NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600

The Radeon 4870 seems to be the big kid on the block.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB999ZM/A

The FX 5600, does it have EFI64 firmware ROM? becasue not only does it need to be PCIe.

For GPGPU and CS4, the Quadro CX is the one Adobe and Nvidia are looking to push.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/productquadro_cxus.html

Barefeats put the 5600 up against the 8800GT

WHY MOST USERS SHOULD PASS ON THE $2850 QUADRO FX 5600

We think most of you should pass on the Quadro FX 5600 option. Though it costs 14 times as much as the GeForce 8800 GT, it is not 14 times faster.

However, the Quadro FX 5600 does feature more video memory (1.5GB vs 512MB). And, according to one Maya guru, the extra memory (and superior memory management code) of the Quadro workstation cards becomes useful for frame buffering in Maya. This is especially true for redraw of multiple views of the same complex 3D model.

http://www.barefeats.com/york2.html

All you can do is wait and see probably. It isn't listed though as BTO.

If the Quadro FX 5600 came from a Mac Pro, it should work in the new Mac Pro. They both have PCI-e 2.0 and 64-bit EFI

PCIe 2.0 is basically meaningless. There is no card made that will only work in PCI Express 2.0 slots.

The real issue is just the EFI64. And that the FX fall off the radar for some reason. At least right now.

I'll be finding this out first-hand since I have a quadro fx 5600 and just ordered a new i7 8-core.

well did it work the FX5600 on the new unit?

well the machine arrived and quickly failed. I have to test with the new machine that Apple is shipping. Be another week

Just noticed a 2.93 w/ FX5600 Barefeats
http://www.barefeats.com/nehal06.html

Assume it was DOA before making any changes (and always a good idea to check it out, run AHT, even clone the system before loading anything, and especially before using Migration Assistant, though that should be safe).

I've been doing my benchmarks for our Ars Technica review and I think it will shed a lot of light on why the Quadro was dropped. It uses high-end OpenGL 3D apps and basically shows that Apple's drivers for the 5600 (Nvidia doesn't write them) are terrible. It is slower than the 4870 on the Mac side and way slower than the Quadro in Windows, since it has tuned drivers. Dropping it wouldn't be such a problem if it weren't for the really low RAM limit on Apple's Radeon 4870. 512 is simply not enough for serious 3D work.

what's also annoying is that there's no high-end Nvidia option. I realize that Apple plans on pushing OpenCL but PhysX and CUDA are used now and there is no good option on the Mac to run them with.