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Looking for advice last of the Mac Pro towers

Gav Mack said:
NEC make the highest quality displays and have done so for as long as I've been in the game for 25 years....
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If you are familiar with high quality displays then you know EIZO! Not turning this into NEC v. EIZO but there is not one "glossy" monitor out there that can hold a candle to these "matte" monitors.

If "glossy" monitors was an Apple idea, it was just to boost sales as "icandy"!
"Come closer, look how good this looks!"

Edit photos or videos on one and your client will be saying, "Come closer, how did you make all these mistakes!" 😱

"Glossy" monitors may be for gaming and the "game" Apple plays for profits!
 

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OS6-OSX said:
If you are familiar with high quality displays then you know EIZO! Not turning this into NEC v. EZIO but there is not one "glossy" monitor out there that can hold a candle to these "matte" monitors.

If "glossy" monitors was an Apple idea, it was just to boost sales as "icandy"!
"Come closer, look how good this looks!"

Edit photos or videos on one and your client will be saying, "Come closer, how did you make all these mistakes!" 😱

"Glossy" monitors may be for gaming and the "game" Apple plays for profits!
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I could and should have added them also to the list; my last CRT was one of their 21 inch models. Over the years I reckon NEC have the edge but not by much, Eizo had a period in the early 2000's where they went too low end whereas NEC didn't go there!
 
WOW, their are some serious monitors being displayed here in this thread! Kudo's to both the NEC and EIZO. I have the (way back in 2008 well overpriced) HP DreamColor LP2480zx, but still very happy with it. Still going strong!
 
Check 6 said:
This is the biggest negative to the iMac. My eyes don't handle extended viewing of a glare screen. I'm going to look at some of the NEC matte screen monitors. I appreciate all your comments and would welcome more
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NEC 27" or 30" Calibrator.

15 Million inaccurate pixels don't do me any good.
 
OS6-OSX said:
If you are familiar with high quality displays then you know EIZO! Not turning this into NEC v. EIZO but there is not one "glossy" monitor out there that can hold a candle to these "matte" monitors.

If "glossy" monitors was an Apple idea, it was just to boost sales as "icandy"!
"Come closer, look how good this looks!"

Edit photos or videos on one and your client will be saying, "Come closer, how did you make all these mistakes!" 😱

"Glossy" monitors may be for gaming and the "game" Apple plays for profits!
Click to expand...

So, where did you see this 4K Eizo? Have you actually used it for video editing? What makes it so much better than Apple gloss and NEC? Have you seen them side by side? How much does the CG318-4K sell for?

Pardon all the questions, but I am interested and cannot find much info.
 
grizfish said:
So, where did you see this 4K Eizo? Have you actually used it for video editing? What makes it so much better than Apple gloss and NEC? Have you seen them side by side? How much does the CG318-4K sell for?



Pardon all the questions, but I am interested and cannot find much info.
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It was just released! Check the Eizo website!
 
BDM STUDIOS NL said:
WOW, their are some serious monitors being displayed here in this thread! Kudo's to both the NEC and EIZO. I have the (way back in 2008 well overpriced) HP DreamColor LP2480zx, but still very happy with it. Still going strong!
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If you like it and it does what you need then no need to change it. Me I can't afford to buy an NEC or Eizo so I settle for the next best thing. An ugly Dell for less than half the price which I can match up the colours pretty well and that's non glossy so I don't see the lights and furniture behind my head! And if an annoying pixel pops up in the middle of the screen or another anomaly I can pick up the phone and have an engineer with another one coming the next business day.
 
BDM STUDIOS NL said:
It was just released! Check the Eizo website!
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And the question is back on the table what graphics card for a 2012 Mac Pro tower will complement either a NEC or Eizo monitor. I'm old and I may want one. You know the old saying children's inheritance.
 
BDM STUDIOS NL said:
Did you check the Eizo and Nec specs?
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somewhat, being old I look for clear answers and since specs are not always the same between manufacturers it sometimes is not as clear as it should be. I have found the same trying to compare graphics cards
 
Looking for advice last of the Mac Pro towers

Check 6 said:
somewhat, being old I look for clear answers and since specs are not always the same between manufacturers it sometimes is not as clear as it should be. I have found the same trying to compare graphics cards
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I meant for specs of the minimum GPU requirements! E.g connectivity! 😉
 
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cinealta said:
Get the new 5K iMac.
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That's what i did sold my 2010 Mac Pro and got a 5K iMac but i'm still waiting for that one on back order sense the 10th of this month, Also I have a 2013 Mac Pro and that's the reason I sold my 2010 cMP there was no need for two Mac Pro's
 
Gav Mack said:
...And if an annoying pixel pops up in the middle of the screen or another anomaly I can pick up the phone and have an engineer with another one coming the next business day.
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This is probably lost on most of the readers here - they think that getting a "genius bar" appointment (with some kid who has 10 hours of training and will say all kinds of nonsense), packing whatever it is up and schlepping it to the closest Apple Store (which may be hours away) is first class service.

