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Best video card for Mac Pro (Nehleham), 10.6.8 and Canon?

Edward Caruso
I have a 2009 Mac Pro with 2.93 Quad, 16GB RAM, SSD boot, RAID 0 capture drive and Nividia 120GT video card. 10.6.8.
I'm looking to improve the speed of images rendering on screen in Capture One with Canon cameras. Will a better video card help? - if so can anyone recommend one? Thanks.
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Comments

12 comments

Date Votes
  • thowi
    I am also on an early 2009 Nehalem Mac Pro and just recently upgraded to the ATI Radeon HD 5870 card. It's one of the cards Apple offers officially as an upgrade... and it also has been recommended to me by Phase One staff. The boost in performance (redraw of previews when editing as well as processing speed) is really considerable. very good purchase... IMO.
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  • Edward Caruso
    Hi Thowi
    do you see a benefit to on screen rendering from capture? that's the one thing I'm looking for.

    I see its about double the price of the 5770 - but I don't see the difference between the 2 - do you know why the 5870 is better?

    Thanks
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  • thowi
    [quote="Edward51" wrote:
    I see its about double the price of the 5770 - but I don't see the difference between the 2 - do you know why the 5870 is better?
    According to Apple the 5870 card "features a wider memory bus and higher-performance GPU, resulting in up to 70 percent faster performance compared with the ATI Radeon HD 5770."
    Source: http://www.apple.com/macpro/features/graphics.html

    do you see a benefit to on screen rendering from capture?
    not quite sure what you referring to with "on screen rendering"... the redraw of previews when adjusting image settings in C1's tools is instant... it shows no noticable lag.
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  • Edward Caruso
    do you see a benefit to on screen rendering from capture?
    not quite sure what you referring to with "on screen rendering"... the redraw of previews when adjusting image settings in C1's tools is instant... it shows no noticable lag.[/quote]

    I mean the speed that the image comes up on screen fully sharp after capture. when alot of images are coming in it takes some time before you can see the image (not blurry)
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  • Edward Caruso
    So looking into it more - I've read more about video cards than I ever wanted to.
    Anyone here use the 5870 over the 5770 with C1P and rendering from capture is fast?
    Does it work with Photoshop good too? Kind of don't want to spend the $200+ more for the 5870 but if its that much better - might have to just deal with it.
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  • thowi
    [quote="Edward51" wrote:
    I mean the speed that the image comes up on screen fully sharp after capture. when alot of images are coming in it takes some time before you can see the image (not blurry)
    I see... so when shooting tethered.
    I can't comment on that as I never shoot at a high frame rate. Too, the rendering of full res previews always went pretty fast on my machine (but I shoot P1 backs... these might be faster than RAW files from other vendors ... not sure, though). So this has not been an issue for me and I am not aware of a speed-improvement with a faster graphics card (there might be one... I just didn't noticed as I don't care).
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  • Edward Caruso
    yeah i 95% of the time I tech for photographers using Canon with USB - even with a repeater and I know using a Phase back over FW is alot faster. Nowadays AD's want to see every capture instantly and they want to tag, rate, crop etc too at the same time. Its frustrating for me when people complain but I can't say shoot slower and stop messing with C1P during shooting unfortunately.
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  • thowi
    send a PM to Lionel (user name on this board: "Lionel12"); I'm sure he can give you good advice about OpenGL and graphic cards
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  • Edward Caruso
    i do not see a way to PM him on his contact page.
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  • thowi
    [quote="Edward51" wrote:
    i do not see a way to PM him on his contact page.
    me neither 😊
    It's really strange that you can't contact Phase One staff through the Phase One User Forum... but, well, obviously that's how the guys in Denmark see things...
    Are you also a member of Luminous Landscape? If so, you can send a PM to the user "lkuhlmann".
    Or alternatively maybe open a support case and ask for advice from Lionel Kuhlmann on that matter ...
    One way or another ... he's the guy that really knows that stuff...
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  • Paul Steunebrink
    Maybe this helps (recent thread)
    viewtopic.php?f=46&t=13916&p=64243#p64243

    Otherwise open a support case and you'll get your answer direct from the horse's mouth as well.
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  • Edward Caruso
    [quote="Paul_Steunebrink" wrote:
    Maybe this helps (recent thread)
    viewtopic.php?f=46&t=13916&p=64243#p64243

    Otherwise open a support case and you'll get your answer direct from the horse's mouth as well.


    Yes I did a support case when I posted the thread and got that long list too. I never really cared all that much about GPUs (PS CS6 is fine and I don't play PC games) but I'm thinking my card is slowing down tethered capture previews so looking to hear from others with experience on set with better cards. That list doesn't tell me which card to get - just cards supporting CL. I guess I'm looking for the ATI 5870 since I'm not going to pay over $1000 for a video card. I wish the Canon cameras used a faster interface than USB2 - maybe C1P will support ethernet like in the 1Dx soon?
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