What is the best Video Card I can get for an Early 2009 Mac Pro?

Hello All!!! Here's my update! (realize that the following is being tendered by a 55yo that has been with the Mac since it's inception wayyyyy back in the 1980's.... even using the ATARI Mega 4 with GCR ((using legally purchased Apple ROMS)) to fully charge the Macintosh experience!)

About three weeks ago I purchased a GTX480 from MacVideoCards. Works spectacular!

I was concerned about the "updating the drivers before putting the graphics card into the Mac Pro"... only because my antiquated knowledge made me wonder: "Are new drivers going to stomp all over the old drivers... rendering my current GT120 card/display functionality useless until I install the new card?" OF COURSE... THE ANSWER WAS NO: Install the NVIDIA DRIVERS (Quadtro 4000 & CUDA) before you install this card... and YAY!

ALSO: I queried this topic and found that I also needed to modify some text files for my CS5.5 AND CS6 suites; but EVERYTHING went as advertised!!

I also created partititons for OS 7.x, OS 8.x, and OS 9.x ... then purchased/downloaded those OS on-top-of "Super-Duper" cloned partitions of my 10.6.8 sorftware (I had put all my Adobe software, Swift 3D, Cinema 4D, etc software on a separate disk... so that EVERY OS partition points to the same products without duplicating the productivity software for every OS).

So Far.... EVERYTHING in EVERY OS works fairly well (although admittantedly.... I've only generically tested the Parallel's 9 BOOTCAMP and Adobe CS suites in SNOW LEOPARD & MAVERICKS!

==> PLEASE NOTE THAT THE **BIGGEST** PROBLEM I HAD... WAS... THE NEW OS INSTALLED "FONTBOOK" (and I already had SUITCASE FUSION 5).... WHICH HUNG UP THE OS WITH EVERYTHING... INCLUDING EMPTYING THE TRASH! This was fixed by deleting Font Book, booting into Safe Mode, and then rebooting.... as directed in the great article on "Font Management in Mac OS" (reference here).

Anyway.... sorry for the long-winded reply here... but the GTX480 works great... excepting that it generates much more heat than the GT120.

I Thank EVERYONE on these Mac Boards... including you "flamalanca"; I've FOUND that the GTX480 Satisfies my Snow Leapord & Mavericks requirements superbly.... and perhaps I'll look into the GTX 680 if it "cools down" my power/heat requirement!

CAN'T TELL YOU ALL HOW THANKFUL I AM FOR YOUR SUPPORT! (wink-wink-smiley-face!!!)

Ah.... alas.... I'm much too old to know the difference! (smile)

I installed the "Quadro 4000" (spelling?) drivers... because it seems THOSE are the ones that all the "flashed" cards are using to "impersonate" actual Apple cards. (please forgive my ignorance here.... I'm way too old to keep track of the venacular).

Anyway.... I'm going WAYYYYYYY out on a branch to say that.... the "flashed" cards somehow recognize the "Quadro 4000" intrinsic drivers.... and believe that they are "part of the family". Therefore... ALL IS WELL!

Sorry if I haven't answered your question... or even understand it; NETKAS.ORG is the place that well informed individuals await!

Cheers! (and Thank You for telling me of yet another ((780)) solution!!!!)

~jj,

Can you give more information on MacVideoCards where you purchased the card? A google search doesn't seem to come up with a valid dealer by that name?

Thanks!

mpostbush: Sorry... my bad, try google this: macvidcards

I purchased my card on EBAY... but macvidcards.com also has some information.

Also, you'll find them active on sights like netkas.org.

I can provide street address if you wish.

the ebay address is "valid" "vendor"

http://www.ebay.com/sch/macvidcards/m.html

~jj: Awesome!I didn't realize you purchased from them on Ebay. Makes sense now. Thanks!

I also bought a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2048 MB video card that was flashed for Mac, giving you the benefit of the bootup screen. IT works fine using the OSX driver for when I am editing FCPX and After Effects CS6. The only issue I have is I tried installing the new NVIDIA driver that is now Mavericks compatible, and it disabled After Effects usage. When using the NVIDIA driver, After Effects is recognizing it as a PC card, and I get a GPU mismatch ( don't remember the exact wording, but I think it was "GPU sniffer"). IF anyone has solved this would be a very happy camper.

No, I added the card to the Adobe After Effects text file as indicated by many of the sites that said how to do it, It works as advertised...just not under the NVIDIA driver...Not sure if FCPX performance would be any better or not.

Sigh; Misnomers and Headaches.

I thought that I had everything working peachy... so after the last few posts I wanted to write up a step-by-step instruction on how my mac 4,1 works with the GTX480 just fine in 10.6.8 and 10.9.2.

HOWEVER.... when I got to my 10.9.2 partition.... I TOO WAS EXPERIENCING problems with After Effects CS6! I could have sworn everything was perfect... but maybe it's because I was confusing Photoshop acceleration with After Effects... and so on. I was also dismayed that my After Effects under 10.6.8 also showed the same problem... but with additional work have concluded that the CUDA drivers just aren't advanced enough in 10.6.8 to allow After Effects to utilize the GTX480.

-------- TO GET MY MAVERICKS CUDA WORKING CORRECTLY GTX480 I DID THE FOLLOWING --------

(1) Follow advice at: http://macvidcards.com/2011/29/fermi-cards-come-to-the-mac-pro/

--> Yes... you'll need to get I "Plist Editor".... I updated my "TextWrangler"

--> In other words.. before I did the Plist Editor stuff... I downloaded:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-macosx-256.02.25f01-driver.html

http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-cuda-4.2.10-driver.html

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/75319/en-us (web-driver mentioned previous page)

(2) Follow advice at: http://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/AfterEffects.htm (bottom of page to "unlock")

--> Didn't get any farther than editing the file for After Effects.... but now GPU is enabled in my 10.9.2 in that app's preferences

--------- BOOTCAMP INFO ------------------

When using Bootcamp I simply went to the NIVDIA websight and downloaded NVIDA drivers and CUDA for the GTX480. When using Parallels 9.... everything works fine... except the NVIDA control panels in my Windows Ultimate 7 don't work... because they're obviously unable to see through the Parallels 9 magic. Bootcamp working just fine with both 10.6.8 and 10.9.2.

Last info tonight: This flashed GTX480 card from "macvidcards" INDEED shows the Macintosh Start-Up Screen... so I can easily re-direct my boot drive/partition at start-up.

Too tired to do anymore tonight.... cheers!

Oh... BTW.... All of my preferences ... both Apple and Adobe... under both 10.9.2 and 10.6.8... always show the graphics card as a "GTX480" ( even though I downloaded the Quadro 4000 driver for 10.6.8). That may have thrown us off.

Also... I re-initialized PRAM when I started working on my 10.9.2 partition..... so under 10.9.2 apple system preferences, "NVIDIA Driver Manager" ... the only selection is "OS X Default Graphics Driver".

Under 10.9.2, apple system preferences, CUDA shows:

CUDA Driver Version: 6.0.37

GPU Driver Version: 8.24.9 310.40.25f01

I have an update...NVIDia"s latest driver and CUDA update resolves the above problem, so that both FCPX and After Efects CS6 both run now under the Nvidia drivers.

so what versions of:

NVIDIA Driver?

CUDA driver?