We buy HP and Dell systems (HP servers and Dell workstations) and stick with the default next-business-day service. (We're an R&D shop, so getting it fixed "tomorrow" is fine. If we wanted 24x7 four hour service, we could up the warranty for that - but it would be a waste of money for us.)

Although, to be fair, Dell's monitor warranty (for IPS-class monitors) is "no bright subpixels". If you have black subpixels (which are very, very hard to spot) they won't replace the monitor unless there are many of them or they're clustered in an area that makes them annoying.
 
As listed in the sig I use a LaCie 324 (with hood) as the main and a 24 inch Toshiba as a client for additional real estate.

If you are going to keep the cMP and get a new monitor, look at a few options.
1. Keeping the Apple 30 inch as the 2nd monitor. For Video 1 monitor for the timeline etc. and the other for the footage in full screen. For music 1 monitor for the tracks/edit and the other for the mix.
2. Performing a test run with the 5870 before dumping it since the monitors won't be 4K.
3. Search the internet for monitors to compare with those EZIO NEC prices! 😱
4. See what monitors are use by people in photography forums.
 

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AidenShaw said:
This is probably lost on most of the readers here - they think that getting a "genius bar" appointment (with some kid who has 10 hours of training and will say all kinds of nonsense), packing whatever it is up and schlepping it to the closest Apple Store (which may be hours away) is first class service.

We buy HP and Dell systems (HP servers and Dell workstations) and stick with the default next-business-day service. (We're an R&D shop, so getting it fixed "tomorrow" is fine. If we wanted 24x7 four hour service, we could up the warranty for that - but it would be a waste of money for us.)

Although, to be fair, Dell's monitor warranty (for IPS-class monitors) is "no bright subpixels". If you have black subpixels (which are very, very hard to spot) they won't replace the monitor unless there are many of them or they're clustered in an area that makes them annoying.
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TBF it's lost on a lot of Windows clients too. I sell only business grade kit to everyone, refuse point blank to serve cheap consumer grade rubbish and when I say that they have 12 months on site next business day for their HP Probook notebook it takes a while for the penny to drop. Mostly spec HP servers and clients but for deployment I prefer the Dell's as easier to deploy with the Windows SLIC burnt in the bios. Though nowadays I always seem to be doing a blend of OS, with Macintosh clients as email buffer for malware attacks and it's Windows use via Parallels (occasionally fusion). I have seen the kind of support we are used to from Dell and HP in an Apple environment - but they were big broadcast clients with 50+ systems. The one, or the very few never get a chance to see it...

The subpixel issue I didn't actually know of specifically but I know if you don't like the look of your Dell U3014 for your critical work and moan loudly enough about it Dell will cave in and change it the next business day - for 3 years! Camera phones are great tools 😀
 
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In this continuing search/research I see where the HD 7970 card is an improvement over the 5870 I have BUT it requires more power to operate i.e. over 30 watts which brings up the question of capacity of the on board power supply in my MacPro.

Bottom line I'm looking for a card that will drive the Nec 4K monitor as an upgrade to the current Apple 30" Cinema display and I don't want to get into a matte vs glossy discussion as I and my eyes like matte (non glare) displays,
 
ToroidalZeus said:
You got absolutely no clue what you are saying.

Glossy = Natural
To make a glossy panel they put a clear, see-through, transparent screen in front of the LCD panel.

Matte = Blurry
To make a matte screen they need to diffuse the light which is accomplished by putting a screen that refracts [blurs] the light.

With a glossy screen you see the LCD panel exactly how it is which provides nice vibrant colors and a sharp picture at the trade off of glare. Think of it like looking into a polished surface, kinda like a mirror.

With matte it's the opposite. You get an anti-glare screen at the cost of colors and sharpness.

So given Apple's love of making the highest quality products possible it makes complete sense why they use glossy screens.
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Glossy = bare polished glass (or some form of plastic in some cases).

Laminated = good. It substantially reduces two sources of reflection: that of the front of the LCD panel, and that of the back of the glass that covers it.

Matte = attempt to get rid of gloss by lightly "frosting" the glass. Blurry and bad! Apple was right to ditch this primitive technology.

BUT: Good anti-reflective coatings (calcium flouride-based, for example) are not "matte" in the sense of being frosted, and do not blur the image. Anti-reflective coatings are what have made zoom lenses on cameras possible. Indeed, almost any lens equal or more complicated than a Tessar design basically requires good anti-reflective coatings, or the contrast would be horrible since each glass surface interface would reflect back part of the light.

The problem has been that the production of good, proper anti-reflective coatings has been too expensive for large glass panels. Go buy so-called "museum" glass for your picture frames, which have a simple anti-reflective coating. The cost is astronomical compared to normal glass. However, Apple and a few others have been moving in the direction of providing proper anti-reflective coatings, at the premium price that they are due.
 
