NVIDIA Launches Quadro 4000 GPU for Mac Pro

[Umbongo]

I almost bought the Quadro FX 4800 but saw reviews where it was actually performing worse than the GTX 280 (I think I have the right model number) in key 3D applications and processes. I almost bought one despite the bad reviews but am glad that I didn't because I have heard that the 4800 was really a disappointment and expensive.

None of the Quadro cards have had optimised drivers. Not the 4500, the 5600 or the 4800. The 5600 and 4800 both used ever so slightly older, and thus slightly slower, GPUs than the consumer versions that were offered which accounted for the benchmarks.

I don't see why this card will be any different, I mean they are going to be making less money on this card per unit, why would there be investment in drivers now .

Anyone buying this card for purely for enhanced OS X application performance before independent benchmarks are out is silly.

 

[pr5owner]

Yes, but will it run Crysis?

(/snark)

Good to know someone hasn't given up on Mac Pro.

its Metro 2033 thats hard to run, crysis is easy now

even on the fastest machines you cant only get like 40fps at max settings with tripple SLI

 

[PeterQVenkman]

But all the programs support consumer cards, they just achieve better-optimal performance, with the pro cards.

That has not been consistent in my experience with the software I've used. My old Dell PC with a workstation card runs Maya OK, my mac laptop with a consumer card runs it about the same.

Meanwhile Cinema 4d runs just as good or better on mainstream gaming cards.

 

[nitro912gr]

That has not been consistent in my experience with the software I've used. My old Dell PC with a workstation card runs Maya OK, my mac laptop with a consumer card runs it about the same.

Meanwhile Cinema 4d runs just as good or better on mainstream gaming cards.

it depends on the pro cards, not all are for 3D apps, the cheaper ones are for multi monitoring or something I really don't get it, what they are really about that's why I target only the higher ones (actually mid to high ones).

The makers notice that in their sites too, but with eyefinity out with the 5XXX-6XXX ati cards I really don't see any reason for the low-end pro cards to exist.

Also as I said running a program for 3D with consumer level cards is seems ok until you start filling the scene with billion of polygons, which believe me, is very easy if you are working on any 3D project, and when I say project I don't mean modeling a character or 3d text.

I mean something like that:
http://nitro912gr.deviantart.com/#/d2z4ort

Here just the trees around are enough to send my card (4850) to hell, even after I turned off openGL preview and keep openGL wireframe things didn't run smooth, the framerate while I move an object is sometimes even 1fps. It was a pain to position the trees around the house. With a pro card however this can be way smoother and easier to do.

While I was modeling the furniture for the house (each object separated) my card was fine, but then the count was 1-2 million polygons, not billions.

 

[berkut]

None of the Quadro cards have had optimised drivers. Not the 4500, the 5600 or the 4800. The 5600 and 4800 both used ever so slightly older, and thus slightly slower, GPUs than the consumer versions that were offered which accounted for the benchmarks.

I don't see why this card will be any different, I mean they are going to be making less money on this card per unit, why would there be investment in drivers now .

Anyone buying this card for purely for enhanced OS X application performance before independent benchmarks are out is silly.

If you install NVIDIA's CUDA drivers for them, that replaces Apple's drivers with NVIDIA's, which give much better performance (as they're optimised) AND give you full OpenGL 3.0 support.

 

[nerdo]

Got this card when it came out for $795 but recently put back the 5770 that came with my Mac Pro because the CUDA is not as spectacular as it should be and well the drivers are not updated as much as they should be.

Also just made the system unstable (10.6.5)

so nice idea but... not for me. did almost nothing for Premiere Pro, then again PP is horrible if you are used to Final cut.. and yes I know someone will say "how can you say that I LOVE premiere pro....because.. etc."

If you install NVIDIA's CUDA drivers for them, that replaces Apple's drivers with NVIDIA's, which give much better performance (as they're optimised) AND give you full OpenGL 3.0 support.

 

[BigJohno]

Does this work well with sketchbook pro? I have tried sketchbook pro with 5870 and the brush lag when rotating the canvas is terrible. I need a card that works in osx and runs sketchbook pro well.

My school has quadro video cards and they run sketchbook amazing

 

[Xenophyte]

On the fence, Bad reviews about this card :\

Bad reviews on Apple store, sounds like a lot of driver issues until things improved a bit with Lion.
http://store.apple.com/us/reviews/H3314LL/A

Anyone having GOOD experiences with this card in Adobe Premiere AND After Effects?

