Re: [Avid-L2] Recommendations for upgrading GPU on MacPro 2010

I have a very similar machine, with two 3.46Mhz chips. I had an Nvidia GPU for a while but that drove me crazy with display glitches all over Media Composer (there are posts about it on the Avid forum). I moved to a RX580 recently and appart from the lack of boot screen (monitors stay black until the drivers are loaded), which is frankly a detail, it's a breeze.

I went for the officially approved model, the Sapphire Pulse. Don't get their Nitro+ as it's thicker and you will lose a PCi slot. It's only marginally overclocked so it's not even worth it. The Pulse lets you use all three remaining PCI slots, though I'd recommend putting a small card in slot 2 to avoid blocking the GPU fans. If you have a Windows drive on your system, it's rather easy to flash the Pulse to limit its top power, you're losing a couple of percents but in return it puts the GPU way under the max power the Mac can deliver. It's not compulsory to do though. Oh yes, that's the nice thing about this card, it can be powered from the two PCI sockets and with a couple of years on the market and a lot of users, no negative feedback on doing so.

I run 2019.11 on Mojave with it, and my current project was shot 4K but all converted to HD/DNxHD85 for editing. I usually go for 36 but I joined this project after it started. So far so good from a machine point of view. And I quite like the new interface. I was reading yesterday that thanks to the new Mac Pro, Red finalized hardware acceleration for MacOS using Metal and that the SDK was offered for DaVinci and Avid. And since this GPU is officially Metal happy, it can only benefit us users of the "old" Cheese Grater even if this machine is out of the officially supported list.
https://www.newsshooter.com/2019/12/13/red-apple-complete-metal-gpu-accelerated-r3d-support/

So honestly, since this GPU can be found for cheap -it's $190 on Amazon at the moment!-, it's a no brainer since it'll allow you to squeeze more use of your Mac Pro. Don't forget to buy the specific power cable.
https://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-11265-05-20G-Backplate-Graphics-Graphic/dp/B06ZZ6FMF8/
https://www.amazon.com/COMeap-Express-Video-Adapter-15-inch/dp/B07J336WY4/

Pierre

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