Hi all,
I've popped this on another forum, but thought I'd try this learned crowd as well
I have recently given my 8800GT a quick roast in the oven to restore some vitality which has done the trick well. But it has got me thinking that I may soon require some upgrades to keep my Mac Pro running smoothly and future proof it... for a little while longer anyway.
I am a pro Photographer and use my Mac Pro regularly for large 2D file retouching. Stitched Digital Medium format files often reach 2GB+, so I am contemplating updating my video card to bring it inline with the larger files I work with, compared to the smaller files back in 2008.
Currently it seems to run fairly well, but any increase in performance would be appreciated. I also often have approx 100 (smaller RAW) files open in PS6 at any one time which does push it a bit.
My main priority is colour accuracy, bit depth, power etc. I realise CS6 doesn't take advantage of CUDA (albeit a few features do), but in the future it may? For 2D work, is minimum 1Gb RAM required or more... 1.5...2.5Gb? Is having a powerful games based card advantageous for 2D work? Are such "games" based cards less critical when it comes to precise colour accuracy?
I have looked at the 5770, 5870 & even a flashed GTX-570 1.2Gb or 2.5Gb. The Quadro I've disregarded, as I'd prefer to put the extra money towards a PCI-e SSD boot/scratch disk.
My current Mac Pro setup is:
27" NEC PA271
2008 2.8Ghz Octo
16Gb RAM
8800GT 512mb
1x 1TB Drive System
2x 2TB Drive Raid 1 Photoshop Scratch
1x 2TB Drive Business related
Synology 4 Drive RAID Photo storage
Any help or related experiences would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Flynny