QUADRO FX4500 Graphics Card Performance / Old Mac Pro Performance

[brianstorm]

Hi,

I'm considering running Catalyst on

a 2006/07 model Mac Pro, 8core, 3GHZ
with OS 10.6.8
Quadro FX4500 graphics
8gb ram
SSD drive for media

Can anyone advise on what level of performance we may get back on this system, or whether another graphics card might improve it (and which card that may be) I'm told the Quattro 4000 won't fit this model...

[Mr_P]

The ATI X1900XT works adequately with catalyst in MacPro 1,1 and 2,1
But I wouldn't expect any more than 4-5 layers of 1080p 25fps (AIC) content playback.
Doubt you will improve on this at all with any other grahpics card...
wouldn't waste your money on a graphics card update for a 1,1 or 2,1 MacPro...

Best combination at the moment seems to be a 5,1 MacPro with OS 10.8.4 with a GTX680 (mac Edition) using ProRes LT or Proxy codec content
(Other PC edition cards also work - only with 10.8.4 - but at your risk...)
NOTE - 10.8.4 only works on a MacPro 3,1 or above...

S

[ajmaudio]

The ATI X1900XT works adequately with catalyst in MacPro 1,1 and 2,1
But I wouldn't expect any more than 4-5 layers of 1080p 25fps (AIC) content playback.
Doubt you will improve on this at all with any other grahpics card...
wouldn't waste your money on a graphics card update for a 1,1 or 2,1 MacPro...

Best combination at the moment seems to be a 5,1 MacPro with OS 10.8.4 with a GTX680 (mac Edition) using ProRes LT or Proxy codec content
(Other PC edition cards also work - only with 10.8.4 - but at your risk...)
NOTE - 10.8.4 only works on a MacPro 3,1 or above...

S

I have been testing 10.8.4 on different machines and have had some odd things come up. Weird screen tearing and gui rendering issues for one... but the interesting one is that ML videos arent played back at their correct speed if they are just freerun in catalyst. I have been able to duplicate this on several machines. Simple changing the OS back to SL resolves issues.. all other things are equal... quadruple checked... this has caused quite some headache... is there a fix for this I dont know about.. I am about to start a large tour and would like to be able to run ML so I can use 680 vid card? Please help

[Mr_P]

Playback at wrong speed sounds strange?
How are you checking this?

What version mac pro?

What are your settings:
Graphics card output refresh rate?
Catalyst playback rate (control window)
Movie Codec & rendered frame rate?
Layer rate (100%?)
Playmode?

S

[ajmaudio]

I have checked several ways.. identical machines, identical files, settings etc.. fire both.. the ML machine will be very very far behind in a short bit of time.. I have been a heavy catalyst user for years and all the settings that you would check are the same and as they should be. This came up when I was transferring a clients show from a machine rented from myself to one I built for them. The newer machine will only run ML, new macbook pro yada yada. When I was testing the system before delivering to client I noticed that when freerun the new machine would not match the song it was programmed too. This was never an issue with any machine I used running SL. I checked everything, I checked several types of machines all with exact same results. When I test with an older macpro I can run a song from the show freerun in SL and it tracks perfectly as it was created to.. take the same machine on ML... falls behind quickly. Its is really quite strange. All playmodes are the same result save for audio playmodes as the audio playback "locks" the machine into playing at the correct speed. That was my fix for that particular show as all of the video files had a timecode audio track that we weren't using. Simply by changing my playmode to audio everything lines up perfectly. I have checked the global playback rate, play speed, etc etc etc. Any thoughts? I would bet you can duplicate this issue. Even My 6 year old macbook will track perfectly when running this show.... As I said.. quite interesting. I would value your input. Also.. with HUD up there are fun artifacts and tearing quite often. Gui also renders incorrectly on every machine I have tried ML on.

[Mr_P]

If the movie plays at the correct speed using an audio playmode, then it sounds very much like you have the wrong playback frame rate selected in the top of the catalyst control window...

The audio playmodes prioritise audio playback and will force a clip to playback at its renderd frame rate

The non-audio playmodes prioritise video an will run at the frame rate selected in the catalyst control window

As per my previous post - what are your settings - and this may highlight the issue

It should also be noted that no two computers will playback at exactly the same rate.
If you need to match video file with audio then use SMPTE timecode to lock both together. I would never rely on freerun in this scenario.

S

[Mr_P]

GUI drawer issues only happen at startup with ML and seems to be fixed now

Can get round this by running a video file for a few frames, and the GUI corrects itself.

This seems to be fixed in 10.9...

S

[ajmaudio]

Thanks for your reply. The playback speeds in the control window are both at 29.97 as they should be, I have actually used the exact same show files, same settings on EVERYTHING.. still this issue persists I am not expecting them to run the same at all but it is clear that there is a large discrepancy that is related to mountain lion as I can switch over operating systems and things stay very close to in sync. I understand what you mean regarding the audio play mode.. that is why I used it to fix my problem for that show. The fact that the diference in play speed varies that much just changing to that play mode illustrates the problem. THe file is made @ 29.97, catalyst is set to play at 29.97, layer play speed at 100 percent, so changing to an audio play mode shouldnt cause much of a change... The reality is that its drastic. I will keep looking into it but I really think something is amiss. I have spent many hours on this and am not a stranger to catalyst. If there is any other info you wish to know please ask. Thanks