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Video card for Final Cut Pro X

M

md4peace

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 27, 2007
20
0
I have a 2x2.8 Quad Core Intel Xeon (early 2008) with ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT that won't run FCP X. What's a decent video card that I can install to be able to run this?
 
md4peace said:
I have a 2x2.8 Quad Core Intel Xeon (early 2008) with ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT that won't run FCP X. What's a decent video card that I can install to be able to run this?
Click to expand...

The official Apple Radeon 5770/5870 cards support OpenCL and will run FCP X just fine.

There are also numerous PC 5770/5870s that can be flashed to work (less money) if you can live without an Apple logo boot screen.
 
5770/5870 are great choices.

I've heard of issues with them in 2008 Mac Pros and Lion. I'm certainly having issues on my end but I have several things I need to check. I think just having the 5870 in the machine by itself with no other GPUs should work fine.
 
Video Card fro FCP X

goMac said:
5770/5870 are great choices.

I've heard of issues with them in 2008 Mac Pros and Lion. I'm certainly having issues on my end but I have several things I need to check. I think just having the 5870 in the machine by itself with no other GPUs should work fine.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'm going to pick up the 5770 today and give it a try.
 
So far so good with install

davenportbuzz said:
Let us know how it goes. I'm gearing up to buy a 5770 real soon myself.
Click to expand...

I got the ATI 5770 upgrade card from MicroCenter today. I just finished installing it - after figuring out where to plug in the power card that comes with it. I just booted up and am using Lion 10.7.1 and initial display looks just fine (23 inch APple display). I will now try to download FCP X and see how that goes.
 
FCP X working fine

The 5770 is installed, FCP X downloaded, all seems to work without a hitch.

Now I just have to figure out which files to transfer from my MacBook Pro back to my MacPro and not lose the work I've done on the laptop.
 
I currently have a 5770. I thinking of upgrading to a single 5870 as part of an overhaul. Any ideas if this would give noticeably better performance in FCPX?
 
Ibrin said:
I currently have a 5770. I thinking of upgrading to a single 5870 as part of an overhaul. Any ideas if this would give noticeably better performance in FCPX?
Click to expand...

At FCPX it should. It's got twice the cores, which should translate to roughly twice the OpenCL power.
 
If apple didn't mess up the driver interaction to scale as they have in other pro apps like motion you'll see benefit. Look for some tests. Barefeats actually shows the iMac i7 3.4GHz beating the 6-core 3.33GHz Mac Pro in a number of tests which shows me the GPU is not being stressed enough as the 5870 is about twice the muscle of the iMac's 6970m.
 
I'm going to upgrade my Quad Xeon 2.66 to Octo-Core 2.66 (matched pair from eBay on the way). I think I may just see how it performs with the 5770, and see if I "need" the upgrade. Hopefully Apple will refresh the pro line and drop 6000-series cards. A 6950 would be perfect: 2x6-pin power and 2GB of VRAM.
 
Which card for Post Editing Feature

If money is not an option,
which card should I buy for a new Mac Pro with maxed out Ram?
We will be shooting on the RED epic,
We have not hired an editor, but I assume it will be AVID(Media Composer) or Adobe Premier.
 
hollyhillbilly said:
If money is not an option,
which card should I buy for a new Mac Pro with maxed out Ram?
We will be shooting on the RED epic,
We have not hired an editor, but I assume it will be AVID(Media Composer) or Adobe Premier.
Click to expand...

Nvidia 570 works great natively in lion, then you get best of both worlds (CUDA, OpenCL)
 
hollyhillbilly said:
If money is not an option,
which card should I buy for a new Mac Pro with maxed out Ram?
We will be shooting on the RED epic,
We have not hired an editor, but I assume it will be AVID(Media Composer) or Adobe Premier.
Click to expand...

RED ROCKET card made by red
 
otlyer said:
RED ROCKET card made by red
Click to expand...

Does that mean I remove the card apple(ATI) that ships with the Map Pro and replace with Red Rocket, or do I keep the ATI Radeon in the slot and add the Red Rocket to another slot?

This is what I am thinking as of now

Slot 1 - Red Rocket or other video card.
Slot 2- 2 port SAS card for 24TB raid and LTO drive
Slot 3 - Boot Drive OWC 480GB Mercury Accelsior
Slot 4 - ?

I am wondering about installing the boot drive in the optical bay, will it be the same speed as the PCIe boot?
 
hollyhillbilly said:
Does that mean I remove the card apple(ATI) that ships with the Map Pro and replace with Red Rocket, or do I keep the ATI Radeon in the slot and add the Red Rocket to another slot?

This is what I am thinking as of now

Slot 1 - Red Rocket or other video card.
Slot 2- 2 port SAS card for 24TB raid and LTO drive
Slot 3 - Boot Drive OWC 480GB Mercury Accelsior
Slot 4 - ?

I am wondering about installing the boot drive in the optical bay, will it be the same speed as the PCIe boot?
Click to expand...

keep the ATI Radeon in the slot and add the Red Rocket
 
I work in a small TV Station and want to know which of these video cards will suit me best when getting our edit station up to par with FCP 10.

We currently have a Mac Pro 1,1
2 x 3GHz Dual Core Xeon
9 gb of ram

Right now this mac edits HD Footage in FCP 7 no problem. I "assume" going with the cheaper 5770 will be nothing but better performance overall when comparing to FCP 10 but I am not much of a hardware dude so please help me out.

With a semi low buget, do you think the 5770 will be the best purchase for my TV Station?
 
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I have the stock ATI 5770 installed on my MacPro 8-core 2.4 with 16G of RAM. I sometimes get hiccups using FCPX, but want to upgrade to 5870. I am hoping that it will be much better. And also will be using Davinci Resolve along with it. Really hoping the price difference is worth it!
 
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