Video card question

[MattDSLR]

EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition Graphics Card for Apple Mac Pro
or
Sapphire HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 Mac Edition Graphics Card

Whats a better solution for MP 4.1 and 5.1
it will be used with 3 NEC PA301 monitors

 

[Donar]

Do you use any "special" applications which rely on CUDA or OpenCL?
I bought a Sapphire Radeon 7950 because i think that Apple will taylor OSX and surrounding applications more and more to OpenCL.

 

[MattDSLR]

Do you use any "special" applications which rely on CUDA or OpenCL?
I bought a Sapphire Radeon 7950 because i think that Apple will taylor OSX and surrounding applications more and more to OpenCL.

Did you had any issues with it?

Thats the one i'm looking at, but there is some horror stories about them

 

[riggles]

What applications will you be using it with? Some apps run faster on AMD cards, some on NVIDIA. (Ie: Cinema4D seems to have faster OpenGL performance with AMD, while MODO viewports run faster on NVIDIA cards). Same thing would apply if you were gaming I believe.

 

[Donar]

Did you had any issues with it?
Thats the one i'm looking at, but there is some horror stories about them

If the horror story is intermittent screen flicker - it was an issue with OSX 10.8 but is no issue in OSX 10.9. So no more flickering.

Strange behavior is/was that the expansion slot fans rev up after a cold start. Can be fixed by stressing the GPU for some seconds (until the next reboot). My MP normally sleeps, so doing this once every month is not a big issue for me. And the behavior got better (but not fixed) in 10.9.1.

 

[MattDSLR]

What applications will you be using it with? Some apps run faster on AMD cards, some on NVIDIA. (Ie: Cinema4D seems to have faster OpenGL performance with AMD, while MODO viewports run faster on NVIDIA cards). Same thing would apply if you were gaming I believe.

It strictly for video and photo editing intense Photoshop work
i'm utilizing 96 gig of ram to allow for better crystallization of large files
my 5870 failed and had to plug in my 5770 card in it

 

[riggles]

It strictly for video and photo editing intense Photoshop work
i'm utilizing 96 gig of ram to allow for better crystallization of large files
my 5870 failed and had to plug in my 5770 card in it

I guess my initial thought would be the AMD 7950, since it has more VRAM and if you use Adobe CC, it's got improved OpenCL support now (which the AMD is faster at). But, I seem to recall a reviewer upgrading to the 7950 Mac and not being really impressed. So, who knows. Here's a quick little spec comparison from GPUBoss.

 

[MattDSLR]

I guess my initial thought would be the AMD 7950, since it has more VRAM and if you use Adobe CC, it's got improved OpenCL support now (which the AMD is faster at). But, I seem to recall a reviewer upgrading to the 7950 Mac and not being really impressed. So, who knows. Here's a quick little spec comparison from GPUBoss.

Thank you
Thats why i'm looking at 7950
But I hate issues

 

[Macsonic]

Thank you
Thats why i'm looking at 7950
But I hate issues

Hi Matt. Not sure if you came across this thread but sharing it here about the Radeon 7950 which may help. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1603588/

Probably inquire the seller or store if you have the option to return the card if it has performance issues. The issues you read in other reviews may be isolated and you never know unless you try out the card.

 

[MattDSLR]

Hi Matt. Not sure if you came across this thread but sharing it here about the Radeon 7950 which may help. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1603588/

Probably inquire the seller or store if you have the option to return the card if it has performance issues. The issues you read in other reviews may be isolated and you never know unless you try out the card.

Thank you so much
That is helpful

 

[ActionableMango]

If you don't mind getting a PC card, the GTX 680 is available in a 4GB version and is quite easy to flash into a MAC edition card.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1603260/

I have done this myself.