Blackmagic Forum

I have a 2008 Mac Pro 3,1
I would like to upgrade it to run Davinci the best it can without adding expansion slots.

I've read that it can't handle the GTX 680. Has anybody successfully used the GTX 670?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Many people have used a GTX670 in that machine. It works fine as long as you run Mountain Lion.

What you will find with a Mac Pro 3,1 is that no GPU will really give you any performance increase because the PCIe buses are to slow to pass data back and forh. I tried my system with a stock GT 120 only and an 8800GT by itself and found it perfermed the same as when I used a GT 120 (GUI) with a GTX 570 or GTX 670 as the GPU. Upgrading to a newer Mac Pro however made a huge difference. Thanks

Thanks for the info. Too bad. It's going to be awhile before I'll be able to use Resolve.

Audio64Live wrote:What you will find with a Mac Pro 3,1 is that no GPU will really give you any performance increase because the PCIe buses are to slow to pass data back and forh. I tried my system with a stock GT 120 only and an 8800GT by itself and found it perfermed the same as when I used a GT 120 (GUI) with a GTX 570 or GTX 670 as the GPU. Upgrading to a newer Mac Pro however made a huge difference. Thanks

Which Mac Pro did you upgrade to? I'm facing the same problem and would like to upgrade to the cheapest possible Mac Pro I can.

If you can wait a few months, Apple has confirmed a new Mac Pro release sometime this spring.

Elliott Balsley wrote:If you can wait a few months, Apple has confirmed a new Mac Pro release sometime this spring.

Where did you find this information? Apple doesn't announce future products until they're actually "announced"

Back in June CEO Tim Cook says, "we're working on something really great for later next year."

http://m.cnet.com/news/apple-ceo-says-m ... r/57452049

chapfilmguy wrote:

Audio64Live wrote:What you will find with a Mac Pro 3,1 is that no GPU will really give you any performance increase because the PCIe buses are to slow to pass data back and forh. I tried my system with a stock GT 120 only and an 8800GT by itself and found it perfermed the same as when I used a GT 120 (GUI) with a GTX 570 or GTX 670 as the GPU. Upgrading to a newer Mac Pro however made a huge difference. Thanks

Which Mac Pro did you upgrade to? I'm facing the same problem and would like to upgrade to the cheapest possible Mac Pro I can.

Sorry chapfilmguy that I didn't respond sooner to your question. I purchase a refurbished 12 Core, 2.4ghz machine from apple and went to 32gb of RAM with a GTX 680 GPU. I'm waiting for the new Mac Pros as well so I purchased this to get me going. I'm lucky because I already have a dedicated place for this machine to go that is guaranteed to make me rental money when the new Mac Pros come out. Thanks

What do you guys think of the 27inch iMac, with the 680MX for resolve?

I realize this might be too late but for anybody else out there, I do have the 2008 Mac Pro 3.1 and it runs Davinci Resolve 9 quite well. No need to buy expansion slots if you are outputting 1080P. I have the GTX 285 and the 120 on it and its smooth as butter. Granted i got my system in the early days when BMD bought Davinci, so the GTX 285 might be difficult to get (not sure). I don't see why you should buy a new machine.

I just sold my 2012 MacBook Pro with the i7 processor and spent 800$ on a 2008 Mac Pro with 16 gb ram, 4tb hard drives, 5770 AND 5870 graphics cards. I will further upgrade it with more ram.
My intent is to use it with my blackmagic footage (raw 2.5k) and grade with resolve seemlessly. Lets hope I'm not disappointed.

The 3.1 Mac Pro's PCIE bus is too slow to to get much performance out or the GeForce GPUs.

Probably best to read the config guide:
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