Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

video card to drive two 32" NEC 4K displays

S

smallwonder

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 26, 2013
26
8
Please suggest an appropriate video card to drive two NEC 32" 4K monitor (PA322UHD).

I'm using a 2010 MacPro (upgraded to 12-core 3.33) with factory 5770 card. Looking to upgrade my Apple 30" display to the 32" NEC 4k monitor (possibly 2 of them), and not sure which video card to choose.
My requirements are that it should do 4k at 60hz, and not have loud fans. Also, I do not game, using mainly for Photoshop and other imaging software.

Thanks for any help or suggestions.
 
smallwonder said:
Please suggest an appropriate video card to drive two NEC 32" 4K monitor (PA322UHD).

I'm using a 2010 MacPro (upgraded to 12-core 3.33) with factory 5770 card. Looking to upgrade my Apple 30" display to the 32" NEC 4k monitor (possibly 2 of them), and not sure which video card to choose.
My requirements are that it should do 4k at 60hz, and not have loud fans. Also, I do not game, using mainly for Photoshop and other imaging software.

Thanks for any help or suggestions.
Click to expand...
Go for the R9 380X, works natively in OS X :)
Buy it from create.pro it's €350 and its flashed and the PCB is modded for PCIe 2.0 speeds !
Their service is great :)
 
tuxon86 said:
The new R9 380X is a simple rebranding of the 280X. It may be easy to fool OS X in believing they're the same.
Click to expand...
The R9 380 is a rebranded R9 285 and doesn't (to my knowledge) work out of the box in OS X.
Remember that you do want a Flashed and physically modified GPU, if you want the OS X boot screen and PCIe 2.0 with 5 GT/s.
If you use a regular R9 280X in OS X it'll work but no boot screen and will only run at 2.5 GT/s and PCIe 1.1 which I think is not ideal for dual 4K (just a guess).
 
Lauwie said:
The R9 380 is a rebranded R9 285 and doesn't (to my knowledge) work out of the box in OS X.
Remember that you do want a Flashed and physically modified GPU, if you want the OS X boot screen and PCIe 2.0 with 5 GT/s.
If you use a regular R9 280X in OS X it'll work but no boot screen and will only run at 2.5 GT/s and PCIe 1.1 which I think is not ideal for dual 4K (just a guess).
Click to expand...

Hence the "fool" part of my quote. Yes you would need to flash it, but it would be imho easy to do if a patch firmware for the 290X is available as a foundation.
 
tuxon86 said:
Hence the "fool" part of my quote. Yes you would need to flash it, but it would be imho easy to do if a patch firmware for the 290X is available as a foundation.
Click to expand...
The R9 380X isn't released yet, but probably won't be based on the R9 280X as it's only GCN 1.0 and AMD is shifting towards GCN 1.1 and 1.2.
The R9 380 is based on Tonga which is used in the 5K iMac so it should work without any problems but yet again there isn't any flashing info released yet plus you'll have to physically modify the card most likely.
The R9 290X should work in OS X although there's not a lot of info on them. The R9 390X will probably work as well if they didn't edit the bios to much...

I'm personally using the R9 280X and it works great in OS X :) (it is flashed and physically modified)

It all depends on how much the OP likes adventures tbh, but as he doesn't need anything to fancy I think the R9 280X is the best option that works out of the box without to much hassle :)
 
Thanks for the R9 suggestion, I appreciate it.
Is it safe to say that for my purpose (no gaming), the R9 would be less expensive, and perhaps less finicky than the Nvidia offerings with regard to driver updates? (since R9 works natively with OS X).
In other words, is there any reason in my case to consider the Nvidia cards?
 
smallwonder said:
Thanks for the R9 suggestion, I appreciate it.
Is it safe to say that for my purpose (no gaming), the R9 would be less expensive, and perhaps less finicky than the Nvidia offerings with regard to driver updates? (since R9 works natively with OS X).
In other words, is there any reason in my case to consider the Nvidia cards?
Click to expand...
Nope NVIDIA, is just hassle everytime there's an OS update. The R9 just works :)
 
Thanks Lauwie.
It appears that there's Rev 2 & Rev 3 versions of the R9 card. Does anyone know if there's any difference to be concerned with considering that it will be flashed anyways?
 
smallwonder said:
Thanks Lauwie.
It appears that there's Rev 2 & Rev 3 versions of the R9 card. Does anyone know if there's any difference to be concerned with considering that it will be flashed anyways?
Click to expand...
Buy the MSI 280X, those are the best ones :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back