Some questions about video cards?

[eyeangle]

I'm thinking about getting a new graphics card because there's a lot of tearing that happens when I edit video in FCP7. I've had the 5870 1GB since it came with the mac.

Do AMD video cards need drivers? Or is Nvidia the way to go?

I don't mind not getting it flashed because not having the boot screen doesn't bother me.

 

[Synchro3]

AFAIK Final Cut Pro 7 (Final Cut Studio 2009) doesn't take advantage of graphics cards for any acceleration. I recommend an Apple PCE-E SSD and an used Xeon W3690/X5690 CPU from eBay for any advantages.

Maybe an upgrade to FCP 10 would help. In this case a card with good Open CL performance would help: http://www.macvidcards.com/store/c3/AMD_GPUs.html

If you would use Adobe Premiere a Nvidia card with CUDA acceleration is the way to go.

 

[eyeangle]

Thanks so much for your help. I didn't know that FCP7 didn't use the graphics card. I already have a Velocity Solo x2 with a soon-to-be 1TB SSD on it for my next editing project.

Knowing this, can you see any benefits to getting the AMD Radeon R9 280X 3GB? Would it help with render times? Also, from my local PC shop these are the Radeon graphics cards: http://www.centrecom.com.au/nvidia-amd-graphics-cards?specs=199

My question is this, I'm looking around the 400 - 500 dollar range to invest in a new card and I want to buy from this shop because I can pick it up whenever, it's local, but I don't know much about mac pros and video cards, other than I don't mind not having a boot screen. Would this be a good buy: http://www.centrecom.com.au/msi-radeon-r9-380-gaming-4gb-gddr5-graphics-card

I want something that will help render times, not for gaming.

 

[Fl0r!an]

You answered your own question before.
FCP7 doesn't support GPU acceleration, so even a $1000 Titan X won't improve anything at all.

For FCP X the R9 280X would be a good choice. The R9 380 is not yet confirmed to work (although OS X driver support should be there), so I'd stay away from it for the time being.