Any GTX 285 owners?

I've been holding out for a mac edition radeon 5870... but I'm starting to think I can't wait anymore.
I'm curious if any GTX 285 owners have any feedback regarding performance of this card in snow leopard with aperture 3 compared to a previous card. (I guess this would apply to aperture 2 as well...)
I've read all the speed tests and issues with the drivers of the card and power management... but I'm particularly interested in comparing this with an Nvidia 8800GT.
This is almost impossible to benchmark, because at this point it seems the card will only affect image adjustment operations, I believe RAW decoding and background processing/exporting are CPU bound. If anyone has any before/after feedback of "perceived improvement" while adjusting images I'd like to hear it.
Thanks!

Received the card and installed in my computer today... all I can say is WOW! This is how Aperture should run! Now, let me remind you, I'm coming from a GT 120, so this is probably to be expected. While I don't have technical data to support my claim, I can say that editing a wedding from this weekend was quick, painless and fun!
Let me just say that the GTX 285 is a huge video card. It's probably 4x the size of the GT 120. The fan looks like something I could use on a hot summer day to cool off with. Installation was a cinch and I didn't have to install any software before installing the card (must be due to Snow Leopard having the necessary drivers already).
Ok, now on to Aperture performance. My setup is an 8-Core 2.26 GHz, 6 GB memory Mac Pro with the GTX 285 running two 30" cinema displays. Upon uploading just under 1000 photos, I began editing right away. The photos loaded on my full-screen 30" display quicker than the GT 120, but not as quick as I expected. That is until I realized that Aperture was still processing all of the photos I had just uploaded. While it wasn't unbearably slow by any means, it was MUCH quicker once Aperture could give 100% of it's resources to the task at hand. Once all of the photos were processed, I could flip from photo-to-photo with the full resolution photo being displayed in under 2 seconds. On the GT 120, it sometimes took up to 5 seconds for the photo to 'Load'.
Editing the photos is such a joy now that I have a video card that can keep up. I applied a plethora of heavy edits on a single photo and didn't notice any slowdown in processing or performance. The only time Aperture gives me grief is when I'm applying the 'retouch' edit after doing several other edits. From what I've read, I believe the retouch is supposed to be down first before other adjustments are applied. No biggie, just something I noticed. All of the brushes painted the adjustments on smoothly and when I switched to the 'color overlay' there was no pause or load-time. It instantly showed the areas where the edits were applied! On the GT120, I would be waiting for 10-15 seconds for the color overlay to show on the screen.
Flipping through the browser is a breeze as well! All of the photos, no matter which size thumbnail they are, are loaded instantly. I literally can't scroll the page fast enough for the photos to not be loaded on the screen. The GT120 would leave several photos with a dashed, empty box when scrolling through the photos.
These are just some of the improvements I've noticed. Like I said before, I'm not a tech guru, but I love how Aperture is performing on my Mac Pro. It couldn't be any better and I believe the biggest reason for my performance increase was the GTX 285. Aperture 2 never ran this smooth.

Similar Messages

GTX 285 GB 512 DDR3 vs gtx 550ti

Quick q: Which one will work better in premire pro cs6

Actually, Bill, the OP meant "512-bit DDR3" for the GTX 285. There have never been any GTX 285 cards with only 512MB of RAM. Most GTX 285 cards came with 1GB of RAM, while a few offered 2GB.
In this case, between 1GB versions of those two GPUs, definitely the GTX 285: You did a test with both of those CPUs some time ago with CS5.5 and an i7-2600K overclocked to 4.4GHz with 16GB of RAM. The biggest difference is in the MPEG-2 DVD test of the PPBM5 benchmark: The GTX 285 completed this portion of the test in 117 seconds while the GTX 550 Ti needed all of 146 seconds. This is in large part due to the higher 159 GB/s bandwidth of the GTX 285's 512-bit DDR3 memory compared to only 98.4 GB/s for the 192-bit DDR5 memory on the GTX 550 Ti. However, both of those GPUs have fewer than 384 CUDA cores (240 for the GTX 285, 192 for the GTX 550 Ti), so expect both of those GPUs to be the bottleneck in faster PCs.

