New NVIDIA driver for Mac OSX Lion 10.7.3

[Matt Ryan]

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.

Jake Blackstone ran some tests with several different cards. Here are the results:http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?65162-Comparing-Resolve-performance-with-GTX-285-470-480-and-Quadra-6000&highlight=jake+blakstone

I just had a visit from Dave Pirinelli from MacvidCards.
Disclosure:
I have no affiliation with David or MacVidCards, other than I use his GTX 285 with stock MacPro 4.1, octo 2.26 Ghz and Resolve, that I had purchased almost 2 years ago.
He offered to bring various Mac video cards to test with Resolve.
So we had tested:
1. GTX 285 with 1 GB of RAM
2. GTX 470
3. GTX 480
4. Quadra 6000.

All cards ran fine with Resolve. Only GTX 480 required an external power supply. They all showed up correctly in the system profiler, with exception of Quadra 6000 showing 2GB of RAM, instead of 6GB.
GTX 470 and 480 were properly recognized by Resolve. Resolve complained about Quadra 6000, but it still ran fine, as far as I can tell.
I used the Noise Reduction to simulate a heavy GPU load. I used settings of 2 and 3 on the NR to see the playback speed. Lower number requires more number crunching GPU power.
So, here are the findings:
1. GTX 285 NR=2 9 fps NR=3 16fps
2. GTX 470 NR=2 12.5fps NR=3 21fps
3. Quadra 6000 NR=2 12fps NR=3 20fps
4. GTX 480 NR=2 16 fps NR=3 Real time

For my money. GTX 470 is the best value with Resolve. As you can see, this card actually exceeded the performance of Quadra 6000. The overall champ was GTX 480. This is the only card, that was capable of real time performance with the NR. Not too bad, but the external power supply is a bit of a bummer. Not a problem, though with the external enclosure.
Hope this info helps...

Personally I am using a 470 and absolutely love it. So much faster than my previous 285.

 

[Paulo Emílio]

Jeff, do you have any suggestions for an external source power to feed my gtx 590 on my mac pro? ;-)

 

[Eric Santiago]

how about the FX 4800? Resolve faq states this is the best single card option for Resolve?
I have one in a mac pro for ae use, maybe put it to good use as a Resolve back-up station.