Final Cut Pro X FCPX Graphic Card performance

[Stork]

Be sure to read the thread here in the Buying Advice on AMD's R series of cards before making your decision. Since it's a long running thread, I recommend you start at page 22.

The tonymacx86 Buyer's Guide recommends the nVidia Maxwell series of cards (750 and 900 series). However, you'll need to use nVidia's Web (and maybe the CUDA) drivers because Apple doesn't yet support the Maxwell cards natively in 10.10.2.

 

[pietzprove]

The problem is that CUDA isnt supported by Final Cut Pro X at all, which results in 5 year old AMD cards being a lot faster than a GTX 980. I don't know if there is any hope for FCPX supporting CUDA, or Nvidia cards supporting OpenCL in the near future.

What really frustrates me is that a Radeon R9 270X is 1,5 years old and costs the same today compared to when it came out (at least here in Germany). I can't buy anything faster from AMD because of my power unit cap. their power effiency is absolutely terrible compared to the 900 series from Nvidia. those cards need about half the power at similar performance.

so right now im just pissed, because im not willing to spend money on a ****ty card from AMD that still costs as much as 1 year ago nor buying a Geforce card that doesnt improve performance in FCPX.

thanks for the help though.

 

[Going Bald]

The problem is that CUDA isnt supported by Final Cut Pro X at all, which results in 5 year old AMD cards being a lot faster than a GTX 980. I don't know if there is any hope for FCPX supporting CUDA, or Nvidia cards supporting OpenCL in the near future.

What really frustrates me is that a Radeon R9 270X is 1,5 years old and costs the same today compared to when it came out (at least here in Germany). I can't buy anything faster from AMD because of my power unit cap. their power effiency is absolutely terrible compared to the 900 series from Nvidia. those cards need about half the power at similar performance.

so right now im just pissed, because im not willing to spend money on a ****ty card from AMD that still costs as much as 1 year ago nor buying a Geforce card that doesnt improve performance in FCPX.

thanks for the help though.

Find you a couple of inexpensive used HD5770 cards on eBay and use them. Works better than most nVidia cards.

I have this one http://www.ebay.de/itm/ATI-Radeon-H...er_Computer_Graphikkarten&hash=item3f48d54e43 but you can also use any of the MacPro HD5770 or HD6870 upgrade cards with no problems.

 

[rwillett]

I used to have dual 5770 cards in my genuine Mac Pro and they worked fine. From memory I was doing the BruceX benchmark in around 32 seconds on a pair of old Xeons each with four cores.

The 5770's are still a good card for FCP X use, I only got rid of mine and moved to dual 280X cards this year (2015) and I thought hard about do I really need to move to 280X cards. In the end I bit the bullet and sold the lot.

If you are into FCP X then the AMD architecture is the only way to go. The 5770's are still good value for money for a five year old card as they go for around 50 Euros/pounds on eBay.

if you can swing the extra money for the 280X then they are even better, a single 280X is around the speed of dual 5770's. Two of them are great for FCPX, they work out the box (for me), nothing clever apart from the EFI mod, no kexts, no boot flags, I've never booted the internal graphics card as I installed with the 280X's both in.

nVidia are great cards for everything but FCP X, however I like my 280X and Battlefield 4 is excellent

Rob

 

[cscturulo]

Two of them are great for FCPX, they work out the box (for me), nothing clever apart from the EFI mod, no kexts, no boot flags, I've never booted the internal graphics card as I installed with the 280X's both in.

nVidia are great cards for everything but FCP X, however I like my 280X and Battlefield 4 is excellent

Rob

Rob,

So i just wanted to confirm that you used GPU Sapphire Vapor-X Tri-X OC R9 280X 3GB as your cards? I just bought two 280x Gigabyte versions and after the EFI boot trick it's still having issues after booting into Yosemite. Dual monitors from one card make it act sporadic, white screen, freezes the system. If the Sapphire Vapor-X Tri-X OC R9 280X 3GB cards work oob with only the EFI trick then I'll jump on them.

 

[rwillett]

here's the sales invoice for one of the cards.



Its a Sapphire Radeon Vapor-X R9 280X 3071MB. The stock number is 11221-12-20G which I think has now been superseded.

Two monitors are on the GPU closest to the CPU, DVI-D and DP, the 3rd monitor is on the other card.

I have done nothing special at all, the only boot flash were -v and maxmem=8192.

No kexts, no DSDT's, straight out the box, straight into the PC, build, EFI mod, reboot, done.

Heres my multibeast

 

[Going Bald]

I have done nothing special at all, the only boot flash were -v and maxmem=8192.

No kexts, no DSDT's, straight out the box, straight into the PC, build, EFI mod, reboot, done.

EFI Mod? Card does not work OOB?

 

[rwillett]

Just to be clear,

1. I installed the R280X into the PC. I actually have done bare disk installs with both single and dual 280X cards in so it will work either way.
2. I disabled the internal on-board graphics card in the BIOS.
3. I installed Yosemite using the latest Tonymac guide. I used the flags -v and maxmem=8192. I accept that -v isn't need but I like to see whats going on.
4. I then immediately installed the EFI mod, which I accept is needed to make the machine boot correctly without using USB key.

We can quibble over the use of the term "out of the box", does it work "out of the box" without any special flags, kexts, yes.

Does it boot out of the box? Yes with the USB install key, No without the USB install key as the EFI mod is needed. I believe that some graphics cards require special drivers before they can even be used. I was referring to lack of any special drivers needed to make the card work.

Rob

 

[Going Bald]

Does it boot out of the box? Yes with the USB install key, No without the USB install key as the EFI mod is needed. I believe that some graphics cards require special drivers before they can even be used. I was referring to lack of any special drivers needed to make the card work.

Rob

Question was "What is meant by EFI mod?"

Firmware mod on the GPU or just moving the boot files to EFI partition to get AMD/ATI card to work on Asus board?

 

[rwillett]

Ok,

There is no firmware upgrades on the card, I wouldn't know how to. If there was a firmware upgrade then it would definitely not be OOTB.

The EFI mod is to move some of the bootable files from the main disk to the EDI disk partition so that the 280X card boots correctly. I am not sure why its needed but it is needed, is simple to do and is quick.

Rob