Early 2009 MacPro with GTX 285 (Mac Edition) - Dual Monitor Setup

Hey Guys - I tried going through the forum to find this, and I think I see some common responses, but wanted to detail my question and make sure I have it right.
I have a MacPro (early 2009) with the EVGA GeForce GTX 285 Mac Edition GPU. I replaced the GT120 that came with the MacPro. I was initially planning on attaching two monitors to the GTX 285, but I have heard rumors that for smoother performance, I should hook up the GT120 as well and hook up one monitor to that one.
However, I am reading posts regarding other configurations (4870 and GT120, etc), and it seems like there are different responses. Basically, I am looking for better performance for graphics demanding application (gaming, photo-edit, movie, etc).
Thanks for your time and responses ahead of time.

I'm so happy that you're soooo happy. If you were so so happy, I would be disappointed. Blessed? You honor me Japamac-san. I have not bestowed blessings in years, it must have been accidental. Well, I am getting old, there's a reason people move away from me on the subway. I'm glad you interpreted it that way.
Well, ok, the cats out of the bag. I do expect 10.6.2 to do something significant for this card. For gosh sake something has to one day justify this investment...
Both EVGA and Nvidia say it's all up to Apple.
Apple says,... well Apple never says anything,.. but since they sell it on their website one would think it was in their interest to do their best. It's really not nice to sell one card as a 200 dollar option, granted 350 by itself, and another for well over 400 that is only marginally better. It's like looking for a Ford, changing your mind for the Porsche, and ending up getting a Ford with a Porsche sticker on it. This card wails in Windows, how can Apple deny that performance to it's own OS?
While OS changes are incremental one doesn't necessarily expect that all things related to the industry will be. CUDA and Open CL are emerging technologies, but the 285 is real and out there. And it has been for quite some time now. Perhaps more honest marketing campaigns are needed, something like, "Here's the best video card for the Mac out there in existence, you'll just have to wait a few years to see that for yourself, maybe".
Nah, it's not right, you buy a product for what it is, not for what it could be. If it gets better over time that's great, but right from the start it should be worth the price. The 285 hasn't been that yet.
And we 285 owners waited for Snow, with all the talk of Apple's unleashing the power of the GPU. It came and the card ran slower. 10.6.1,... well at least the OS ran better. 10.6.2, well I can't say much about it, but if one can believe what they read, it looks like Apple is at least aware of certain things to be especially worked on. The question for me is to what degree they fine tune things. Can it really be as difficult to create a driver for Nvidia cards, unlike the drivers for ATIs which seem to work with such ease? It's almost like Apple and ATI are intrinsically bound somehow. For instance, with the 285 a new game like COD4 runs just perfectly for me with a 30" monitor, but another game under Rosetta runs not too well at all. Put the 4870 in and COD4 runs very well but not as good as the 285. The Rosetta game however runs great with the ATI. It's things like that I find to be very weird.
If the history of OS X has shown us anything
The history of anything only shows me we learn nothing from it. That's my biggest fear in this case, but I'm encouraged by what I hear.
Expecting 10.6.1 or even 10.6.2, .3, or even .4 to be perfect
That's an odd thing isn't it? How long would car companies last if they fine tuned their cars by analyzing how they failed and crashed for their customers on the road? "Yo, Edsel, I think we need a way to stop them once they're going".
Yet as much as we pay for our computers and equipment we realize that the companies are using us as their R&D Depts. It's an interesting cycle, we're sold things that don't work well, give feedback to make them work well, and next time we buy the better product and it starts all over again.
Well, it's been an interesting chat, full of sound and fury, signifying... well, probably something.

Radeon 2600 vs GTX 285

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro with the ATI Radeon 2600. I recently installed Windows 7 and was looking to upgrade my graphics card to whatever is currently the best available now that I have access to Windows games. Scanning the forum I see the NVIDIA GTX 285 and the ATI Radeon 4870 seem to be the most popular cards. Other than price, is there any reason to choose one over the other?
Thanks.
Message was edited by: bankergrahams

GTX 285 better gaming in windows.

