Graphics Card for MacPro

I have a MacPro 2.66 GHz Quad-Core machine running 10.6.8. I am looking for the best card to work with FCP X, anyone have a suggestion? Thanks, rjett

ATI Radeon HD 5870, as far a I know.

Also:
support.apple.com/kb/HT4664

Be sure you've got at least 8GB RAM if not 16.
Use a secondary internal SATA drive for Events and Projects, not the OS drive.

Thanks for the tip.

I have heard about the Quadro 4000 by NVIDA and the Matrox Mojito card. Do you have any knowledge of these cards and which one would be a good choice?
Thanks again, rjett

I don't believe either is fully OpenCL for FCP X and Motion.

I just finished researching the Matrox Mojito card ( www.matrox.com/video/en/products/mojito_max/ )
Looks like it works with Compressor to speedup compression but no help in speeding up rendering (ram issue?)

I have not found any definitive information on the Quadro card. Still looking. Thanks, rj

It doesn't actually "help" Compressor, it takes over and does hardware compression for H.264 on it's own.

Quadro is not OpenCL, many discussions about this on other boards. IT didn't help Motion 4 either. Again, lack of OpenCL and OpenGL support.

I have the same Mac Pro as you with 24GB of ram and the ATI Radeon HD 5870, its a great Card to have. As for the Matrox Card, I use an MXO2 and its awesome for h.264 compression. I do alot of bluray encoding and web screeners for client, so it is really nice to be able to send something out to compressor from either FCP7 or FCPX, have it encode and still be able to work. The Matrox Card like Ben said takes over the process of compression.

Now one thing to be mindful of is if you have the ATI card, with the latest update to FCPX, if you export H.264 (single pass only) It exports almost as fast as using the Matrox with Max, but you can not do anything else until your export is done. I still feel its worth it but it is only for exporting.

Thanks Mikey,
I have the stock NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 and will be bringing the machine up to 16GB. I am thinking of the Mojito card, I can get it a good price.
Thanks for the tip that I can go back to work while the card takes over, good time saver.
rj

Rjett,
Remember the Matrox only takes over with compressor. You you need to have that installed.

Rjett I also had the quad core 2.66. with the original nVidia 120 graphics card and 6gb of ram, it didn't play happy with FCPX. I upgraded the graphics card to the ATI HD 5770 and put in 12gb of ram and it works very well now. A big difference compared to the nVidia 120.
Although on the apple site it mentions that the ATI HD 5870 is for the 2009 mac pro (which mine is) lots of what I read suggested that the ATI HD 5770 worked just fine, which in my experience it dose. Im on OSX 10.7.2

Like you Im wondering weather to bump up the ram to the max, which is 16gb in my machine. The reason I updated to 12gb is the theory that blocks of three are faster when using DDR3 ram? would another block of 4gb making it 16 be better for FCPX ?

Robs,

Thanks for the info.

I am having no problems with my 120 card and 6GB of ram and FCP X. Of course faster is better which is why I am pouring in more GB of ram and looking for the right card(s) solution. Looks like I am leaning to the Matrox Majito and Compressor combo for compression. I am hoping adding more ram will help speed the rendering. I am curious as to where you heard that blocks of three are faster when using DDR3. Got a link?
Thanks, rj

RAM won't make any processing faster, just more stable, and accessing recent resources quicker. But actual processing time for transcodes and renders is solely dependent on GPU/CPU ability.

There was an older Mac version in which paring RAM cards made RAM access faster, but that's pretty much ancient history. Fit the RAM that works in the Mac, it'll be as fast as it can be, no special config these days will help.

This is a link to one of the articles I read about the DDR3 ram being faster in blocks of three

guides.macrumors.com/Understanding_Intel_Mac_RAM

It seems to only apply to the mac pro 2009 quad core Nehalem processor with a max of 16gb ram, thats the mac I have, is that your particular model? you will need to scroll down the page to get to 'mac pro Nehalem' quad core info.

Also when I bought my ram from 'crucial' the the maximum ram they sell for my machine is 12gb in three 4gb blocks, you have to by a separate block of 4gb to bump it up to the 16gb which again made me think maybe three blocks is the optimum for this particular machine? although theres not much said about it if it is.

Im glad your 120 is ok with your setup mine just wasn't happy

Interesting. I also have the Nehalem machine but Other World Computing sold me 4x4 for the machine for $129, which I thought was a good deal.
Perhaps I will do a test with 3 against 4 after more research.
Thanks, Richard Jett