Posted on by Terry White

Review: Nvidia Quadro 4000 for the Mac Pro

I never really used to pay much attention to graphics cards in the past. I figured that the stock video card would be more than enough for my needs. I'm not into hardcore gaming where I would need a high frame rate or rendering lots of 3D work. I've also never really had any complaints with the standard video cards that came with my systems in the past. However, this year when I upgraded my 4 year old Mac Pro to a new 12 Core Mac Pro system, I knew that I was going to replace the stock video card. With the introduction of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 and the Mercury Playback Engine I knew that I would want a compatible video card to take advantage of it. With Mercury Playback Engine in Premiere Pro it has support for the Nvidia Card's CUDA chips and GPU acceleration. This means playing back multiple layers of HD video with effects in real-time without having to render first. Sign me up!

 

The New Nvidia Quadro 4000

Although I had a loaner Nvidia Quadro 4800 card (their older discontinued card) that worked fine in my new system, I was anxiously awaiting to see the next card they were working on for the Mac Pro. The New Quadro 4000 for Mac (yes it's for PC too) is better in just about every way over the older card. First off it only takes up one slot instead of two like the previous model and the stock ATI card that came with my Mac Pro. Secondly there is a built-in DVI port and a second port in which you can plug in either one of the two supplied dongles. One dongle gives you a Display Port for Apple's and other manufacturers newer displays and the other dongle provides a second DVI port to drive a second display.

Although I'm perfectly happy using this card to drive my existing 30" Cinema Display, it's nice to know that if I ever have to go to a new display with a Display Port connection, I'm all set. Installation was pretty easy. Install the Driver first! Then just open the case unplug the old card and plug in the new one. It did leave an "open" hole (the old card took up two PCI spots) in the back of the machine as Apple doesn't ship a spare cover. I was going to scrounge around my house looking for one (as I'm sure I have a few), but decided to stick an OWC USB 3.0 card in that slot instead.  

This new card is not only slimmer, but also better on power consumption while providing a 30-40% speed improvement over the previous model in intensive graphics work and has more onboard RAM. Again my main concern was more around Video Editing than scientific computations. So my first question to Nvidia was "how much faster is it in Premere Pro CS5 over the previous model?" The answer was "about 10% faster." What this means to you is that if you have an existing Quadro 4800 card, there is very little reason to buy this one! However, if you're in the market for a NEW card to replace the stock ATI card then this is a great choice. It's less expensive than the previous model and like I said it's faster, uses less space and consumes less power. Full Specs Here.

 

Putting it to the test

People that do video editing know what it's like to have to render an effect or scene first to preview it before you can move on to the next edit. If you didn't have to render the scene/effect then your editing is going go much much faster. Although the built-in "Software" Mercury Engine in Premiere Pro CS5 works well on a fast system. Having a compatible Nvidia card with CUDA support simply blows away everything else out there on a desktop system!

I recorded this quick video to show the Mercury Playback Engine in action. Rather than do a typical screen recording using software, I wanted to show the real performance without the screen recording software processing in the background. So in this case I setup a video camera pointing at the screen to show the playback in real-time. Enjoy!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foLxsL5RU6k

 

You can get the Nvidia Quadro 4000 for Mac here for $1,195 or here (thanks Brian Stone for this incredible find) for only $761.78!

 

You can get Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 here.

Download the 30 day trial here and play.

42 Replies to “Review: Nvidia Quadro 4000 for the Mac Pro”

  1. Terry,

    Thanks for the interesting info on the Nvidia Quadro 4000 video card. Do you know if it will work – primarily for Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5 – in a 2008 model Mac Pro (Model 3,1)?

    I still have the original ATI Radeon HD 2600 card and was thinking that a new one may be worthwhile for speeding things up a bit.

    Appreciate your help.

    Stan

  2. Terry,

    I have a 2009 Mac Pro with the ATI Radeon 4870, will this Quadro card be much faster with Photoshop? I was thinking for the 3D stuff it may be better, and Raytrace faster, but I can’t see it being much better for anything else as far as Photoshop stuff goes correct?

