FCP.Co on installing a PC GTX570 in a MacPro

FCP.Co has an article on installing a PC GTX570 in a MacPro to get better OpenCL performance in FCP X, but it will also increase your CUDA power for Premiere Pro and After Effects CS6.

Still you can score over 1000 on Luxmark if you go for a GTX670 instead (which has a huge amount more of CUDA cores, and can still draw it’s power from the internal power supply instead of say a 680, which would require an external power source to run), but they are not as well supported on the Mac. Either way you will need to go to Netkas to get some instruction and some help (though some of the help can be rather surly, but it is worth it if can really beef up using your MacPro). Someone at Netkas has also figure out how to Firmware update recent MacPro’s to the latest firmware for the newest itineration, allowing beefier XEON’s into your old MacPro.

The instructions are pretty easy, but I have found that they don’t always work, so think about re-installing your NVIDIA drivers once you are done, as that did it for me.

You will also need to do some hacking to Premiere Pro and After Effects to get them working with the CUDA cores on a new video card.

Was having a slow finder on my MacPro

Managed to fix it though. I carbon copy cloned my main hard drive to make a new, then did a clean install of Mountain Lion. This took a download of Mountain Lion from the app store and Lion Diskmaker 2, which installed a full version onto a USB stick. I then did a clean install. This is of course after de-activating Adobe CS6, Final Draft and AVID Media Composer.

Just to try it, I had it import my User and Applications from my carbon copy cloner version (thinking this would bring over the problems, whatever they were), but after the import I had a system that was working fine, with all of my applications installed. Sure I had re-install a few, but overall everything worked just fine and my computer is back to speed!

I am glad there is still a way to do a clean system install, since Apple removed the Archive and Install option a while back. Still it should be easier than it is (IE the option given from Apple). Glad it is working though.

Now just really need a bigger hard drive so I can get my Time Machine going again (had to do a bunch of moving of files to get an extra drive for the Clone procedure).

NVIDIA releases new drivers for Mac

Adobe blogs has the story.

 If you have experienced crashes in Premiere Pro CS6 or later when using a qualified NVIDIA GPU, we strongly recommend you update to this new driver version, which should improve stability. The crashes were mostly seen when switching from OpenCL to CUDA or when tabbing from other applications back to Premiere Pro (most notably Safari).

It doesn’t mention all the crashes I was having for other reasons, and general premiere pro instability, but hopefully this will cover it. And hopefully I can move back to my GeForce GTX275 from my Quadro 4800 as the 4800 just isn’t fast.

Wonder if this improves Kepler card support? That would be awesome, though I doubt it.

You can download from NVIDIA here.

NVIDIA announces Kepler based Quadro K5000 GPU for Mac Pro!!!! This is huge for CUDA users!

quadro-k5000-mac-front

Arstechnica has the news on this HUGE announcement. The K5000 is the replacement for the QUADRO 5000 and runs at $2249. You check it out at NVIDIA as well.

Built around NVIDIA’s latest “Kepler” architecture, the double-wide card boasts 1536 processing cores shuffling pixels at up to 173GB/s along a 256-bit path to 4GB of GDDR5 memory. The card supports Shader Model 5.0, Open GL 3.2 on Mac OS X, and Open GL 4.3 and DirectX 11 when running Windows under BootCamp. And, it can support up to four monitors: two running at 2560×1600 over dual-link DVI ports, and two running up to 4096×2160 over DisplayPort 1.2. All that power also fits within an Energy Star-rated 122W power envelope.

This has serious CUDA performance and should be awesome for Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve 9.

Even more exciting for us not quite able to afford such a behometh card is that it signals some changes from Apple and Drivers. As you can actually run many Kepler cards now without much effort, since they included the drivers to deal with the NVIDIA powered MacBookPro and NVIDIA has started just writing a single driver for all cards in a series instead of different drivers. The thing is as of now you can only see 2GB of RAM on a card without doing some fiddling, which is an arbitrary addition made by Apple. The 4GB of RAM in this card looks like this will soon change for the better. And hopefully we get some Kepler GeForce cards running at full power on the mac soon. Like a GeForce GTX 680 (which matches the 1536 CUDA cores of the QUADRO) with slightly higher memory bandwidth.