 

[mBox]

Bad reviews on Apple store, sounds like a lot of driver issues until things improved a bit with Lion.
http://store.apple.com/us/reviews/H3314LL/A

Anyone having GOOD experiences with this card in Adobe Premiere AND After Effects?

Seems to be inexperienced users mostly. Ive had my tech problems with this card at first. Now we have close to 8 across a few machines and also in CUBIX for CUDA (Resolve).
Not everything is plug n play in the high-end game.

 

[nitro912gr]

Seems to be inexperienced users mostly. Ive had my tech problems with this card at first. Now we have close to 8 across a few machines and also in CUBIX for CUDA (Resolve).
Not everything is plug n play in the high-end game.

I can't blame them, since apple was always advertising that "it just works" I could expect everything to just work as well.

 

[mBox]

I can't blame them, since apple was always advertising that "it just works" I could expect everything to just work as well.

LOL! Ive known that for years
Yes it does work if you just buy the base system and run with it.
Where Im from, everything we've purchased is BTO.
Then our vendors get all weirded out when I expect them to know what Im doing with it.
"You want to put that in it?"
Mind you these are consumer vendors.
We dont have the high-end services here like LA and NY gets

 

[5883662]

Learn how to model properly, what you are saying is hard to believe. I run the 5770 on 2.8GHz Quad Mac Pro and do stuff like this (http://carloviscione.com/index.php?/spatial-design/vessels/) in C4D with ease (Enhanced OpenGL live preview, shadows, reflections, refractions, transparency, AA, etc...) on 4 OpenGL viewports.

it depends on the pro cards, not all are for 3D apps, the cheaper ones are for multi monitoring or something I really don't get it, what they are really about that's why I target only the higher ones (actually mid to high ones).

The makers notice that in their sites too, but with eyefinity out with the 5XXX-6XXX ati cards I really don't see any reason for the low-end pro cards to exist.

Also as I said running a program for 3D with consumer level cards is seems ok until you start filling the scene with billion of polygons, which believe me, is very easy if you are working on any 3D project, and when I say project I don't mean modeling a character or 3d text.

I mean something like that:
http://nitro912gr.deviantart.com/#/d2z4ort

Here just the trees around are enough to send my card (4850) to hell, even after I turned off openGL preview and keep openGL wireframe things didn't run smooth, the framerate while I move an object is sometimes even 1fps. It was a pain to position the trees around the house. With a pro card however this can be way smoother and easier to do.

While I was modeling the furniture for the house (each object separated) my card was fine, but then the count was 1-2 million polygons, not billions.

 

[nitro912gr]

Learn how to model properly, what you are saying is hard to believe. I run the 5770 on 2.8GHz Quad Mac Pro and do stuff like this (http://carloviscione.com/index.php?/spatial-design/vessels/) in C4D with ease (Enhanced OpenGL live preview, shadows, reflections, refractions, transparency, AA, etc...) on 4 OpenGL viewports.

Do you really checked the reference picture I posted? I ask because I see the link you give here, and all I see is a low polygon scene, and in the scene I give above is a big forest with a lot of trees and grass which each tree are ~300.000 polygons itself.

The building and the insides in my scene are at the polygons you are talking about and you have in your scene, I didn't had problem with them, the problem started when I added the complicated forest around.

You should check first if what I said is valid and then try to be a smartass.

 

[mBox]

Do you really checked the reference picture I posted? I ask because I see the link you give here, and all I see is a low polygon scene, and in the scene I give above is a big forest with a lot of trees and grass which each tree are ~300.000 polygons itself.

The building and the insides in my scene are at the polygons you are talking about and you have in your scene, I didn't had problem with them, the problem started when I added the complicated forest around.

You should check first if what I said is valid and then try to be a smartass.

I highly doubt that the scene you speak of is being worked on with everything on. In the professional world, you dont throw everything plus the kitchen sink in a scene. We do a little trickery called compositing and post
Now of course Ive done work where its way over the millions of polys but that was just stupid

 

[nitro912gr]

I highly doubt that the scene you speak of is being worked on with everything on. In the professional world, you dont throw everything plus the kitchen sink in a scene. We do a little trickery called compositing and post
Now of course Ive done work where its way over the millions of polys but that was just stupid

Well I didn't said that what I did was right, just that I could get a better performance with a quadro than a gaming card.

