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Final Cut Pro X - Which Graphics Card

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Hi All,
my first post here, so bear with me :)

I'm looking to build a hackintosh primarily because of video editing needs (amateur, nothing professional) in FCPX. From what I understand there are major issues of compatibility between the gcards and FCPX. Are any of the recommended cards tested as working with FCPX under OpenCL, that I could just buy and plug-in?

thanks in advance :)

Marcin
 
OK, this is a topic that has been done time and time and time again.

I know this is your first post but its a good idea to search the forums before you ask.

A very quick summary is:

1. nVidia cards work but are not that effective.

2. AMD cards work and are very effective. This ranges from the 5770 (old, serviceable and still very quick and very cheap) to the 280X range.

3. The 280X cards are pretty good value for money. Most seem to work OK, though some have issues with which frame buffer you select. I have dual 280X Vapor-X cards and they just work under Clover, however the mini-display ports don't.

4. Crossfire or SLI or whatever its called doesn't make any difference on OS X. Leave the cable on for Windows though.

5. Multiple identical AMD cards work better in FCP X than single AMD cards. FCP X is optimised for AMD such that dual 5770 cards will easily outpace top end nVidia cards. The cards have to be identical, no mix and matching.

6. Turn off internal graphics cards as FCP may (or may not) prioritise the internal graphics card over your nice fast AMD cards.

7. You can benchmark your cards and FCP X performance using the BruceX benchmark. See first comment on searching the internet.

8. 290X and 295X still seem to be problematic and unless you like playing about with them are best avoided.

9. The 280X is basically the same as the 7970.

10. Some of the 270x cards appear problematic
 
Thanks - I really appreciate your time. I did search through the forums, but I wasn't able to find current posts on the topic. None of them would match the current recommended list, which only includes the nvidia cards.

Your setup is very powerful, but also the cards are quite pricy. Is there anything that works similarly out-of-the-box, but would be priced closer under the $150 mark? Or perhaps there is a list of current lower end models that are supported and I can do my own price research (I did check the 'from' you listed, but I can't seem to buy it in the UK).
 
The nVidia cards are good for a lot of things including games but specifically for FCP X, they are pretty poor. Most people don't use FCP X so its not an issue hence the recommendation for nVidia.

Out of the box the 5770 cards are very good with FCP X. Forget the fact they are 5-6 years old, a dual 5770 setup will eat any similarly priced nVidia card with ease. I benchmarked a 5770 vs a GTX660 (?) and the five year old card was twice as fast the 660. All the 5770 cards appears to work out of the box with no flags needed or special work at all. I have used 3 (or possibly four) different 5770 cards and never needed to use any special kexts or boot flags on both real Macs and hacks.

I believe the 270X and the 260X are the rebadged version of the older 6xxx range and 5xxx range. They are a little faster but for all intents and purposes the same. No doubt somebody will correct me.

I would look for any specials on a 280X if you can. Be careful that you get the X version and not the non-X. Also look for 5770's on eBay. They were too slow for Bitcoin mining so often are good value. I wouldn't buy a 7970 or a 280X second hand unless I knew who had had it as its likely to have been hammered into the ground for mining.

If you are dedicated to FCP X then dual 5770 cards could be had for $100 for both of them, e.g. $50 each. They need a 550W upwards PSU as they are quite power hungry, but two of those plus whatever MB combination you can afford will make a very good FCP X editor. Ignore the nutters who will moan and wail about how old the 5770 is, I used 5770's until the end of last year and I was very happy with them.

FCP X also benefits from the i7 chips as they have building video encoding (or something like that). I forget now but you could certainly put together a video system for around £500 which would work very well indeed. It won't be very good at Battlefield 4 but hey, it can make money.

Rob
 
Thanks for the detailed info!

I'm also planning a build for running FCPX & Motion5. My only frame of reference is a late-2011 Macbook Pro with HD 6770M and 2.4 GHz i7 processor. It runs FCPX pretty well, though it gets really HOT and the fans run loud, which kinda sucks when I want to redo a voiceover segment.

But my Macbook's fatal flaw is no support for 4K. :(

Soon I'm going to get the new Philips 4065UC 40 inch 4K monitor.

Any idea if Yosemite supports 4K on those R9 280X cards?
 
I just picked up this ASUS 270X from my local MicroCenter last night:http://www.microcenter.com/product/425141/Radeon_R9_270X_Overclocked_2048MB_GDDR5_PCIe_30_Video_Card

I was worried I was in for a battle, I've always used Nvidia with my hacks. Very happy to say this card worked right out of the box running two displays off the DVI ports after moving Chameleon to the EFI partition and running 10.10.3. It blows the gtx 650ti I had out of the water in the BruceX test. The best I got out of the 650 was 92 seconds. The 270x so far is coming in at 37 seconds! This seems to be a good choice if you want a card with good FCP X performance and decent modern capabilities for other things.

Only one gripe right now, is that the card is long, even for a full length PCIe. The plastic cooling shroud sticks out on the back a little bit and the thing just fit in my case with ZERO wiggle room. The back of the shroud is touching the HDD cage in my case.
 
I've run some tests (BruceX) to know exactly witch GPU Final Cut Pro X use.

2 monitors, one plugged in the intel GPU and the other in the Geforce.
1 monitor one plugged in the intel GPU.
1 monitor one plugged in the Geforce.

The test results are all almost the same ..... !!!!

6. Turn off internal graphics cards as FCP may (or may not) prioritise the internal graphics card over your nice fast AMD cards.
Interesting ....
How do I do that ? :)
Olivier
 
I've run some tests (BruceX) to know exactly witch GPU Final Cut Pro X use.

2 monitors, one plugged in the intel GPU and the other in the Geforce.
1 monitor one plugged in the intel GPU.
1 monitor one plugged in the Geforce.

The test results are all almost the same ..... !!!!


Interesting ....
How do I do that ? :)
Olivier
Set first init display to PCIe
 
The nVidia cards are good for a lot of things including games but specifically for FCP X, they are pretty poor. Most people don't use FCP X so its not an issue hence the recommendation for nVidia.

Out of the box the 5770 cards are very good with FCP X. Forget the fact they are 5-6 years old, a dual 5770 setup will eat any similarly priced nVidia card with ease. I benchmarked a 5770 vs a GTX660 (?) and the five year old card was twice as fast the 660. All the 5770 cards appears to work out of the box with no flags needed or special work at all. I have used 3 (or possibly four) different 5770 cards and never needed to use any special kexts or boot flags on both real Macs and hacks.



Rob

Thanks for the info. I was debating buying a new video card but looks like my old Batmobile is holding up well. I just ran the Bruce test and scored 59. Not bad for a 4 year old system :)
 
Would dual config of the AMD FirePro W7100 be Hackintosh comparable?

Excuse my lack of knowledge; I've used mostly Nvidia cards - but I imagine it's not comparable..
 
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