GeForce GTX 580 3GB question

[Lonzo N]

I recently bought the GTX 580 for my Mac Pro Early 2009. I intend to use it for Davinci Resolve and hopefully increase .R3D ProRes render.

I currently run ATI Radeon 4870. My question is how best to install it to make maximum use of the cards. Do I completely loose the ATI and install only the GTX 580 or use both?

My setup is:
Mac Pro Early 2009
2x 2.26 Quad Core
16 GB Memory
OS X Lion 10.7.3
CalDigit 4 TB Raid 5

[Tom.Wong]

i think the 4870 is a double length card and requires additional gpu power. if so, you'll need to lose the ati card and get something like a gt 120 as a gui card and use the gtx 580 as the cuda card for acceleration. the gt 120 needs no external power. also the gtx 580 consumes a lot more power than most video cards, so even than I think you might be on the edge of maxing out your psu. I had that happen to me using a quadro 4000 and using a power splitter with a gtx 470. on full load my computer just shut off. I was forced to buy an external power supply to power my quadro 4000 and leave my system to power the 470.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

To put it bluntly, you can't install the 580 in your Mac Pro tower. It takes up the same double slot-width of your current ATI card and both power connectors. It also doesn't operate as a proper primary GPU card in the Mac. To further complicate things, it will over-draw the power available to it via the two PCIe power connectors, so it may not be completely stable or may in fact pose a risk to your system, if operated under load.

As Tom says, you would need to install another card like the GT120 or something that doesn't require power itself, so that both power connectors can be used for the GTX580, and so that you have a display card while the 580 serves to accelerate Resolve. You must use a secondary GPU card for acceleration in Resolve, it does not use the primary GUI display card for CUDA acceleration.

The only way you will be able to run that GTX580 in your tower right now with the ATI card is to sacrifice one of your PCIe slots in addition to the one you install it in (since it's 2 slots wide). You will also need to do what Tom did to power his Quadro and purchase an external power supply for the card since the ATI card takes up both available power connectors -- which are 2 x 6-pin in the Mac Pro. The GTX580 is 2 x 8-pin and is a real power hog.

All things considered, your best bet is to install the GTX580 in an external PCIe expansion box like a Cubix or Cyclone. If you really want a second GPU to run inside your tower, the GTX580 is not a good choice. And you will also want to figure out how to handle power for whatever card you choose as well. IMO, the best two-GPU combo inside a Mac tower is to use dual Quadro 4000 cards. They would each take a single slot width and a single PCIe power connector. You will get CUDA acceleration and decent all-around performance for your primary display GPU as well as the secondary card that can accelerate Resolve.

These cards don't do anything to accelerate R3D processing or rendering directly. Once the system/CPUs and/or RED Rocket have decompressed and decoded/debayered the R3D image, then the GPU may kick in (application dependent) to accelerate image processing at that point. In Resolve, the GPU accelerates all the color/pixel/whatever operations performed within the grading nodes, for example.

[Lonzo N]

Thanks guys for the answers. I happen to have a GT 120 which I swapped for the 4870 a while back. So if I use GT120 as my primary and GTX 580 for my Resovle, then I'll be good with both cards inside my MAC. I'm trying to avoid the external power setup. Also with the GT 120, am I better off than when I had the ATI 480 as my display card?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Chances are, with the GTX580 only being used for Resolve, you probably won't over-draw on power. No guarantees though... You may need to use adapters on the PCIe power cables, or perhaps the particular one you purchased will have the right cables to connect it, you can adapt 6pin to 8pin for this purpose. Place the GTX580 in slot-1 (bottom double-width slot). GT120 goes in slot-2, unless you have something else that may need more than the X4 bandwidth of the other two slots. The ATI 4870 is superior to the GT120 as it's just a higher performance card all around. If you run any apps that use OpenGL acceleration or push a lot of pixels, the GT120 will be noticeably slower. Unfortunately, there's really no good solution here without spending a small fortune to make it work, and even then it's a compromise. Also hard to spend the money when you're adding to a system configuration that is 3 years old and new systems with updated CPUs, faster PCIe slots and faster memory architecture should be just around the corner.

[Tom.Wong]

Thanks guys for the answers. I happen to have a GT 120 which I swapped for the 4870 a while back. So if I use GT120 as my primary and GTX 580 for my Resovle, then I'll be good with both cards inside my MAC. I'm trying to avoid the external power setup. Also with the GT 120, am I better off than when I had the ATI 480 as my display card?

either display card will be fine, but you won't get any cuda acceleration with that ati on adobe software, and you won't get adequate cuda acceleration in adobe with a gt 120. i liked the gt 120 though, it works, and it works well. Depending on what you have in you computer, be warned that a gtx 580 might still over draw your PSU. you might be able to skate by if you don't have a lot of hard drives in there, but different setups have different amounts of power draw on the system, and I've heard of any gtx 580 in the system with another vid card might need a external power supply anyway. you'll know right away once you start testing out resolve with it and start stacking nodes full of blurs and noise reduction. you'll hear the gpu screaming and if you're comp doesn't shot off during playback it's fine. if it does than you've over drawn the PSU and you'll either have to get a external PSU or put it in a pci expander.

[ERIC PECK]

What about putting an additional power supply on one of the 5 1/4 slots of the mac pro?

Something like the FSP X5?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817104054

I've been thinking about this, so to make a more portable system.

Mac Pro with an extra internal power supply, and a GTX580 + GT120.... I wonder if this would work with a 590.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

That PSU would work just great... If you can find a way to route the cables. And it's overkill as the 2 x 6pin it supplies are redundant.

[Lonzo N]

Thanks again for all your answers. Now waiting for UPS to deliver so I can try it out.

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Like a lot of folks, I am trying to nurse along an older MacPro until the new tower/desktop/rackmount comes blazing forth from Cupertino ;-)

Is there any "low hanging fruit" for improving performance for RCX and CS5.5? Obviously anything that costs more than $200 or so needs to have a decent chance of being portable to the new rig or have a HUGE impact on speed.

Current config in my case is a 2008 Octo-core w/5GB RAM, ATI XT1900 GPU, Sonnet EP2 eSATA HBA, Red Rocket.

My first thought is to add a GPU with CUDA (that doesn't need 2 slots or lots of power) just for processing tasks, leaving the old ATI card for driving the monitors.

The Quadro 4000 seems like a good option. For $750 or so I get a pretty heavy duty card that should migrate well to a newer system. The downside is the risk that the next generation GPU options supported by the anticipated new MP might not play nice with the Quadro 4000, or perhaps underutilize it. Hard to spend $750 with no certainty of ROI.

The GT 120 is a bit long in the tooth, but perhaps there is another option from nVidia that would spool up the Mercury performance in CS 5.5 for less coin. If the cost is low enough then if it didn't make sense to migrate it to a new box it wouldn't hurt too much. Would want a card that didn't require an additional PSU or other hassles.

Is there any reason to consider the ATI 4870? It seems like a great card with decent drivers for OSX but AFAIK its little or no help for CS 5.5.

Cheers - #19