MP 1,1-5,1 Recommend a video card for Mac Pro 5,1 upgrade (Adobe)?

[swechsler]

I'm upgrading a Mac pro 5,1 for my son for enhanced performance in Adobe Premiere and After Effects. Gaming isn't a huge priority, although it will probably see occasional use for that. I've already got the CPU, memory and storage upgrades taken care of, but I'm trying to determine the best affordable GPU. I'd like to stay under $300; under $200 would be even better (I'm willing to buy used). The current card is a GTX 650.

We'll be running Catalina to start, although the ability to upgrade to MacOS 11 would be a big plus (I know there are many unknowns for an OS that hasn't been officially released yet). Being flashable to allow seeing the boot screen is another plus.

Thoughts?

 

[krakman]

amd vega 56 - it will work with power from the 2x mini 6 pin power sockets, best to use a evga powerlink adapter to smooth out the power draw.

you could even conisder an AMD radeon VII but they are more expensive.

Search this forum for more info about these cards.

you will have a boot screen if you use Opencore


The real question is whether you will see any benefit from the Adobe apps??? AFAIK After Effects only uses a single core and you would be better off using FCPX than Premier (just my opinion)

 

[kohlson]

"Which card" is highly situational with Adobe products. Consider:
- First things first: which version? CC? Or CS6?
- Adobe and Apple do not seem to, ahem, get along as well as they could. Apple is all in with AMD, and Adobe seems to get more benefit with Nvidia. So before buying a card, make sure it will provide advantages over your current 660 in the environment you're using: apps and OS.
- The PCIe available power for a cMP is 225 watts, and many modern GPUs exceed that. The details are in the sticky thread at the top of theorem.

I use an RX580 8GB in my cMP - it's plug and play for anything from 10.12.6 (supported, but poorly) throughHS and Mojave and beyond. For my NLE environments - FCPX and Resolve - this enables me to seamlessly edit 4K (along with an NVMe SSD). My friend has a dual-CPU cMP with the RX580 and uses CS6 to edit HD. It's not clear how much benefit he gets from this GPU, but he needed something like it to upgrade to Mojave.

FWIW, user benchmark comparison pages show the RX580 over 100% faster that the 660. Whether that's true for your Adobe/OS environment remains to be seen.

Perhaps others can chime in on using Adobe products and what GPU works with the OS you're using.

 

[swechsler]

So before buying a card, make sure it will provide advantages over your current 660 in the environment you're using: apps and OS.

My current card is a 650, not a 660, and from the minimal reading I've done after seeing your post, it appears that even the 660 vastly outperforms the 650 (not surprisingly, since the latter is an 8 year old card). I believe my son is using CS6, not CC. From what you and krakman have said, it's not a given that a GPU will improve rendering speeds for either one of these packages, correct? Assume that the software in question is non-negotiable; he's a professional animator and wants to use the same software on his personal machine (for doing some independent consultancy work) that he uses at work.

 

[kohlson]

it's not a given that a GPU will improve rendering speeds for either one of these packages, correct?

Correct - it's not a given. My understanding is that AMD GPU enhancements offer little to CS6 products by way of performance improvements. If I understand it correctly, better off with maximizing single-thread performance.

AE is a standard in animation. CS6 not so much. Student pricing for CC is quite reasonable - he may want to enroll in a local community college for class. Consider a google search "Adobe CS6 GPU Acceleration" Puget Systems did some good analysis. In my experience, everything - GPU, CS6, OS - needs to match up.

You may also find something at macvidcards.