Hello, just wanted to get some recommendations for upgrading my graphics card in my 2009 Mac Pro.
Currently has NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600.
I will be using it with Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018
Mac Pro Specs:
2 x 3.33 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
64GB RAM
High Sierra 10.3.3
2x SSD drives
7 TB SATA
thanks in advance!
Shawn
Mac Pro, macOS High Sierra (10.13.3)
This "boilerplate" article may provide some needed background information. It is somewhat dated, but still applicable:
User Tip: Mac Pro silver tower (2006-2012) Replacement Graphics cards
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Your best performance is likely to come from the 1080 Ti, but for your use, I would recommend the Radeon R9 290x with Mac EFI flash. Plug-and-play, boot screen and all, and plenty fast with Metal
Not positive it would work in a MacPro 4,1 like you have, but I just popped a Radeon Vega Frontier in my 2010. Works out of the box in my 2010
I also forgot to mention that there is no boot screen on the un-flashed card, so booting up off the Areca card is 1 min of blind faith. Safe Boot and Recovery both work, but not Verbose Mode
Seems like a great upgrade so far, but I don't think it's worth $1k it cost (which is why it's such an awesome gift). Probably a better value is the Vega 64 if you can find it anywhere, but many models have already been discontinued for some reason despite the fact that people love it.
In any event, the CUDA rendering in Premiere/AE/AME is VERY fast with the GTX 980 Ti and 1080 Ti but I found the constant messing with drivers to be too much of a pain. You may need an external PSU with the 1080, but not the 980
<Edited by Host>
Thanks for the info! My Pro is actually 5,1 also. I was looking at the 980. This is my first Mac (I've worked on many but never owned one) so I'm not very familiar with compatibility of peripherals. Thanks again!
Shawn
Great article thanks! That gives me some more cards to research.
So is it correct i need to look for a card that is flashed with Mac bios? That appears to give me the best functionality. A producer i work with has a PC with a 980 and that works great. But as you mentioned and I've also read there are driver issues. But I've edited in Premiere on his machine and it was really nice. Just about all fx worked real time.
Are there a few other older cards other than ones listed in that article that you could recommend so that i can research them also?
Again, thanks so much for the help and knowledge!
Shawn
I also have a Mac pro 4,1 and am seeing a lot of recommendations for the Sappire RX 580 pulse 8gb but most recommendations come from gamers and I am only interested in video editing performance. I currently use a Radeon 7950 3gb and would really like to improve performance if possible. Does this sound like a good choice?
Heath
You left out that you had to add an external Power supply to get it to go, but Man, does it go!
Graphics card upgrade 2009 Mac Pro
