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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

New NVIDIA driver for Mac OSX Lion 10.7.3

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Rohit Gupta

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NVIDIA has released an updated driver for Mac OSX Lion 10.7.3. It can be downloaded at:


http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-270.00.00f01-driver.html


The good news is this update seems to provide CUDA support on OS X for all CUDA capable NVIDIA cards including the GTX580.


We have tested this and it works well for Resolve on Mac OS X.


We were using a configuration with 3 x GTX 580 on a Cubix Desktop 4 with a GT120 GUI GPU, and we could get 25 nodes of image blur processing at 24fps, or 4 nodes of noise reduction at the default settings.
 
Would love to hear from others if this update is a happy experience. It might be worth benchmarking your machine before and after to see what happens
 
YeeeeeeSSS!, time to spend money, again.
 
looks like this is strictly a lion upgrade
 
just bought a gtx 470 too! it's ok, the card is cheaper, and i'm not upgrading to lion anytime soon.i think you need a external power source to power a 580 if u have the card in the tower, the power requirements are a lot more than the tower can put out at full load. come gpu expansion time though...
 
Sorry, not too knowledgeable when it comes to graphics cards, but how will this effect FCPX users? Will using one of the nvidia cards allow faster performance for that as well? Also with RCX?
 
Jerrod, these cards are more important to Adobe CS 5.5 users (Premiere and AfterEffects) and Davinci Resolve user than to FCP users. I don't think FCP products have a use for CUDA yet....
 
So we have run more tests, this time without a Cubix expansion, and with just a GT120/Mac and a GTX570/PC inside a Mac Pro.


At HD, we could 11 nodes of image blurs at 24fps.


In the Mac Pro, we also have the Red Rocket card and the Decklink card in the x4 PCI-E slots.
 
Jerrod Cordell said:
Sorry, not too knowledgeable when it comes to graphics cards, but how will this effect FCPX users? Will using one of the nvidia cards allow faster performance for that as well? Also with RCX?
Click to expand...

Won't do a whole lot for FCPX. The biggest issue is that the Mac is still limited as to which cards it can actually use with the primary graphics display interface or as a card that shows what you see on screen. FCPX uses your primary GPU and does not extend beyond to additional GPUs as Resolve will. FCPX uses OpenCL, which is the non-proprietary alternative to CUDA, meaning that they are not locking themselves into GPUs from one manufacturer. CUDA is nVidia. This is fine and great as nVidia cards support OpenCL as well. It just comes back to which cards are actually supported in full by OSX.

There are a lot of rumors flying that Apple is fully opening up the GDI with OSX 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and if so, we'll be able to buy more off-the-shelf GPUs for the first time.
 
Does this mean the GTX 590 would work in my 2010 MacPro for use with PP?
 
Josh,

AFAIK PremierPro still only supports 1 card; no SLI. Since a GTX590 is essentially 2 SLI-on-PCB underclocked GTX580s, even though the card might recognize in OSX, PP will still only use 1/2 of the card, because unless things have changed in some recent patch, PP does not support SLI, either on PCB or by molex jumper.

HTH
 
What's the best CUDA card for Mac?
 
Josh Beadle said:
What's the best CUDA card for Mac?
Click to expand...

That's actually a question with multiple correct answers.

For a card that will accelerate and work with everything, will work in OSX 10.6 or 10.7, fully supported, etc.. The answer is the Quadro 4000 Mac Edition. It's an all-around nice card, but expensive and not as powerful ad the GTX580 or many other cards.

If you want a card that can still run everything like your OSX GUI, accelerate Premiere, FCPX, etc.. and you want some more muscle than the Quadro 4000 and don't mind doing some tweaking, then you can look at the GTX470. There's a couple good sources to pick them up where they have the EFI ROM flashed to work with the Mac EFI and it seems to run well in most cases. The GTX580 is not a good candidate for use in a Mac for all-purpose GPU. To fit it internally in the tower still works within the dual-slot space of slot-1. However the card does not fit into the Mac tower's power profile. It requires dual 8-pin power connectors, the Mac Pro offers dual 6-pin. You can use adapters to make it work, but it actually over-draws voltage from the logic board. So you need to place it in an external PCIe expander like the Cubix or Cyclone or power it from an external source or pull extra power from another source, often external.

For running a few odd applications like Resolve, where multiple CUDA cards can be used for acceleration (and not for display), the GTX570 and 580 look to be great options. Possibly the GTX590 if you're slot-limited. The 570 is the only one of those that fits within the power profile and I see that Rohit says they have tested it internally. Mostly, these configurations are best set up using a PCIe expander unit.
 
Thanks for that info, Jeff. So are you saying that a GTX 580 will not play well with the OSX GUI? You can't use it as the main card for everything? Also, will a simple juice box work as power supply? An expander kinda takes away from the lower price point of these now-useable cards. Thanks for clarifying.

Maybe I'm better off with a 4000? I'm switching to PP but will still run FCP every now and again. Will be using AE and Resolve as well. I just see much more bang for buck with the GTX 580 which is why I think i'm wanting it to work.
 
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