  4. Terry,

    Thanks. With the exception of an increase in the Photoshop 3D performance, you really think it’s worth getting it? I can’t see any of the brush GPU or other features that use the card being mind-blowing faster? I have a dual 2.93 with 16GB of ram. It’s pretty fast right now….I’ve been torn on purchasing it. I do no video work, just design.

    1. If you’re heavy into video and 3D then yes! If you’re mostly in PS and not doing a lot of PS 3D, then probably not. Will it make a difference? Probably. Will it make a thousand dollar difference?…. probably not for what you’re doing.

      1. Nice, that’s what I thought. I bet the 3D stuff would be much faster & smoother, but it’s just doesn’t get used enough in my daily workflow, it would be nice to purchase it and see what it can do though. Is that PNY place legit?! That’s a smokin’ deal on that card! Thanks Terry!

  5. While some pro 3D apps and scientific software do better with a card such as this as opposed to a top line gaming card (and not always from my experience), do Adobe’s products? I don’t use Premiere, I use FCS. I’m not sure how the current version uses GPU accel. From what I hear, the new version we should see soon should be better in that regard.

  7. For many GPU purposes the 5770 or 5870 is going to be as fast as the Quadro4000 (or within 10% at a fraction of the price)

    for some tasks, especially 3D Modeling, the Quadro will be faster.

    It would be nice to see some specific benchmarks/comparisons between these cards for the Creative Suite 5.

  8. I’m just waking up to improving my original Macpro 1.1 (2006) in the CPU department etc. I noted that processor changes has been undertaken and was looking forward to reading how . . .

    Any chance of info in that direction? T.I.A.

  9. I believe every major video editing software on the Mac supports the Cuda GPU acceleration; Clearly Adobe Premiere, Avid Media Composer, Autodesk Smoke and BlackMagic DaVinci. All except FCP.

    Apple should offer this card as an option when a system is configured.

  10. Nice demo. Two questions:
    1) When we say “HD” are we talking 1920 by 1080.

    2) What kinda of compression is on those files for premiere or After Effects for that matter to take advantage of the Mercury playback with this card.

    Thanks

    AK

    1. 1. Yes we’re talking 1920×1080.
      2. The files are in whatever various formats they came off of their respective cameras in with no further compression or transcoding done by Premiere Pro.

  11. Can this card support two 27″ Cinema Displays? There is only one display port on the card. Strange as the PC version has two.

    1. The card doesn’t have “Dual-Link” support which I know the 30″ Cinema Display needed to drive two of them. Not sure about what the 27″ needs since I don’t have one.

  12. Pingback: NLESystems Blog » Review: Nvidia Quadro 4000 for the Mac Pro

  13. Will the new MacPro accommodate both the 4000 card and a Radeon 5870? I’d like to use the 5870 to run my monitor while all of the 4000’s graphic cores are performing scientific calculations. Thanks!

    1. No, I had the same problem and had to upgrade to a newer Mac Pro before I could use the newer cards.

      A quick check on the Nvidia site under Drivers & Downloads for the Quadra 4000 has your answer:

      Please note:

      Mac Pro Requirements: >>To find out if you are running the correct Mac Pro, go to About This Mac to find out what system you are running. You can find this by doing the following:

      Go to • About This Mac
      Click on the • More Info button
      Select • Hardware
      The model identifier should be MacPro3,1 or MacPro4,1 (2008 or 2009) or later
      Note: MacPro1,1 and MacPro2,1 are not compatible.

      1. Ok thanks, but I am afraid, as Apple produced ATi 5770 and ATI 5870 did not mention These cards compatible with old Macpros, the reality these cards run well on Macpro 2006.

  16. A couple of things:

    1) you can drive two 30″ inch displays on one card by getting Apples dual link dvi adapter ($99.00) for the second dongle. You’ll need a free USB port to make it work. Or, alternatively
    2) you can get another Quadro 4000 card.

    I have two 27″ NEC monitors, one on each card in my 12-core Mac Pro. This, obviously, makes Adobe Premiere and any other program capable of CUDA support scream.