I was doing my first steps in 3D scene composition back then and when I was designing the first level for that game I made that scene... well I designed the whole level as one file.

 

[5883662]

You don't seem to understand how to model properly - using a tree that has 300K of polygons is crazy. It makes it even worse that you don't seem to be using render instances for your trees/grass. The scene I posted has about 6.5 million polygons and is in no shape or form optimised but I knew my machine can handle it. I used it as an example of what "consumer" graphic cards are capable of. I am very confident that I could cut the polygon count in half for the whole scene. And again, please note that EVERYTHING you see in the screenshot is actual 3D in the same file/scene. Again, this is not how I normally work for render-time sensitive projects but I know my machine/graphics card can handle it.

EDIT: I should also add that this is architectural visualisation and not game scenes. Polygon count only matters for rendering time and is not as important as for realtime rendering by a game engine.

Do you really checked the reference picture I posted? I ask because I see the link you give here, and all I see is a low polygon scene, and in the scene I give above is a big forest with a lot of trees and grass which each tree are ~300.000 polygons itself.

The building and the insides in my scene are at the polygons you are talking about and you have in your scene, I didn't had problem with them, the problem started when I added the complicated forest around.

You should check first if what I said is valid and then try to be a smartass.

 

[mBox]

Well I didn't said that what I did was right, just that I could get a better performance with a quadro than a gaming card.

I was doing my first steps in 3D scene composition back then and when I was designing the first level for that game I made that scene... well I designed the whole level as one file.

No worries I was referring to that particular scene. I for one dont care if its a gaming card or not. Here at work I couldnt convince the tall foreheads to use them. We have the Quadro 5600 in a few BOXX and Dells for hard-core Maya and Renderman.
Most of the Macs have the Quadro 4000.
And of course a pile of un-used ATI 5770/5870.

 

[nitro912gr]

note, this is not real time 3D, the game is an old school prerendered Myst style game, check the link in my sign below, I describe in details the mistakes I did back then.

 

[Renzatic]

Also as I said running a program for 3D with consumer level cards is seems ok until you start filling the scene with billion of polygons, which believe me, is very easy if you are working on any 3D project, and when I say project I don't mean modeling a character or 3d text.

I mean something like that:
http://nitro912gr.deviantart.com/#/d2z4ort

Here just the trees around are enough to send my card (4850) to hell, even after I turned off openGL preview and keep openGL wireframe things didn't run smooth, the framerate while I move an object is sometimes even 1fps. It was a pain to position the trees around the house. With a pro card however this can be way smoother and easier to do.

While I was modeling the furniture for the house (each object separated) my card was fine, but then the count was 1-2 million polygons, not billions.

I'm going with what everyone else is saying. I have no idea how that scene could take billions of polys. Just about everything in that scene could be done with materials and alphas. Like the trees off in the distance? You don't need individual high poly subdivided models for every leaf. And it's so far away, you don't need a high poly trunk. Just enough to make it look good. You could easily do that with a texture sheet of a spread of leaves, and get the exact same results with just 8000 quads on the high end. The house? It's rather simplistic geometrywise, and doesn't have any rounded edges. The tiling on the porch is about the only poly intensive bit on it. Everything else could be done sub-500 polys. The whole thing, tiles and all, could be done with roughly 3000 polys. The grass? Replicators. You don't need to have a model for each and every individual blade of grass. You could use a similar technique for the leaves, and use an alpha masked texture.

To toot my own horn here. I did a house bit by bit just to see how tedious I could get. No texturework. Every detail, every tile in the roof, every board, every shutter, was modeled by hand. The end result polycount? About 600,000 polys. And that's only because the smooth stone and tile work drive it up a goodly bit. If I were worried about efficiency, I bet I could do the whole thing with half that.

Now don't get me wrong. It's not a bad scene. It's just shouldn't be anywhere near a billion polygons. When I think of something with that high of a polycount, I think of scenes and models like this.

 

[nitro912gr]

Well I didn't said that what I did was right, just that I could get a better performance with a quadro than a gaming card.

I was doing my first steps in 3D scene composition back then and when I was designing the first level for that game I made that scene... well I designed the whole level as one file.

Seriously guys, I have explained my self above, read me please.

 

[5883662]

Our point is that you don't necessarily need a 1'000 USD graphics card if you can optimise/learn how to model better.