Graphics Card Advice

[Giancarlo Bianchi]

Don't buy hard drives and especially do not buy your RAM from Apple unless you like to throw away lots of money.

I found these on BH, Can anyone recommend Crucial technology Brand?

 

[Uli Plank]

Yes, CalDigit is building great stuff.
If you want to use Color, go ATI, I've been bitten bad by NVidia in that app. I had all kinds of strange issues which they coulnd't fix with a replacement, and it all went away with an ATI card.
This app seems to have been built around ATI, and it might take Apple a long time to adapt it.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I found these on BH, Can anyone recommend Crucial technology Brand?

Crucial makes good RAM products, however they're not my first choice for the Mac Pro. That price from B&H isn't very good anyway and those modules don't have the proper heat spreaders for the Mac Pro -- in fact, Crucial makes the proper modules, but their heat spreaders on their specific Mac Pro kits are still lacking.

Take a look here.

Also your profile says you're in Barcelona. If that's the case, you may want to find a more local source.

 

[martinnoweck]

Hi Uli,

so you would recommend getting the ATI 3870 instead of nvidia8800 to use with color?

kind regards,
martin

 

[Uli Plank]

Yes, at least until Apple get's this truly sorted out. But I don't know how deep they'd need to dig into Color's code…

 

[Giancarlo Bianchi]

Thanks Jeff, I`m already planing to order some things from BH.
Anyway, its almost imposible to find this kind of modules hre in Spain, the best I have found so far is 4GB kits (2x2GB), and for Pc....
For External Raid I found this, comes with a pciex card. Can you recomend this? Or there is a better choice (cheaper too)?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Those memory modules from B&H are not the right ones for a Mac Pro. Don't do it. Without proper heat spreaders, they will cook themselves in no time.

The external LaCie RAID is expensive and slow. I personally wouldn't want it.

Unfortunately, i don't have any good suggestions on how or where to purchase that will service Spain. B&H is not a good place for buying computer components and related hardware.

 

[Giancarlo Bianchi]

Thanks for the Heads Up!
I think I´m going for the OWC ram.

Im triyng to regroup my purchase (even RED), and have it send to a friends house in the U.S., so for the Shipping and Handling I think Locally (US), then I have it all sent to Spain from my friends house, I think I can save a couple of grand this way.

 

[Giancarlo Bianchi]

Unfortunately, there are some things you cant find here in Spain, or the price is way overboard. The Lacie Raid is "cheap" for the things I have found here....
So if anyone has a better suggestion faster and cheaper if possible, I`ll be truly greatful.

 

[Evin Grant]

My preference is (2) ribbon-attached ATI Radeon 3870 HD cards.

http://www.macworld.com/article/133935/2008/06/radeon.html

Ribbon to attach two together comes in box. I'm not 100% positive that Mac OS 10.5 will support dual attached cards.

Since these are not available from Apple, just pick cheapest card and then order two of these for around $200 ea. from Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/ATI-100-43592...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1223330966&sr=8-1

Just make sure you put both in 16-bit PCI slots. The Mac Pro (Early 2008) computers implement PCI-E revision 2.0 which support twice the data rate per lane as the PCI Express revision 1. Slots 1 and 2 are both x16 revision 2.0 slots. In my Mac Pro, I can run two cards striped because only one channel can be set to 16 bit.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2838

-shooter

Has anyone seena performance boost in Color using this setup? Has anyone gotten it to work in 10.5.5?
With Color now supporting Native Redcode this has become important.

 

[Patrick Tresch]

Has anyone seena performance boost in Color using this setup? Has anyone gotten it to work in 10.5.5?
With Color now supporting Native Redcode this has become important.

I tought the r3d decode (for color) was always done by the CPU and not GPU. In this case, GPU wouldn't help more than in other RGB workflow...

?

Probably I didn't get the point...

Patrick

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

ATI 3870 for Apple apps.

 

[Evin Grant]

The R3d is decoded/debayered by the CPUs but everything else in Color is handled by the GPU.

 

[Nook Kim]

Are these the same cards?

Are these the same cards?

Hi,

I have looked at the ATI 3870 card on OWC:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/ATI Technologies/100435928/

AND I have searched to see if I can get the same card where I am, but only thing I found was "SAPPHIRE HD 3870 Blue II D4 512MB."
I have attached a photo of it, and it has Angelina Jolie's Tomb Raider character print on the card.

Is it safe for to buy this Sapphire HD 3870 one instead of the OWC one, or should I get it from OWC?

Thanks,

 

[Giancarlo Bianchi]

About Ram

About Ram

Does anyone knows if these can work on a mac?

By the specs it appears they do. I was going to Import OWCs from macsales, as Jeff recomended, but finally I think I found some affordable modules in Spain.

Thanks in adavanced.

 

[Curran Giddens]

Hi,

I have looked at the ATI 3870 card on OWC:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/ATI Technologies/100435928/

AND I have searched to see if I can get the same card where I am, but only thing I found was "SAPPHIRE HD 3870 Blue II D4 512MB."
I have attached a photo of it, and it has Angelina Jolie's Tomb Raider character print on the card.

Is it safe for to buy this Sapphire HD 3870 one instead of the OWC one, or should I get it from OWC?

Thanks,

The card from OWC is for Mac & PC. The one you found is probably only for PC. Look for one that is for Mac & PC.

Does anyone knows if these can work on a mac?

By the specs it appears they do. I was going to Import OWCs from macsales, as Jeff recomended, but finally I think I found some affordable modules in Spain.

Thanks in adavanced.

Notice how much larger the heatsinks are on this other RAM from the same website. It also specifies that it is for a Mac Pro. Better to be sure the RAM works on a Mac, not all of them do.

 

[Uli Plank]

If you don't have huge heatsinks on your RAM, the Mac will throttle speed to avoid overheating – something you don't really want, I suppose.

 

[Giancarlo Bianchi]

Thanks Curran!

Well, then it is back to the OWCs....

 

[Nook Kim]

The card from OWC is for Mac & PC. The one you found is probably only for PC. Look for one that is for Mac & PC.

Thanks Curran. I really appreciate your reply. I'll try to find one for Mac & PC, but now I'm thinking it might be safe for me to go with OWC.

Best,