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Check 6 said:
In this continuing search/research I see where the HD 7970 card is an improvement over the 5870 I have BUT it requires more power to operate i.e. over 30 watts which brings up the question of capacity of the on board power supply in my MacPro.

Bottom line I'm looking for a card that will drive the Nec 4K monitor as an upgrade to the current Apple 30" Cinema display and I don't want to get into a matte vs glossy discussion as I and my eyes like matte (non glare) displays,
Click to expand...

I had the Nvidia GTX 680 2GB for Mac and it was a pretty good card for HD video editing in Premiere Pro. But when I began editing UHD footage it became a bottleneck. Render times, export times, and playback within PP were painfully slow. I tried the Quadro K5000 4GB and it wasn't any better. Incidentally, around the same time I got a Dell UP3214Q UHD monitor. I was unable to get the Dell to display UHD @ 60Hz with either the GTX 680 or the Quadro K5000. So I got a MacVidCards EFI-flashed Radeon 280X 3GB which was much better than the GTX 680 in terms of rendering, exporting, and playback within PP but I still could not get UHD @ 60Hz on the Dell. So I bought an ASUS PQ321Q UHD monitor... still no 60Hz. So I returned the ASUS and sold the Dell UP3214Q (it's return period had expired) and got my Dell U3014 2560x1600 monitor.

The thing with UHD monitors is that it's still a nascent technology. Most of them require Multiple Stream Transport (MST) which segments the screen vertically down the middle into two halves. This is a stop-gap technology on the road to Single Stream Transport and it doesn't work very well. There are a few UHD monitors out now that can handle SST and I would recommend getting one of them. Just make sure that your graphics card can handle SST. The only one that I know of right now is the GTX 970 or GTX 980. I have the 980 and it's 2x faster than my old 280X in terms of rendering, exporting, and playback within PP.

I hope that long story is helpful.
 
benjobe2513 said:
I had the Nvidia GTX 680 2GB for Mac and it was a pretty good card for HD video editing in Premiere Pro. But when I began editing UHD footage it became a bottleneck. Render times, export times, and playback within PP were painfully slow. I tried the Quadro K5000 4GB and it wasn't any better. Incidentally, around the same time I got a Dell UP3214Q UHD monitor. I was unable to get the Dell to display UHD @ 60Hz with either the GTX 680 or the Quadro K5000. So I got a MacVidCards EFI-flashed Radeon 280X 3GB which was much better than the GTX 680 in terms of rendering, exporting, and playback within PP but I still could not get UHD @ 60Hz on the Dell. So I bought an ASUS PQ321Q UHD monitor... still no 60Hz. So I returned the ASUS and sold the Dell UP3214Q (it's return period had expired) and got my Dell U3014 2560x1600 monitor.

The thing with UHD monitors is that it's still a nascent technology. Most of them require Multiple Stream Transport (MST) which segments the screen vertically down the middle into two halves. This is a stop-gap technology on the road to Single Stream Transport and it doesn't work very well. There are a few UHD monitors out now that can handle SST and I would recommend getting one of them. Just make sure that your graphics card can handle SST. The only one that I know of right now is the GTX 970 or GTX 980. I have the 980 and it's 2x faster than my old 280X in terms of rendering, exporting, and playback within PP.

I hope that long story is helpful.
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Thank you it does,
 
After re-reading this topic several times, my conclusion is to keep the Mac Pro (tentatively) and upgrade the graphics card. Here in lies another area of confusion, trying to find a graphics card that is faster but more importantly has more memory as the HD 5870 has but 1gig. An additional consideration is finding one that is "plug and play" and does not consume significantly more power than the 5870 so I do not have to also replace the power supply. Help appreciated
 
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There's not really much out there that can use considerably more power than the Radeon 5870.

Here it is against the 280X. Note that the power numbers are for full system, not just the graphics card. The power supply in your 2010 Mac Pro is 980W, with a 300W max for the PCI-express slots, so you're not in any danger of maxing it out.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1062?vs=1041

And according to TomsHardware, basically 100% utilization will maybe push 250W in OpenCL GPGPU tasks like bitcoin mining, and under normal usage it drops to around 200W:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-280x-r9-270x-r7-260x,3635-18.html

That leaves around 50-100W for whatever other expansion cards you have. Usually that's more than enough. What else do you have in your PCI Express slots? For example, I have a Broadcom 802.11ac card and a USB 3.0 card, and neither one will draw more than 5W or so each.

So for power consumption, I don't think you're in any danger. I have a Radeon 7950 Boost Edition from MSI, which is like a 280 without the X. Weirdly enough Tom's didn't do any comparisons for card power consumption, though Anandtech shows it using just a few watts less.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1033?vs=1041

That might also be a viable option. It will do 4K at 60Hz. Mine is flashed, I did the flashing myself. Got the card on eBay.
 
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