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How much display is too much work for my Mac Pro?

quantum003

quantum003

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 27, 2009
542
0
Superposition
I'll admit right now that I am overly protective of my Mac Pro, it's my baby.

I enjoy using 2 monitors, but I am wondering if these two ACD's are too much, since the one time I tried them both at once performance seemed sluggish. Here's the specs:

2.66Ghz Mac Pro early 2009 Quad-Core

12GB of RAM (3x 4GB)

The apple shipped video card is an NVIDIA GeForce GT 120, 512MB of VRAM

And I added an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT for the second monitor; it's 256MB of VRAM.

The two monitors are two Apple HD Cinema Displays, a 30" and a 24".

Am I being overly cautious, or are these two displays large enough to hinder my system performance if I use them both at once? The 30" is currently using the NVIDIA card and the 24" would run from the ATI.

Thanks! :D
 
what configuration do you have with the monitors? is the 30" set to the GT120? or to the 2600?

the 2600 is a bit old now. at least 3 years. i would consider upgrading it to another GT120.
 
Yes you are being over cautious. The 2600XT can drive two 30" displays fine even. Although OS X does utilize the GPU for things other than actual 3D modelling, you shouldn't have any issues if you are not using GPU intensive applications.
 
The 2600s will run pretty much any set of monitors just fine on their own. A monitor on a discrete card should certainly not make the system sluggish. Are you sure it is not something else?

I ran a 30" and two 23"s just fine on a pair of 2600s for months without a single issue.
 
DoFoT9 said:
what if SL has some visualisation features that the 2600 isnt quite capable of?

could be a RAM problem i guess, depending on whats being done.
Click to expand...
Such things come under "what usage" though, but as a basic card it would suffice (internet browsing for example). But if say GPGPU use is desired, the card will matter. That card isn't the best for it, as its only capable of single precision floating point use only.
 
nanofrog said:
Such things come under "what usage" though, but as a basic card it would suffice (internet browsing for example). But if say GPGPU use is desired, the card will matter. That card isn't the best for it, as its only capable of single precision floating point use only.
Click to expand...

hardly anything under OSX can utilise GPGPU anyway! so it pretty much rules that out. maybe CPU usage was high at the time and made the UI feel slow?
 
DoFoT9 said:
hardly anything under OSX can utilise GPGPU anyway! so it pretty much rules that out. maybe CPU usage was high at the time and made the UI feel slow?
Click to expand...
Maybe. There's a lot of missing information. Usage. Keeps popping up for some strange reason... :p

Seriously, it could be the software, especially if it's disk intensive with only one drive. We need more information to go any further than just a simple generalized question.
 
nanofrog said:
Maybe. There's a lot of missing information. Usage. Keeps popping up for some strange reason... :p

Seriously, it could be the software, especially if it's disk intensive with only one drive. We need more information to go any further than just a simple generalized question.
Click to expand...

thats what i was thinking. maybe the computer was indexing? there are too many variables to even consider here its not even funny.
 
DoFoT9 said:
thats what i was thinking. maybe the computer was indexing? there are too many variables to even consider here its not even funny.
Click to expand...
It even could be that the cards are too slow for the software used (i.e. 3D rendering on bottom end cards). We just don't know. :eek: :p
 
DoFoT9 said:
what configuration do you have with the monitors? is the 30" set to the GT120? or to the 2600?

the 2600 is a bit old now. at least 3 years. i would consider upgrading it to another GT120.
Click to expand...

Hey, thanks for the posts. The 30" is running from the GT120. The 24" would be plugged in to the 2600, but I took it out.

So, dumb question coming (brace yourself), but I assume I need a special "Mac" version of the GT120 don't I? So if I find a smoking price on a GT120 with 1GB DDR that came from a PC it won't work. I would need to flash the ROM... or just buy a different card altogether.

I do a lot of high-intensity photoshop work for web and for print, and I often have Flash or another large CPU draining program at the same time, but no 3-D rendering. Just large high-resolution image files, and it's very convenient to drag them all over in 2 different monitors. So I am interested in upgrading to a second GT120, as recommended by the very friendly poster that I quoted above. :) Anybody got any buying advice? Thanks!
 
quantum003 said:
So, dumb question coming (brace yourself), but I assume I need a special "Mac" version of the GT120 don't I? So if I find a smoking price on a GT120 with 1GB DDR that came from a PC it won't work. I would need to flash the ROM... or just buy a different card altogether.[\QUOTE]
Apple sells the Mac version of the GT120 ($149 here). Other than that, you'd have to try the injector or flash method to make a PC version work.
Click to expand...
 
nanofrog said:
quantum003 said:
So, dumb question coming (brace yourself), but I assume I need a special "Mac" version of the GT120 don't I? So if I find a smoking price on a GT120 with 1GB DDR that came from a PC it won't work. I would need to flash the ROM... or just buy a different card altogether.[\QUOTE]
Apple sells the Mac version of the GT120 ($149 here). Other than that, you'd have to try the injector or flash method to make a PC version work.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Hmm... $149 is downright spendable... but the Apple store doesn't take Paypal so my wife would see. :p I'm sure that I'm technically competent enough to figure out the flashing process... I'm good with tech and tinkering but I would be starting from square 1. Are we talking about an hour or two for a first time flasher? An afternoon? A weekend?

Also, could one successfully flash a better GT120, one of the models with 1GB DDR3 instead of 512?

Thanks for your time. :)
 
quantum003 said:
Hmm... $149 is downright spendable... but the Apple store doesn't take Paypal so my wife would see. :p I'm sure that I'm technically competent enough to figure out the flashing process... I'm good with tech and tinkering but I would be starting from square 1. Are we talking about an hour or two for a first time flasher? An afternoon? A weekend?

Also, could one successfully flash a better GT120, one of the models with 1GB DDR3 instead of 512?

Thanks for your time. :)
Click to expand...

I'd get an Nvidia 9800gt and use an injector such as NVDarwin 1.2.5. Like this
 
quantum003 said:
Hmm... $149 is downright spendable... but the Apple store doesn't take Paypal so my wife would see. :p
Click to expand...
:eek: Hmm. Put it on the a card, hide the bill, and pay it off in one lump sum. :D If she finds out, run for it, but don't leave the computer. :p

quantum003 said:
I'm sure that I'm technically competent enough to figure out the flashing process... I'm good with tech and tinkering but I would be starting from square 1. Are we talking about an hour or two for a first time flasher? An afternoon? A weekend?
Click to expand...
It's not that hard, or take that long as I understand it (but I've not done it first hand). Research is required as to specific make and model numbers, as not all cards will work very well (some may not at all). There's a few threads on MR, and there's even guides on places like insanelymac.com IIRC.
 
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