Nikon DSLR Forums Home 

This site requires new users to accept that a small amount of member data is captured and held in an attempt to reduce spammers and to manage users. This site also uses cookies to ensure ease of use. In order to comply with new DPR regulations you are required to agree/disagree with this process. If you do not agree then please email the Admins using info@nikondslr.uk after requesting a new account. Thank you.

 Moderated by: chrisbet,  
AuthorPost
Robert



Joined: Sun Apr 1st, 2012
Location: South Lakeland, UK
Posts: 4066
Status: 
Offline
I have been offered an NVIDIA - GeForce - MSI - 970GTX 4Gb video Card by my neighbour. He has just upgraded to 8Gb.

It's currently in a PC but I understand the NVIDIA - GeForce cards can be flashed for Mac.

I am currently running an NVIDIA - GeForce - GTX285 1Gb video Card in my Mac Pro 5.1

Neither Photoshop nor Lightroom can make use of the GPU processor on my current card although they might with this larger card. Rendering some images can be slow, I wonder if this card would speed up my workflow. Particularly in Lightroom.

Any comments or suggestions welcome... Polite please!

Attachment: Screen Shot 2018-08-31 at 20.55.52.jpg (Downloaded 7 times)

jk



Joined: Sun Apr 1st, 2012
Location: Carthew, Cornwall, United Kingdom
Posts: 6835
Status: 
Offline
Not sure about the firmware differences between video cards in Mac and Windows machines. Bus architecture is same/similar but.

Robert



Joined: Sun Apr 1st, 2012
Location: South Lakeland, UK
Posts: 4066
Status: 
Offline
Have been doing some research it seems this is the most powerful video card which can be fitted in a Mac Pro 5.1.

The current draw is about 240Watts with a limit of 300Watts available to the PCI buses. That's a maximum which in practice is unlikely to be reached. More powerful cards have a much higher draw and would need an external power supply. Apparently it's quite an old card in computer terms.

Apparently you still need a native Apple card to boot into safe mode or recovery because the 970 GTX drivers don't load until after theOS is up and running, whereas the native board drivers are in firmware.

It seems you download the appropriate drivers from Nvidia and run them before switching out the small card for the large one. The OS loads the drivers then you get video to the screens.

I still need to do more research but it looks like it should work.

I need to get back on the Apple boards and ask there.


Current theme is Blue



A small amount of member data is captured and held in an attempt to reduce spammers and to manage users. This site also uses cookies to ensure ease of use. In order to comply with new DPR regulations you are required to agree/disagree with this process. If you do not agree then please email the Admins using info@nikondsl.uk Thank you.


Hosted by Octarine Services

UltraBB 1.173 Copyright © 2008-2024 Data 1 Systems
Page processed in 0.0661 seconds (65% database + 35% PHP). 45 queries executed.