Mac Pro 2008?

[John Desay]

Hi,

Thinking of swapping my 2009 24" iMac for a 2008 Mac Pro 2.66 Quad Core Intel Xeon 2.66ghz.Can anyone tell me if the Nvidia Geforce 7300 GT graphics card is supported for Resolve and is it any good? Can only find one Geforce that is supported in DaVincis system requirements,the GT120.
Or would i be better in purchasing a new 21" iMac that has Quad Core,AMD Radeon HD 6770M,2.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5,Thunderbolt etc?
Have i just answered my own question??
Just think that the Mac Pro has better upgrade options than the iMac so not sure which route to go....

Any help appreciated cheers.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

7300...? You sure it's not a 7800? Anyway, it will work for a GUI card, but won't offer any GPU/CUDA acceleration.

The '08 Mac Pro is a big step down for running Resolve. Biggest issue is you are losing up to 55% of the potential bandwidth for the RAM alone. '08 Mac Pro is dual-channel DDR2 at 800MHz. '09 Mac Pro is triple-channel capable at 1066MHz. You pretty much can't work in Resolve at 10bit at 1080p and greater due to memory bandwidth restrictions on the '08 tower.

Nehalem CPUs are about 15% faster per clock compared to the CPUs in the 2008 Mac Pro. ...Just some stuff to think about. :-(


That said, the '08 tower is still a good system. With the right video card and enough RAM, it can still be a great NLE and general workstation. But I wouldn't dump a whole lot of money into one at this point. The new iMacs are great systems, but I would pause just a bit before buying one. They're due to be updated real soon -- like in the coming few weeks.

[Kwan Khan]

7800? Hummm
This Hacked version work well with Resolve (but you need EXTERNAL POWER)
Nvidia GTX 580 Apple Mac Pro 3 GB CUDA DaVinci Resolve Adobe Premiere GTX580

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nvidia-GTX-5...item35bc59501e

[John Desay]

Thanks for the reply Jeff,

Looking at previous posts i had a feeling you were the man to ask on the subject anyway!!
Think i'll take your advice and hold off a bit longer...

Cheers.

[Peter Chamberlain]

Remember DaVinci Resolve v9 will be a 64 bit application and so you are likely to want more RAM as well as the latest OS.
Peter

[chad vachter]

So a 2008 mac pro would do ok with davinci using that hacked gtx 580 thatbkwan suggested?

[Rob Ruffo]

In my opinion you would be OK. Here in V8 with "Good 1/4" on Red 4K 16:9 we get 18-20 fps even with 20 nodes with a GTX285 + GT 125 (for GUI) + 12 gisg Ram - No Rocket. Fine to work. Then you render at Premium Full (we get about 4-5fps rendering, which for TVC/music video means we wait 12 minutes or less at the end , which really is nothing) Of course our timeline is 1080p, but we yet to have an actual 4K-finish client (Like I've said before - there are few 4K finish gigs in the entire world), so 1080p is fine for us.