Purchase advice - $1500-2,000 for video card(s)

[Ryan Lightbourn]

Hey guys, I'm upgrading my 6-core desktop PC/hackintosh to (hopefully) cut R3Ds is realtime 4K, and was wondering which video card(s) would best suit my needs. Budget is 1.5-2K USD. If the cards aren't hackintosh compatible I'm fine sticking to PC-only as long as the performance is up there. I have a MacBook Pro which I can use when OSX is absolutely necessary.

Sorry if these questions are vague...I'm just hoping for some recommendations to narrow down my cumbersome search:
1. Will I get better price to performance with a single or dual cards?
2. AMD or GeForce?
3. Hackintosh compatible recommendation?

Thanks in advance...any advice is appreciated!

EDIT: If I'm overestimating the budget let me know as well...it would be nice to spend some of that on camera gear!

 

[Eric Bowen]

I would definitely suggest the Titan Black edition rather than 2 780Ti cards. 1 CPU really cant push more than 1 Titan card and adding a 2nd later for Davinci is always an option if you need to provided you have the PSU for it.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

+1 to what Eric says. The Titan cards are great all around. You can use two of them to great effect for CUDA acceleration, depending on what you are accelerating. With R3D decoding now getting GPU support in apps like Resolve and Premiere, you will most certainly be able to use the second GPU with the single 6-core CPU.

The Titan Black works in OS X under 10.9.3. If you go to dual GPUs, make sure your PSU can support them!

 

[Ryan Lightbourn]

Ok great...thanks for the advice! I'll probably get one for now & use the rest of the $ for a 4K monitor.

I'm sure it'll be a nice step up from my GTX670.

 

[Ryan Lightbourn]

Jeff do you think I'm better off pawning my current rig and buying a nMP 6-core with dual D500s?

If the Titan Black will get me close to that, I'd prefer to stay away from the trashcan, but now I'm wondering if I'll have more value over time with that setup (currently using a 3930K OC to 4.0 GHz).

Thanks in advance!

 

[Eric Bowen]

No you would not. What board are you using for the current 3930K system? If it's the Asus P9X79 Pro then update to the latest bios and then it has the microcode for the E5 V2 xeons up to the 12 core same just like the nMPro. The Nvidia Titan cards would be far better than the AMD cards on the nMPro.

Eric
ADK

 

[Ryan Lightbourn]

No you would not. What board are you using for the current 3930K system? If it's the Asus P9X79 Pro then update to the latest bios and then it has the microcode for the E5 V2 xeons up to the 12 core same just like the nMPro. The Nvidia Titan cards would be far better than the AMD cards on the nMPro.

Eric
ADK

I'm using a Sabertooth X79. Would I need two of those Titan cards or would one beat out the dual D500s?

I'd spend about $3k selling my current rig and buying the nMP configuration I'd need.

 

[Eric Bowen]

Bios 4502 will update the Xeon microcode on that one as well

Yes 1 Titan is far better than 2x D500 cards especially with Adobe and Davinci.