New 8 core + Quadro FX

Hey there, I bought the 8 core Mac Pro a month or so ago, Got it with 4 Radeon XT 2600s because the salesman at apple said that theyd work in Crossfire mode (Which they didnt)

So I called them and explained the situation, after 4 hours of being bounced around different countries they decided to replace the whole machine with a new one- one difference, instead of the 4 ATI 2600's theyre giving me a FX 5600.

Now, I dont think ill use that, since i also run Windows in bootcamp for games (hence the dissapointment when the 4 ati's didnt run in crossfire)

Should i sell it and get another gaming card?

Also, I use Final cut a lot, is there any way to export using compressor and use all the cores (Direct from final cut > Compressor) to encode/render

I can get compressor to convert files using them all (with qmaster) but not directly from final cut since it crashes whenever i do that.

Any Ideas?

Yea, Macs video cards are only to drive more displays and they cant be tethered together (Crossfire/SLI) unfortunately.
Onto the Quadro 1.5GB.... that card is really for video editing/rendering. Im pretty sure it scores pretty low for gaming. the 8800 GT on a Mac is awesome. I would save the $2700 to invest in a monitor (not the cinema displays if you are serious into gaming.. refresh rates aren't that great ) or something else.

This is directly from Store.Apple.com:

"NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600
Featuring a massive 1.5GB frame buffer of GDDR3 memory, the NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 is the ultimate workstation-level graphics card. It’s ideal for industrial-strength 3D design work, modeling, animation, and stereo 3D visualization. One of the most advanced graphics cards available, it has an integrated stereo 3D port, so you can use stereo goggles for stereo-in-a-window visualization applications. With two dual-link DVI ports, you can connect two 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Displays"

I don't think your looking for that in a gaming rig.

Im not paying for it

- theyre upgrading it to that for free. Im a video editor, I work with final cut and have 4 1.5 tb seagate drives in a striped raid array (via esata) to edit 1080p music videos. Also have another mac pro and a mac mini (Controller) set up as a cluster to render the files, using two 26" Samsung Syncmaster monitors atm and have 16 gigs of ram in this mac and 12 in the other one.

What i wanted to know was, should I sell the (Free) Quadro FX and buy a different card for gaming in bootcamp? If so which one (8800 GT?) -with the budget that it would fetch after selling it, or should I keep it (Would it help with rendering etc?)

Also, any ideas where I could sell it?


(p.s. I only figured out the clustering thing last night.. its AWESOME! -Making a high quality MPEG 2 file from 4 mins of high def footage takes around 3 minutes tops! took almost 20 before!)

Thanks

RAFAZUM said:

Im not paying for it

- theyre upgrading it to that for free. Im a video editor, I work with final cut and have 4 1.5 tb seagate drives in a striped raid array (via esata) to edit 1080p music videos. Also have another mac pro and a mac mini (Controller) set up as a cluster to render the files, using two 26" Samsung Syncmaster monitors atm and have 16 gigs of ram in this mac and 12 in the other one.

What i wanted to know was, should I sell the (Free) Quadro FX and buy a different card for gaming in bootcamp? If so which one (8800 GT?) -with the budget that it would fetch after selling it, or should I keep it (Would it help with rendering etc?)

Also, any ideas where I could sell it?


(p.s. I only figured out the clustering thing last night.. its AWESOME! -Making a high quality MPEG 2 file from 4 mins of high def footage takes around 3 minutes tops! took almost 20 before!)

Thanks

Click to expand...

I really dont know how much video processing power you need, but I have been using my roommates Mac Pro with a 8800GT to make some dive videos for my local dive shop and its more then adequate but they are simple... so all depends on you.

I don't know if you could install both and just switch between the two cards if you really needed that much power (have to have a mac hardware person about that)... but you will be very disappointed with the quadro for gaming.

Yeah I agree on the gaming part, Its benchmarks are almost Identical with the 8800GT , It only excels in 3d design and gpu-intensive calculations.

Basically the same card with more memory and a slightly different overlaid architecture.

I wouldn't keep them both, dont need THAT MUCH power. If i sell it, any ideas what other cards would be compatible / a comparison to the 8800GT?

i.e would the ati 3870 or the nvidia G9800 GX2 be compatible?

The budget for another card is basically what the quado FX fetches, it retails at around £1700-2100 for the model that comes with the mac

Any Ideas?

2008 Mac Pro - GeForce 8800 GT vs Radeon HD 2600 XT -Heres a link with some benchmarks

I'd get the Quadro and keep it.

Gaming with a Quadro is more or less the same as the GeForce cards, but you might lose 5 - 10 FPS in some games. Not a massive loss and its a much better card than a 8800GT for video editing!

I don't know a great deal about compatible Mac Video cards so I would sudjest reading this:

'The Deal' On Mac Pro Video Card Compatibility - Mac Forums

martyp said:

I'd get the Quadro and keep it.

Gaming with a Quadro is more or less the same as the GeForce cards, but you might lose 5 - 10 FPS in some games. Not a massive loss and its a much better card than a 8800GT for video editing!

Click to expand...

It doesn't seem like he is heading off to work for Pixar so I really don't think he needs that much power.

Yep, Just doing music videos and the odd add.

Any Ideas what Id get for that? / Is the 8800 my best option? (Cost doesnt matter)

I think you will be happy with the 8800

THANKS will be getting that then! know where a good place to buy one is? (uk)

thankyou!

Im getting 65 frames per second on Crysis set at Enthusiast (all settings) and at 16x qAA on 1920 x 1200(its an LCD so cant go above this) and Its pretty awesome. Any Ideas if Id get the same on a 8800GT?

Thanks

Well guys, the Quadro is on ebay, hoping for 1K
nVidia Quadro FX 5600 1.5GB GDDR3 PCI Express (2xDvi) on eBay, also Graphics Video Cards, Graphics, Video TV Cards, Desktop PC Components, Computing (end time 12-Dec-08 08:45:00 GMT)

Thanks for all your help