MP 1,1-5,1 Mac Pro 2012 Video Card for 4k video editing

[Iturnem]

Im looking to upgrade a mid 2012 cMP to be used for 4k video editing. I plan to upgrade the 2 x 2.4 6-core Xeons to 2 x 3.4 processors along with 32gb ram. My question is with regards to the video card. Ive been researching this for over a week now and it feels like i'm going in circles. Most of the information i can find is from 2019/2020 or earlier and i'm just not sure how relevant it is now with the recent release of Big Sur and also with the M1 chips i wonder if it is still worth it to upgrade this machine. Should i not consider Nvidia at all since there will never be any new drivers? If not, what are the best options from AMD? Im looking for at least 4gb but ideally 8gb Cards and i'm really not familiar with AMD cards nowadays. I think the last current AMD(ATI) card i purchased was in the late 90's/early 2000's. A key factor i need to consider is remaining compatible with the current Adobe line of products at least for the foreseeable future. Im also curious how this will compare in performance to the machines we are currently using to edit 4k video, which are i9's with 2070 gpu's. Any advice or direction on this would be hugely appreciated.

Shane

 

[h9826790]

Should i not consider Nvidia at all since there will never be any new drivers?

If you plan to stay at (or below) High Sierra on the cMP, then Nvidia cards are fine (up to TitanXP).

what are the best options from AMD?

In general, Radeon VII (need 10.14.5 or above)

 

[Iturnem]

If you plan to stay at (or below) High Sierra on the cMP, then Nvidia cards are fine (up to TitanXP).


In general, Radeon VII (need 10.14.5 or above)

If you plan to stay at (or below) High Sierra on the cMP, then Nvidia cards are fine (up to TitanXP).


In general, Radeon VII (need 10.14.5 or above)

Thanks for your reply, i appreciate the information. The Radeon vii seems to be all 16gb, maybe im not looking hard enough lol but it seems a little pricey for putting into a machine this old. Is there an 8gb card that would suffiice for my purpose. I understand ill definitely have to compromise in some areas but being able to use as current an OS version as possible is a big thing to be able to maintain compatibility with the editing software we use, primarily Premiere and After Effects. i dont want to invest a whole lot into this machine if im not going to be able to maintain the compatibility with the latest version of these products. Otherwise my editors are ust going to want a new machine if that happens and this will go unused

 

[padams35]

A Radeon VII is certainly the fastest option, but I'm not sure about 'best': those are expensive, require system mods to power, and are overkill for typical 4K editing.

'Best' is probably whatever you can find at a reasonable price with MacOS drivers, Metal API support (and maybe also H.265 hardware encoding). In theory that would be an RX 570, 580, or Vega 56 but those cards were discontinued about a year or two ago and MSRP stock has sold out. Maybe one of the workstation variants? (WX 5100, WX 7100, or WX 8200)?

Otherwise the RX 560 might be too slow for professional work, while the HD 7950 might be too old (no H.265 hardware encoding).


I expect software compatibility will mostly be MacOS version limited rather than GPU limited.

 

[Iturnem]

Thanks, I've come across some other recommendations for the 580 and I've found a used one on newegg

Model: Radeon RX580
Video Memory Capacity: 8GB
Item Condition: Used
Interface Type: PCI Express 3.0 X16


It will not show the boot screen so im wondering if its still possible to boot into recovery mode?

Yes your right about OS version limiting the software compatibility, I'm just worried about gpu driver availability limiting the OS version which in turn could limit the software compatibility. Which is why I'm shying away from Nvidia

 

[tsialex]

Thanks, I've come across some other recommendations for the 580 and I've found a used one on newegg

Model: Radeon RX580
Video Memory Capacity: 8GB
Item Condition: Used
Interface Type: PCI Express 3.0 X16


It will not show the boot screen so im wondering if its still possible to boot into recovery mode?

Yes your right about OS version limiting the software compatibility, I'm just worried about gpu driver availability limiting the OS version which in turn could limit the software compatibility. Which is why I'm shying away from Nvidia

You can boot Recovery/macOS installer with any GPU that has native macOS drivers. RX 580 has it since 10.12.6. Display works after the drivers are loaded, 3~5 minutes.

 

[Iturnem]

You can boot Recovery/macOS installer with any GPU that has native macOS drivers. RX 580 has it since 10.12.6. Display works after the drivers are loaded, 3~5 minutes.

Awesome, Thank you! Do you know if this card will encode h.265? or at least h.264?

 

[tsialex]

Awesome, Thank you! Do you know if this card will encode h.265? or at least h.264?

MP5,1 don't off-load video encoding/decoding to the GPU at all. The only Mac Pro that do that is 2019 Mac Pro, but you can hack it on MP5,1 for any AMD GPU after Polaris (RX460/480) - read here Activate AMD hardware acceleration.

 

[amstel78]

I have a Vega 64 in my 5,1 with Pixlas mod. Running Mojave via RefindPlus/OpenCore for boot screen and hardware H264 and HEVC support. I can work with 4K video in Resolve 17 without issue. Only limiting factor is drive speed when scrubbing through timelines.