    1. Jim,
      How did you get 2 of these into the Mac Pro?
      The card requires PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots. Or am I mistaken?

      Thank you.

        1. Terry,

          Am I missing something here:

          “I have two 27? NEC monitors, one on each card in my 12-core Mac Pro. This, obviously, makes Adobe Premiere and any other program capable of CUDA support scream.”

          The “one on each card in my 12 Core Mac Pro” leads me, and all others to believe that you have 2 cards in a 12 core Mac Pro.

          Am I mistaken?

          1. 1) I had a FX4800
            2) I took it OUT
            3) I put in the 4000 card
            4) I connected the one and only Cinema Display 30″ that I use to it.

            NO, I don’t have two in at the SAME TIME.

  17. Great video! What type of hard drive set up did you have? I imagine it had to be some type of raid. Was it external or internal? Just curious, what codecs were used in your demonstration? I’m waiting on my Quadro 4000/mac in the mail, and am considering various new hard drive set ups and configurations.

      1. Wow, that’s pretty amazing! I bought two 1TB hard drives to RAID 0 internally, but one was DOA, doah! Card came in today, look forward to testing PP. Moving from FCS b/c of the graphics card acceleration, seamless integration with Red, faster product development and better adoption of new technologies. Plus having better integration with PS and Ill is key as well.

        My understanding is that PP does not have it’s own intermediate codec though, I mean I know with this graphics card you don’t really need it in most cases. But lets say one was doing a lot of compositing with 7D footage, what would you recommend to transcode it to if you had to? NeoScene?

        1. Hey Terry,

          Another question. I’ve been testing back the GPU acceleration, and love it. I’ve specifically been testing 7D footage in PP. A workflow that I imagine might be common is to link some PP footage to AE and do some compositing, motion graphics, and CC, like ColorFinesse. When I dynamic linked some footage to AE and used just ColorFinesse the linked footage in AE would not play back. I imagine this is because ColorFinesse is not graphics card accelerated, nor is AE, but what solution would you recommend? Would transcoding to another codec help? My processor does not seemed to be working any harder in PP after linking to a CCd clip, so I’m not sure what the hold up is.

          1. And if AE can’t dynamically link w/ real time playback in PP, then hopefully PP will get more robust text features, b/c the ‘Titler’ is not ideal to work with most of the time.

  18. Thanks terry for the review, I am really going to upgrade my GPU, I have a GT120, which sux like anything, any suggestions on best display’s ( Monitors ) apart from the apple cinema display’s. Here in Dubai apple cinema display’s are crazily expansive.

  19. Hi terry awesome video.

    I’m planning on buying a Mac Pro with a quadro, but I need our help here.
    I use a lot of 3D applications such as Blender and Maya, Vue etc will this Nvidia quadro really helps me?
    Especially when i’m going to render on the GPU with Octane render.
    http://www.refractivesoftware.com/

    Now from my point of view you are a expert with mac pro’s and the technology behind it, so could help me decide if this will be the right decision to make?

    Kind regards

    1. I’ve not ever used Maya so I can’t say for sure if it would help you. However, if their software is optimized to use GPUs then it should.

  20. Pingback: NVIDIA Quadro 4000 for Mac: Smaller, Faster, Better — Designorati

  21. Any idea if it’s possible to run other monitors on different ATI cards concurrently with the Quadro 4000 installed? I have heard about there being problems on the windows side.
    I’ve got two displays, a wacom cintiq for sketching and an old Formac Display for documentation ( with a clunky adapter inbetween) attached to two different ATI cards.

  22. Hi Terry,
    Are you able to verify if the Quadro 4000 will allow a second monitor to be selected for full screen playback. Typically most users have dual 24″ monitors conncected via DVI. Monitor 1 is for Premiere Pro and Monitor 2 is for full screen playback. This is selected in the flyout menu on the program monitor > playback settings > 2nd GPU head

    I have been unable to use the Quadro 4000 in this way. If you could check this out, it would be appreciated.

Comments are closed.