of graphics ram in total.

Or better to get a single beefier card with more ram? Like this 3gb Radeon Saphire 7950?

eshop.macsales.com/item/Sapphire/100352MAC/

www.barefeats.com/tube02.html

This is good news for anyone with an older Mac Pro.

Notice that toward the end of that article he says:

Out of curiosity, we ran the tests with dual Radeon HD 5770s and got render times only slightly slower than dual 7970s. The 5770s require only one power feed each so we used the two factory standard PCIe power feeds. A pair of them is definitely faster rendering in FCPX 10.1 than any single AMD GPU including the Radeon HD 7970.

So it looks like two cards are better.

For an old Mac Pro (early 2008) I've had good luck with the ATI Radeon HD 5870, even though on the OWC site it doesn't even list it to be used with a 2008. That in conjunction with this SSD

eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDEX3G480/

make this old piece of heavy metal quite useable.

Darren Roark wrote: The "64 on 32" script makes running mavericks really simple on the 2006.

I can't seem to find any information on this. Is that the one that requires an internal bootable hard drive permanently dedicated to the task somewhere and it's all convoluted and stuff? This was the process I saw:

www.jabbawok.net/?p=47

This method is not simple. Is there a better one?

Redifer wrote:

Darren Roark wrote: The "64 on 32" script makes running mavericks really simple on the 2006.

I can't seem to find any information on this. Is that the one that requires an internal bootable hard drive permanently dedicated to the task somewhere and it's all convoluted and stuff? This was the process I saw:

www.jabbawok.net/?p=47

This method is not simple. Is there a better one?

This post here on our BruceX has the link and some encouraging words. www.fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/...hmark?start=80#36876

Is it as straightforward as firing up an installation disk? No, but it's worth the effort and very stable. The 64bit Geekbench 3 scores are close to 11000 depending on ram and CPUs. 10.9 can double the performance over Lion on 'old ironsides'.

It's similar to building a hackintosh only easier since you have a fully built mac already. You are just using a new 64bit kernel to load the OS.

I would get a separate hard drive anyway so you can keep your current system drive separate. I would remove all your hard drives but the one you are installing to as a precaution. The onboard sata ports on the logic board are not bootable so the drive must be in one of the four sata bays. If you are using an SSD, you will need some sort of adapter to secure it.

And you need a mavericks compatible GPU, but since that is the point of doing this that's probably already on the list.

The gent who wrote that post was able to find another CPU for $50 on ebay to make his an eight core. You have nothing to lose as this is all done with software, so you can always boot up the system you have now.

So the additional video card on the "old" Mac Pro will cut the rendering time by roughly 30-34% depending on what's involved. Not too bad if I can find one 5770 card for cheap...If I have to pay high price for the old card I may just save the money as my "New Mac Pro fund"

rgilman, thanks for finding that. i just hate losing slots since I do want to keep my eSATA/SATA cards and soon install a 3.0 pcie card. sucks i never saw that but some really good info.

Same here. I totally forgot the 2nd 5770 will occupy two slots. I am planning to get a eSATA card and a USB 3 card too. If I decide to get a 2nd 5770 I need to decide which one extra card to give up.

Yeah, does anyone have a 1-slot card to recommend that allows us to use two cards plus an eSata card? I currently have a 5870 (which takes up 2 slots) and an eSata card. So can't add another 5870.

Thoughts?

Nevermind. Where's the "delete my post" button?

Someone mentioned dual graphic cards can be installed in a Mac Pro (silver box) and that Mavericks and FCPX 10.1 will take advantage. What if the cards do not match specs? Can I put in my AMD 7970 as well as my ATI 5770? Or are we talking major crashes and errors?

Hi Ted,

You might want to check out the BruceX topic in the FCPX Forum; there are lots of folks running the same rendering/exporting test with different Macs, and many are trying out different GPU combinations. Here's a link:

www.fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/...-cut-pro-x-benchmark

Based on the experiences that others have reported, OSX 10.9.1 and FCPX 10.1 should be able to take advantage of both your 7970 and 5770, the only major obstacle is safely powering both GPUs.

As a techie, you are probably familiar with adding an additional GPU power supply into one of the optical bays in your Mac Pro, here's a link to one

www.amazon.com/FSP-Certified-Crossfire-P...r+supply+FSP+booster

If you have a moment to try the BruceX Benchmark it would be great to learn what sort of performance that beefy 7970 yields!

Won a bid for a refurbished Apple brand 5770. Price wasn't bad and the power cord is included.

I will be running dual 5770 on my 5.1 MP when the card arrives. I also may get a OWC eSATA RAID drives and card combo after Spring Break.

Hopefully that will give my current MP a year or two extra life before I can jump to the Darth Vader™ (for 4K stuff)