best video card (mac/PC compatible)

[Zakaree Sandberg]

what is the best video card for resolve? mac/pc compatible

[Rohit Gupta]

Q4000 for Mac

[Dave P]

If you read Blackmagic's buying guide, they make it quite clear that a GTX285 will run rings around a Quadro 4000.



"The ATI Radeon HD 5770 is a standard graphics card with the mid 2010 series of Mac Pro computers. This means that customers purchasing a new Mac Pro are no longer required to discard the standard GUI card and replace it with an NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 at extra cost.
Slots 1 and 2 in the Mac Pro are most suitable of graphics cards as they provide maximum bandwidth and run the cards at full speed. Slot 1 is double-width and slot 2 is single-width. Some graphics cards only need a single-width PCIe slot whereas others require a double-width slot.
While the ATI Radeon HD 5770 and NVIDIA Quadro 4000 cards are the latest combination of graphics cards for Resolve, the highest GPU performance for Resolve continues to be the combination of NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 (GUI) and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 Unfortunately the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 is no longer available but owners of this card will continue to enjoy the highest GPU performance in Resolve. The NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 delivers higher performance than the NVIDIA Quadro 4000 and the Quadro 4000 is not designed to replace it. The Quadro 4000 is available at a much lower cost than the Quadro FX 4800."

[Jeff Kilgroe]

GTX285 does not run rings around a Quadro4000. In fairness, it did back when that guide was originally published and the initial Q4000 drivers were in dire need of optimization. That said, the cards perform very similarly. I have both GTX285 cards and Quadro 4000 cards here and have tested both of them and have tested the FX4800 as well. I have gone to the Quadro4000 cards for Resolve since they run cooler, take up less space and consume less power. Some functions operate faster on the Q4000, some faster on the GTX285. Overall they're about the same. Obviously, the GTX285 has the price advantage, but is also out of production and considered EOL on both Mac and PC platforms, it has become hard to find them if you just happen to need one. Quadro 4000 is available everywhere, but is $700...

I have to disagree with their assessment of the Quadro FX4800. It is a relic from the generation preceding the GTX285 and is a junk card when the price/performance ratio are considered. Like the GTX285, it is outdated and out of production. For reasons I can only speculate on, it still commands a high price from many vendors. nVidia never identified a specific successor to any individual FX series Quadro model. But the top three Quadro models available as of this posting are the 6000, 5000 and 4000. The 4000 being the only one available for the Mac platform.

Performance-wise, the GTX285 runs circles around the FX4800. The GTX285 is clocked faster, has 48 more parallel processing cores, a 512bit memory interface vs. 384bit on the FX4800 and it has double the memory bandwidth at almost 160GB/s vs. 76GB/s on the FX4800. The Quadro 4000's Fermi design is nVidia's new platform. The 4000 has 25% faster memory bandwidth than the FX4800 and a full 2GB of memory to work with. It doesn't have the raw horsepower under the hood that the GTX285 has, but it is far more efficient. For 3D applications like Maya, Lightwave, or other OpenGL applications that throw geometry around, the 4000 smokes both the GTX285 and FX4800. It pushes around 3X as many triangles vs. the FX4800 and has 4X the texel throughput. It drives nearly 2X as many triangles as the GTX285 while maintaining roughly the same texel bandwidth. texel performance seems to be a good indicator of Resolve node performance.

In my tests both in Resolve and with CUDA benchmarks under OSX 10.6.6 with the latest drivers and CUDA installation, the GTX285 was holding its own in most situations and could usually muscle its way past the Quadro 4000 on many tasks. Both the Quadro4000 and GTX25 smoked the Quadro FX4800. I no longer have the FX4800 here to test with as I sold it about a month back, so have not tested it with 10.6.7.

For now, the best option is the Quadro 4000, plain and simple. The other two card options are EOL and no longer supported. Drivers have improved on the 4000 and being a single-width card that only requires one PCIe power connector, it's easy to add more than one inside a Mac tower or in a PCIe expander. Second choice would be the GTX285, if you want to scrounge around the used market for one or two of them.

You can buy two Quadro 4000 cards for the going rate of a single FX4800, which is just an old dinosaur at this point.

[Alexander Ibrahim]

For now, the best option is the Quadro 4000, plain and simple. The other two card options are EOL and no longer supported. Drivers have improved on the 4000 and being a single-width card that only requires one PCIe power connector, it's easy to add more than one inside a Mac tower or in a PCIe expander. Second choice would be the GTX285, if you want to scrounge around the used market for one or two of them.

You can buy two Quadro 4000 cards for the going rate of a single FX4800, which is just an old dinosaur at this point.

I agree with Jeff wholeheartedly.

The only reason to consider the GTX285 is to save some $$$

I should add that some reports are floating around that the GTX580 is supported in Lion and in some builds of 10.6 (I think the ones shipped for the 2011 MBP ... can't quite remember.)

So, if you are working TODAY Quadro 4000 without a doubt, but as always in this business, exciting new choices are around the corner- including notably MORE CHOICES.

[Dave P]

It is a relic from the generation preceding the GTX285

I do not believe that this is correct.

Quadro 4800 is same generation, but pre-die shrink. (Both cards being GT200 family cards)

The Quadro 4800 matches basic specs of GTX260 but with almost double the VRAM. I agree wholeheartedly that it should be selling for a LOT less money. It is for most things a poor cousin to GTX285.

A die-shrink is typically not considered a new generation. Same reason the GTX480 and GTX580 are both considered "Fermi" chips, despite 480 being original GF100 and newer cards being GF110.

"I should add that some reports are floating around that the GTX580 is supported in Lion and in some builds of 10.6"

In fact, the GTX570 is only card that I have posted about running In Lion DP2. When Hardmac re-posted the story, they incorrectly stated "GTX580" but if you look at the screenshot, it is my GTX570.

And to be extra clear, ATI cards from recent generations are running in both SL and Lion DP2. Fermi cards of GTX5xx only run in DP2.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

All in the semantics I suppose. There were, 3 I think, iterations of the GT-200 architecture. Most I know, including nVidia's own CUDA developers, consider these as different generations. Even though they're still the same GT-2xx architecture, the GTX285, 295, FX5800, etc.. all gained upgraded interfaces, new memory architecture and more.

As for the reports of the GTX480, 580, etc.. working with DP2. As well as the other ATI cards working, it's promising news. There is definitely something up at Apple with their support for various video cards and it looks promising.