Any way you look at this it is good news for high end mac graphics as it looks like NVIDIA is back and here to stay.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 is unofficially supported in MacPro

evga5700-660x320

Tej’s Tech Blog has a post on installed an NVIDIA GTX 570 PC card into a MacPro and it seems to work except for EFI (so it goes straight to desktop or login screen, you don’t see the spinning ball at the start. Guess you can’t do safe mode or boot to another drive then from startup, though not positive on that).

You will have to do some Terminal tricks to get the Adobe suite to see it as compatible as the card is not listed for Mac, but it can be done.

This is great news. Wonder if NVIDIA is going towards one driver for all their cards, or if it means that Apple is planning to include NVIDIA if and when it ever updates the MacPro?

No matter what, more NVIDIA support for Macs is a good thing. And it is great that the new MacBook Pro and the MacBook Pro Retina are run by NVIDIA cards, as more CUDA support means more realtime with the Adobe Suite.

Netkas Forums got a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 working in a MacPro

Now this is some seriously exciting news at Hardmac, it seems the members at Netkas forums using the new mac NVIDIA drivers for the MacPro have managed to get an NVIDIA GeForve GTX 680 running in a MacPro.

gtx680

Now lets hope that Mountain Lion come with drivers and new cards are released, or are at least hackable to work, because I want a new video card in a big way!

Forbes says new MacPro’s in 2013

Forbes says new Model, designs for MacPro in 2013. It seems that after the uproar over the MacPro non-update that Apple CEO Tim Cook has sent an e-mail to a customer saying that there will be new designs and models of MacPro in 2013.

Franz,
Thanks for your email. Our Pro customers like you are really important to us. Although we didn’t have a chance to talk about a new Mac Pro at today’s event, don’t worry as we’re working on something really great for later next year. We also updated the current model today.
We’ve been continuing to update Final Cut Pro X with revolutionary pro features like industry leading multi-cam support and we just updated Aperture with incredible new image adjustment features.
We also announced a MacBook Pro with a Retina Display that is a great solution for many pros.
Tim
Of course having to wait till next year after a 2 year wait fucking sucks, but at least it looks like the MacPro has a future. And it better include NVIDIA cards and external Retina Display monitors, as well as Thunderbolt and USB 3!

Dave Pogue says there will be new MacPro’s with a real update

Dave Pogue in the New York Times has a great article on all the new goodies Apple released yesterday, but for me the most interesting part is what he has to say on the MacPro’s.

Many Apple observers also wonder if Apple thinks that desktop computers are dead, since not a word was said about the iMac and Mac Pro. An executive did assure me, however, that new models and new designs are under way, probably for release in 2013.



Still though, that could really mean the iMac are getting an update soon, and the MacPros will just continue with these crappy updates, but one can still hope that Apple has reversed course and is finally working on a new and more powerful MacPro with the latest technology and powerful NVIDIA support (how about a QUADRO 5000 and a GeForce GTX 690 or at least 680). Still the tech in the MacPro is so far behind at this point, they need to work fast or more and more people will move to Windows in the Interim!

Apple has slightly updated the MacPro

9 to 5 Mac is reporting that in fact Apple has slightly updated the MacPro towers with new Processors, but no Thunderbolt, no USB 3 and no new Graphics cards. This actually makes me more worried that they are killing the MacPro, because who wants a MacPro with so little upgrade? I mean the new processors are nice, but come on. And not only that they are still 2 year old processors, not the latest Xeon’s Intel has released, so while they 12 core is $1200 cheaper than it used to be, it is still old tech.

And if the MacBook’s get NVIDIA graphics cards, why not the MacPro? We want CUDA as well, not the same 2 year old graphics card!

This is not an upgrade. It is a little FU to all us power users!

COME ON APPLE, WTF!