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Best Second Video Card for 4870

F

Fomaphone

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 11, 2009
226
0
I'm running two 20 inch monitors with my 4870... I want to purchase another video card for driving another monitor--a 1080p hdtv that i'll be using as a preview monitor in FCP and after effects as well as in 3d modeling programs. i'd like to maximize my machine's potential in SL.

i can wait a month or two to do this, because i'm planning to replace my RAM with three 4gb sticks to start.

i'd like to get the most powerful card I can. Would getting a Blackmagic IO card contribute in any way?
 
Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but doesn't the primary card do all of the OpenGL work by itself? Macs don't do crossfire, and I believe you can use the cheapest secondary card you can find, so long as it will drive your resolution.
Am I crazy?
 
How does it know which card to use. Say for example you have a 4870 and a GT120 driving your second monitor.

You load up say a game. How does the OS know which card you wish to do all the graphics intensive work. ie you would want the 4870 doing it and the GT120 not doing much at all really.
 
wpc33 said:
Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but doesn't the primary card do all of the OpenGL work by itself? Macs don't do crossfire, and I believe you can use the cheapest secondary card you can find, so long as it will drive your resolution.
Am I crazy?
Click to expand...
The card that the monitor is attached to is responsible for it's own OpenGL computations (i.e. works with multiple card vendors simultaneously), so no ability to use one card for the calculations and transfer completed data to other cards via the PCIe bus (load sharing, but is done over a different interface, i.e. Crossfire/SLI). As you mentioned, it's not supported under OS X.

Either card would work, but given the usage ("a preview monitor in FCP and after effects as well as in 3d modeling programs"), I'd think it needs to be a fast card to keep the frame rates high.
 
Keep in mind that FCP doesn't like having a second card installed. It gets a little confused.

Trust me it happened to me and drove me nuts.

You can have 2 cards inside. but if you want to use FCP, DVDSP they don't work and cause problems.

Get the black magic for the previewing
 
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