maintaining compatibility with 10.9.5?

[babag]

about 8 years ago i got great advice here and have never looked back, until now. back then i built a system:

audio/video hack pro station: check me on this, please?

Intel Core i7-4930K Corsair H60 (Water) GA-X79-UP4 GeForce GTX 760 Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model BLS4K8G3D169DS3 SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE250BW 2.5" 250GB SATA 6Gb/s 1x nm Samsung Toggle DDR 2.0 3-Bit MLC NAND Flash...

www.tonymacx86.com

that system has been running well ever since. i used it mainly for final cut pro 6 ( pre x ). i've since migrated away and have used both windows and now primarily linux, all on this same box. i often have a workflow that includes long term (often extremely long term) projects. for that reason, i try to maintain compatibility with my older systems as much as possible. thanks to the great advice here, that has worked well. now, however, things seem to be changing. i have just been looking into upgrading both my current operating system ( to ubuntu studio 22.04 ) as well as my video software ( to davinci resolve v18 ).

when i built the original system, i used an nvidia gtx 760 graphics card, which has served me well until now. now, however, after not upgrading resolve for a while, i'm finding that the 760 is no longer compatible. the last compatible version of resolve is v16.2.6, itself pretty much outdated.

my question is whether to stick with the system as is and only update resolve as far as v16.2.6, or whether there is a graphics card that would maintain compatibility with osx 10.9.5 and my old final cut 6 system while also meeting resolve's much more rigorous requirements. any ideas on this?

i can offer a bit more detail. here is a wikipedia link on cuda:

CUDA - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

the table at the bottom of the page lists cards and, in the left column, the 'compute capability' for said cards. my 760 has a value of 3.0, which resolve no longer accepts. higher numbers are better.

a tech on the black magic forum suggested a 1660 card a couple of years ago, which has a value of 7.5 and is, i believe, still viable. would that work with 10.9.5 and final cut 6? any others that might and have even higher compute capabilities?

here is the info output from the system i'm trying to work with:


Operating System: Ubuntu Studio 22.04
KDE Plasma Version: 5.24.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.92.0
Qt Version: 5.15.3
Kernel Version: 5.15.0-46-lowlatency (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 12 × Intel® Core™ i7-4930K CPU @ 3.40GHz
Memory: 31.3 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760/PCIe/SSE2


thanks for any ideas,
babag

 

[trs96]

a tech on the black magic forum suggested a 1660 card a couple of years ago, which has a value of 7.5 and is, i believe, still viable. would that work with 10.9.5 and final cut 6?

Mavericks 10.9 was first released in October of 2013. The 1660 didn't exist yet. No way it will have support in 10.9.5. You could run Win10 and use a GTX 1660 if you are ok with Windows 10 as your main OS.

You would need a Kepler based card from 2012/13 for it to work with Mavericks 10.9.5. Whether any of these have Resolve v18 support I have no idea as I don't use it. The compute value won't be 4 or higher. These cards do still have native support in Big Sur so if you run that macOS version, Resolve might work. These just barely make the cut as they say.

• GTX Titan (GK110)
• GTX Titan Black (GK110)
• GTX Titan Z
• GTX 780/Ti

 

[babag]

thanks for the quick reply, trs96. much appreciated. sounds like my desired setup is pretty much screwed, though. sounds like i have to just keep things as is if i want to maintain access to my old final cut files. too bad final cut won't virtualize. maybe i'll look into that.

thanks again,
babag

 

[trs96]

i have to just keep things as is if i want to maintain access to my old final cut files. too bad final cut won't virtualize. maybe i'll look into that.

You could still use Mavericks/FCP on one SSD and have a newer SSD that runs Big Sur and Resolve. It would require that you get an AMD card supported in Big Sur and Resolve. Also, probably be best to switch to OpenCore bootloader if you want to do that. I've never tried Mavericks with OC but it should work. Takes a good amount of time and study to learn that.

 

[babag]

i must have been unclear but i run 10.9.5/fcp6 on one drive and swap that out for another that runs linux/resolve. i'm trying to find a hardware configuration that will maintain the ability to run either system. sounds like there's a possibility that these cards might actually do it:

• GTX Titan (GK110)
• GTX Titan Black (GK110)
• GTX Titan Z
• GTX 780/Ti

i'll check that they still will be able to run resolve.

thanks,
babag

 

[trs96]

Looks like these are the Linux requirements:

• 32 GB of system memory
• Blackmagic Design Desktop Video 10.4.1 or later
• Discrete GPU with at least 2 GB of VRAM
• GPU which supports OpenCL 1.2 or CUDA 11

 

[Edhawk]

You might be better served doing the following:

1. Upgrading Mavericks to High Sierra.
2. Replacing the GTX760 with a high end Pascal or Maxwell series Nvidia card, i.e. GTX980/Ti or GTX1070/1080/Ti.

As those cards would have much better graphics performance, even than the hard to find Kepler Titan cards listed above. Will work in High Sierra with the Nvidia Web Drivers and should be compatible with the newer software.

The compute capabilities for the two newer series of Nvidia cards are 5.2 (Maxwell) and 6.1 (Pascal), so 1.7 and 2 times the compute capability of your GTX760.

The Pascal cards would obviously be the better option, but are also likely to be more expensive. However, they may be easier to find on the second-hand market, as people transition to the newer RTX series of Nvidia cards.

Below are a few screenshots showing the relative performance of the GTX 760 verses the other cards mentioned as possible replacements. The replacement cards have been highlited in a red rectangle, with the increase in relative performance shown on the right-hand side of the image.



Screenshots taken from TechPowerUp GTX 760 page.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 Specs

NVIDIA GK104, 1032 MHz, 1152 Cores, 96 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 2048 MB GDDR5, 1502 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

 

[trs96]

@Edhawk did you see this requirement ?

Whether there is a graphics card that would maintain compatibility with osx 10.9.5 and my old final cut 6 system while also meeting resolve's much more rigorous requirements.

 

[Edhawk]

Probably, but had forgotten about it by the time I read the rest of the posts and started thinking about any other solutions. Doh!