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Genuine Apple ATI Radeon HD 5870 Today? Still Good?

S

sammyman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 21, 2005
998
65
I might have the chance to buy a sub $200 5870 for my 2009 MP. The only thing I'd like to do is power a couple monitors. I don't need the extra power. Is it still a good valid graphics card?

Or is there anything out there in the sub $200 range that would do as good or a better job?
 
No, skip the 5870.

Go out and buy a brand new Nvidia GTX 750 ti, its about $130 and is equal or faster than the 5870 in anything. It takes far less power, does not need a pcie power cable, runs cool, and you can run two or three of them if needed for more monitors. The 750 is completely up to date with regards to modern GPU features and opengl support, where the 6+ year old 5870 is rather behind now.

Requires Yosemite with downloaded Nvidia driver installed.

The only thing you will lose is your EFI boot screen.
 
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I should mention that this computer is a workhouse for my wife's photography business. It always is chunking through many GB's of pics in Lightroom and Photoshop.

What I really need to know is, what is the best video card I can get for a reasonable price to upgrade my wife's photoshop experience? 2 monitors would be a plus. I currently only have a 24" Apple Cinema, and would like at least one more 24" or 27". Also considering a non-apple brand displays for the 2nd since I don't know how much I care about having matching displays.

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Surrat said:
No, skip the 5870.

Go out and buy a brand new Nvidia GTX 750 ti, its about $130 and is equal or faster than the 5870 in anything. It also takes far less power and you can run two or three of them if needed for more monitors. The 750 is also completely up to date with regards to GPU features, where the 5870 is rather behind now.

The only thing you will lose is your EFI boot screen. Requires Yosemite with downloaded Nvidia driver installed.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. The only problem with that graphics card is I can't run Mini Displays. Can I leave the current monitor in the GT 120 and get a 2nd graphics card and monitor?
 
sammyman said:
I should mention that this computer is a workhouse for my wife's photography business. It always is chunking through many GB's of pics in Lightroom and Photoshop.

What I really need to know is, what is the best video card I can get for a reasonable price to upgrade my wife's photoshop experience? 2 monitors would be a plus. I currently only have a 24" Apple Cinema, and would like at least one more 24" or 27". Also considering a non-apple brand displays for the 2nd since I don't know how much I care about having matching displays.

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Thanks for the tip. The only problem with that graphics card is I can't run Mini Displays. Can I leave the current monitor in the GT 120 and get a 2nd graphics card and monitor?
Click to expand...

Hm, if you need mini display ports but not heavy 3d performance, then perhaps the 5870 would work well for you, it supports two of them. The cheaper apple 5770 supports two mini dp, and you can run two of them in the mac pro, giving you four mini dp.

Others might know good usable pc version cards that have working mini dp in mac pro.
 
Get 7950/7970 and flash it (or buy preflashed, your choice). 2x mDP, much better than 5870, flashed will have the bootscreen. PS supports OpenCL, and most likely LR 6 (if it will get rumored GPU acceleration OFC) will do as well. More likely than CUDA.
 
Hi, I hope that is okay to ask, as I also have a Radeon 5870 HD 1gig card in a mac 5.1 and while it has been great and still is, never had any problems with it. I have been wondering for a while to upgrade the card, looking for more power. I do use 3D modelling programs (though not at the moment) such as Blender and create basic 3D models. It is a learning process as well. And I also play games, though not as much. I noticed a few times on a complex model the textures in Blender would make updating the screen run very slow, it was unworkable at one point. I had to turn off the texture move to where I needed then turn on the texture. I figured if I am having problems with this model just think on something much more complex.

I am not sure why this was happening but I guess it is the card I have. From what I remember Blender does not natively support Radeon cards but supports Nvidia cards I am not sure if that is correct please correct me if I am wrong.

So yeah, if I can ask what would be a good upgrade/options? from the 5870HD I connect to 3 screens I think there is Radeon 6970HD but as stated Blender does not support Radeon cards for processing as far as I know, maybe it is different now.

If I was to update I would look at the 6970HD, as the 5870HD card has worked and I never had a problem but I am not sure, just like to know what are the options one can take.

Thanks
 
Zobec, for Blender you'd want Nvida card. GTX 570, 680 or newer. You'll be able to render on them using Cycles.
 
Thanks 666sheep, the Nvidia GTX680 card sounds great. I might go for one of the newer variants, like the GTX 970/980 for my needs. Yeah I did forget to mention that I was using Blenders, Blender render engine and not the cycles engine, sorry for that.

From what I understand the GTX 970 will not function in OSX 10.8.5 is that correct? So one needs to upgrade to a new OS 10.10.

I have heard of the term flashing before but never really looked into it, is it possible to damage a card, say the GTX 970 if one flashes the card incorrectly?

This thread seems to be an introduction into flashing of some sorts, though I am not sure if it is relevant with the GTX cards i have in question https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/877441/

Is the Macvidcards store graphic cards, a good choice, the cards have been flashed and made to run correctly in a mac pro seems great. I need a store/shop that would ship the card to Europe. Macvidcards seems like a good option. Are there any problems that can happen with having a flashed graphics card? I have had no problems with the Radeon 5870.
 
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