Need advise for Nvidia MacPro

[Paulo Emílio]

as you guys can see my EVGA GTX 590 running on my mac pro 2009. the problem here is the second cuda core, is only 512mb and show as a generic NVIDIA. Any suggestion to fix this ? nvidia guys, THANK YOU f** awesome.

http://postimage.org/image/b49h9ppb5/

[Jeff Kilgroe]

May be a driver issue, as in the drivers aren't smart enough to set it up as a second GPU with the right parameters, so it's defaulting to what you're seeing. Not sure if there's much you can do about it.

It could also be a power issue. As Walter inquires two posts above about the 580, he's correct and I've said it further back in the thread. The 580 doesn't fit within the power profile of the Mac Pro tower. People are doing it, but it has to be over-drawing on the PCIe power connectors. The GTX590 takes MORE POWER than the 580 card does. ...Just something to think about. I would not attempt running a GTX590 without supplementary power or placing it in a PCIe expander. But would be curious to see if it worked in that situation or still does what you're reporting. When it all comes down to it, I'm still betting there's only so far the drivers will go. It looks like the current nVidia set only supports the GTX580 and below, on down to the GTX200 series.

[Paulo Emílio]

Hi Jeff, thanks for the tip. It seems that there is not a power problem, but the driver. Testing here and I'll give you news. I'll test the DaVinci and the premiere CS5.5. It seems that 3d software, use only one core. For those 3d softwares I think a quadro will be better choice.

[Paul Nordin]

. The standard Cubix GPU-XPander boxes will only hold two of the GTX580 and nothing else as they are only sold with two double-width slots or 4 single-width slots.

The Cubix GPU-Xpander 4 Pro I have has 4-double-wide slots, two power leads per slot.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Hi Jeff, thanks for the tip. It seems that there is not a power problem, but the driver. Testing here and I'll give you news. I'll test the DaVinci and the premiere CS5.5. It seems that 3d software, use only one core. For those 3d softwares I think a quadro will be better choice.

Let us know what you figure out. :)

As for the 3D software and Quadro support, depends on the specific application. Many of them like ZBrush, Modo, Lightwave, and a few others do just fine with the GeForce cards as they don't make use of any of the Quadro's few extra features. Some others, namely Maya as far as what's available on OSX, does benefit from the Quadro. I really don't know how complete the Quadro driver support is on OSX currently and if there is any benefit to using a Quadro 6000. There are reports out there of people getting them to work, but I wonder just how well they work. Even with Quadro-specific features being used, an over-clocked GTX580 w/3GB should still be comparable, if not better in most situations. At least that's the way it works in PC land. For my PC workstations, the only workstation I've been able to justify the Quadro for is the one that runs XSI and SolidWorks and it's all about edge precision and stencil buffers and stipple masking functions of the Quadro.

Only 3D apps I run on OSX are Modo and Lightwave and that's out of convenience here and there. Most all my 3D work is done on Windows and I primarily live in Lightwave, Modo and Maya.

The Cubix GPU-Xpander 4 Pro I have has 4-double-wide slots, two power leads per slot.

Yeah, I should've been a bit more clear on that one... Cubix has several different models. I was thinking only of their compact desktop one at the moment I posted that. And it comes in two flavors with the same form-factor, either 2 double-width slots or 4 single-width slots.

[Will Keir]

Without a RR?

I have an NVidia gtx 580 in my 2010 mac pro running the latest version of lion. I can speak from experience in how awesome it is to playback 4k footage in realtime in premiere pro cs 5.5. Also, I switched over to premiere pro for editing a 2 hour show every week. I haven't comepletely ditched fcp yet, but I'm getting there. :)

-josh

[Will Keir]

I saw a youtube video suggestion the ATI Radeon X1900XT graphic card is the faster on mac pros.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I saw a youtube video suggestion the ATI Radeon X1900XT graphic card is the faster on mac pros.

What was the date of the video? 'cuz the X1900XT was out of production before the '08 Mac Pro was EOL'd. And it was a crappy card anyway, not even as good as the nVidia 7800GT that a lot of people ditched in favor of it. Only reason people bought the X1900XT was because it could drive dual 30" displays, whereas the 7800GT could not. The only other card to do it at the time was the Quadro FX4500.

[Will Keir]

Jeff, can help me with this one? What is the fastest graphics card current for the Mac Pro line? I am having a 2009 Mac Pro revival weekend. The rig currently has a GTX 285

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Sit tight with the GTX285. The only faster card that has full Mac support is the Quadro 4000 and when I say faster, I mean it's like 5% faster at some things, mostly equivalent for others. The GTX285 is slower at texel operations, fill operations, memory moves and whatnot, but actually can push more polygons.

Other than that, you could install a GTX480 or one of the GTX5xx series in place of what you have now, using off the shelf cards. Some are reporting success with the GTX580, but I'd be wary of that one -- great card, but it draws more power than the Mac Pro logic board is designed to put out via the PCIe connectors. The nVidia drivers do support them. However, those cards don't have the Mac EFI support, which means you can't do certain things with them, like option-boot to pick which drive to start from. Also by not having the EFI and official support, you will want to be careful about when and how you update OSX and drivers. For example, the current nVidia drivers are incompatible with the 10.7.4 developer beta seeds. I'm sure nVidia will have it sorted by the time the update releases or shortly after, but just one example of potential issues.