Apple Color with Nvidia Quadra FX5600 with SDI?

[Harcharan Singh]

Hi,
Has anyone tested this card with Color?What is the playback speed ?
Thks
HS:shifty:

 

[Adam Glick]

Quadro SDI is not supported in OSX.

 

[Loren White]

I hear that nVidia does not make quality drivers for the Quardro's...

What are some other quality GPU's for osx/color/fcp?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

nVidia's drivers for the Quadro are just fine. Apple pretty much writes their own drivers for OSX and doesn't implement all the functions that nVidia has placed in their own drivers (Windows / Linux). But the Quadro card is still the top card option for the Mac. If you want to go cheaper, there's the nVidia 8800GT and the ATI 3870. Both perform very similarly, but the ATI supposedly offers 10bit color output over DVI|DL. I personally have not had access to the right hardware to test this. I would probably recommend the ATI 3870 if you spend most of your time in FCS and Color. The 3870 had a noticeable edge in performance for Core Image and Core Animation OSX applications, but that gap seems to have mostly closed between it and the 8800GT with the past couple updates. The 3870 is available as an aftermarket card. The 8800GT and Quadro can be purchased as a BTO option for the Mac Pro.

 

[Loren White]

The reason the quadro seems like a nice option is because I will probably run Nitris and Lustre (must have a nvidia card) on the windows side via boot camp...still possible?

 

[Andrae Palmer]

As Jeff said, the ATI 3870 is the top card for the intel mac as far as performance in pro apps like color, motion and aperture are concerned.