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- Mar 17, 2014
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I built my machine hoping for a Final Cut Pro X 10.1 and beyond powerhouse.
I'm not saying it isn't great; it's far better than the iMac I'm coming from, but I have to say I've been glued to this site (and others that shall remain unnamed) trying to figure out my best GPU options and I'm so sick of Gamerspeak, I can't even tell you. I built a machine to use for pro purposes, and it seems like everybody who's buying the really great GPUs are either gaming or bitcoining...whatever, that's not my point.
Where to begin? Okay: my build. Here 'tis:
GA-X79S-UD5
i7 3930k
64GB Corsair Vengeance
h60i cooling
120G Sandisk System Drive
12TB Raid array for storage.
And the GPU? Well, I started off with a GT 640, just to get the system up and running, assuming I could get something better in there once everything was looking stable (yeah, a "noob" idea, I guess - sorry, it's my first time). After reading a bit, looked like the GTX 770 OC 4G would be a good bet! So I got one! Neat! NO!
Took pretty much an entire afternoon of troubleshooting just to boot back in to Mavericks with the thing. Finally I did, though! And then I ran Luxmark and pretty much started crying. Its OpenCL performance is horrible, and for a dedicated FCP machine, that just won't do. So back to the searching I went.
Looked like Radeon would be the answer; people running the BruceX benchmark were posting crazy fast results even with just one R9 2xx or 7xxx card installed, and so many of them claimed they worked out of the box. Yesterday, I took my son to Best Buy (yeah, I know; their return policy is crazy lax, though), and they happened to have an R9 270X, so I snagged it.
Brought it to my machine, popped it in (alongside the 770!) and I was ecstatic! System saw it as a 7xxx (good enough for me) and the Luxmark score (around 2300, with both cards) was encouraging! Naturally, because FCPX arbitrarily doesn't address any cards that aren't powering monitors (correct me if I'm wrong), it didn't address my 270x even though the Luxmark test did, and I got the same result on the BruceX benchmark (about 80 seconds; certainly not the shabbiest, but my machine should be CRUSHING that thing in <30 seconds!).
I've tried everything, or so I think. I've reinstalled Mavericks 10.9.2 with the 270x solely, and it was a dud. I've tried running the 640 and 770 together, and it works, but OpenCL is pitiful.
Here's my thinking: I WANT the AMD card to be my primary card, because I NEED FCPX to see it as my primary card for its OpenCL performance, or it won't address it. I WANT the 770 (it's a 4GB Gigabyte windforce deal, BTW) as my secondary card because I have effects that rely on CUDA, which it's got oodles of, and those effects don't have the same arbitrary restrictions as FCPX (ie, they don't care if the card is plugged in; if they see CUDA cores, they'll access them).
I'm not an idiot. But, I AM an editor, and the fact is I've hit a wall with the amount of research, time and effort I can put into this before I need to, you know START EDITING AGAIN, because I have clients who are waiting for work to be done, and they don't consider me sitting around editing kexts and modifying .plists work. They need their videos. I need their money.
Long short: HELP. I know about the EFI bootloader thing; I fail to see how it's supposed to help load AMD GPUs, though, because it's never been made clear, in anything I've read at least. How do these people just luck into these things working out of the box, and then USE THEM FOR GAMES!!!!!??!??!?! AARRRGGHH!!!! When I think of how quickly I could render a project on a machine that would be an ACCIDENTAL FCPX BEAST I seriously want to scream.
Little help? Can someone please make sense of this? Honestly, I can DEAL with the 770 the way it is, but getting a Luxmark score like 2300 and not seeing it reflected in FCPX is just sad. Maybe I should change the smbios to show a different machine? Any and all advice welcome.
Ask ANY questions; if it'll help you help me...well, help me help you help me.
I'm not saying it isn't great; it's far better than the iMac I'm coming from, but I have to say I've been glued to this site (and others that shall remain unnamed) trying to figure out my best GPU options and I'm so sick of Gamerspeak, I can't even tell you. I built a machine to use for pro purposes, and it seems like everybody who's buying the really great GPUs are either gaming or bitcoining...whatever, that's not my point.
Where to begin? Okay: my build. Here 'tis:
GA-X79S-UD5
i7 3930k
64GB Corsair Vengeance
h60i cooling
120G Sandisk System Drive
12TB Raid array for storage.
And the GPU? Well, I started off with a GT 640, just to get the system up and running, assuming I could get something better in there once everything was looking stable (yeah, a "noob" idea, I guess - sorry, it's my first time). After reading a bit, looked like the GTX 770 OC 4G would be a good bet! So I got one! Neat! NO!
Took pretty much an entire afternoon of troubleshooting just to boot back in to Mavericks with the thing. Finally I did, though! And then I ran Luxmark and pretty much started crying. Its OpenCL performance is horrible, and for a dedicated FCP machine, that just won't do. So back to the searching I went.
Looked like Radeon would be the answer; people running the BruceX benchmark were posting crazy fast results even with just one R9 2xx or 7xxx card installed, and so many of them claimed they worked out of the box. Yesterday, I took my son to Best Buy (yeah, I know; their return policy is crazy lax, though), and they happened to have an R9 270X, so I snagged it.
Brought it to my machine, popped it in (alongside the 770!) and I was ecstatic! System saw it as a 7xxx (good enough for me) and the Luxmark score (around 2300, with both cards) was encouraging! Naturally, because FCPX arbitrarily doesn't address any cards that aren't powering monitors (correct me if I'm wrong), it didn't address my 270x even though the Luxmark test did, and I got the same result on the BruceX benchmark (about 80 seconds; certainly not the shabbiest, but my machine should be CRUSHING that thing in <30 seconds!).
I've tried everything, or so I think. I've reinstalled Mavericks 10.9.2 with the 270x solely, and it was a dud. I've tried running the 640 and 770 together, and it works, but OpenCL is pitiful.
Here's my thinking: I WANT the AMD card to be my primary card, because I NEED FCPX to see it as my primary card for its OpenCL performance, or it won't address it. I WANT the 770 (it's a 4GB Gigabyte windforce deal, BTW) as my secondary card because I have effects that rely on CUDA, which it's got oodles of, and those effects don't have the same arbitrary restrictions as FCPX (ie, they don't care if the card is plugged in; if they see CUDA cores, they'll access them).
I'm not an idiot. But, I AM an editor, and the fact is I've hit a wall with the amount of research, time and effort I can put into this before I need to, you know START EDITING AGAIN, because I have clients who are waiting for work to be done, and they don't consider me sitting around editing kexts and modifying .plists work. They need their videos. I need their money.
Long short: HELP. I know about the EFI bootloader thing; I fail to see how it's supposed to help load AMD GPUs, though, because it's never been made clear, in anything I've read at least. How do these people just luck into these things working out of the box, and then USE THEM FOR GAMES!!!!!??!??!?! AARRRGGHH!!!! When I think of how quickly I could render a project on a machine that would be an ACCIDENTAL FCPX BEAST I seriously want to scream.
Little help? Can someone please make sense of this? Honestly, I can DEAL with the 770 the way it is, but getting a Luxmark score like 2300 and not seeing it reflected in FCPX is just sad. Maybe I should change the smbios to show a different machine? Any and all advice welcome.
Ask ANY questions; if it'll help you help me...well, help me help you help me.