CS5 custom build with GTX 285 for long-form 4k projects

I've been researching nonstop for several days, and it's time to ask for your expert opinions. I would appreciate any help.
I'm ordering a new system for Production Premium CS5, and mostly I will use Premiere Pro CS5 to edit long-form projects (huge timelines with thousands of clips) of Red 4k footage. It's a feature film with only a few F/X shots, but we'd like to do as much F/X, sound mixing, and color correction in CS5 as possible.
Here is what I'm considering:
CUSTOM BUILD from CYBERPOWERPC (about $1950 including items not listed):
OS: Windows 7 Professional x64
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-930 2.80 GHz 8M Intel Smart Cache LGA1366
HDD: 1TB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD (Single Hard Drive)
MOTHERBOARD: * (3-Way SLI Support) GigaByte GA-X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Ultra Durable™3 Mainboard DDR3/1600 ATX Mainboard w/7.1 Dobly Audio,eSATA,Dual GbLAN, USB3.0, 2 x SATA-III RAID,IEEE1394a,4 Gen2 PCIe,2 PCIe X1 &1 PCI [+132]
MEMORY: 12GB (2GBx6) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Module [+219] (Kingston HyperX)
SOUND: Creative Labs SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio 24-BIT PCI Sound Card [+48]
VIDEO: Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 (I will have to take out their card and install this myself for GPU acceleration)
1. Do you see any poor or strange decisions?
2. I liked that mobo because of the chipset's possibilities and because it has 1394 for old-style DV capture. Plus it has 8 SATA 2.0's, 2 SATA 3.0's, 2. eSATA 2.0's, and 2 USB 3.0's for huge/fast storage options in the future. Is there some better alternative if I'm keen to have at least one of each of these formats?
3. I'll clone their 1TB OS drive onto a smaller 250GB drive to use as the OS drive, then use their 1TB drive as part of a 2TB RAID 0 video storage. Will using the mobo's raid controller or some type of virtual RAID (like I did in Xp64) be fine, or do I need a separate RAID controller (like I had in the late 90's).
4. What do you think about that processor and RAM for what I'm doing? Any reason to prefer 2 Quad-Core's (if dual processors are even compatible with CS5)? Please let me know if the current configuration will lag with huge timelines with thousands of 4k clips.
5. Maybe I don't need the Creative sound card and could just use the mobo's sound?
6. Will it be simple for me to remove their graphics card and install an Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 myself?
7. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 seems like a good fit for GPU acceleration for me since I'm not expecting to have 4+ layers of videos, though I will be doing multiple effects on 1 or 2 layers. Would having a Quadro FX give any advantage over the GTX 285 for huge timelines with thousands of 4k clips? Or any advantages for any other use?
8. The GTX 285 has 2 DVI's as its only connectors (plus something that looks like S-video). Can I use one DVI for my workstation and one DVI for monitoring video in realtime on an HDMI/DVI-equipped LCD TV or professional HD video monitor. Any problems with viewing/outputting my 4k video in HD in realtime? What is the best setup to view your video on an external monitor? Back in the CS2 days I used a 1394 through a camcorder into an analog professional monitor, but that's not going to be HD, plus I heard there's a sync problem these days.
Thanks for your advice.

Thanks for your advice, everyone!
I'm gaining a lot of knowledge, but I have some followups so I'll break it down into subcategories and hopefully you can chime in on one or more topics.
To give more info about my daily use and purpose:
--smoothly edit huge amounts of RED 4k footage/clips and view the video externally in as high a resolution as possible (2k or minimum of 1k).
---no reason to have more than 3 layers visible at a time.
--the vast majority of the time only 1 video layer (with video effects) will be visible, with perhaps a handful of fades/dissolves during the entire 2-hour feature.
--I don't mind if it takes slightly more time rendering DPX files at the end, but I don't want any hiccups and never want to render during day-to-day editing and monitoring.
GRAPHICS CARD and VIDEO MONITORS
1. I'm pretty much set on the GTX 285, but I wondered if for my purposes I'd get any significant benefit from the Quadro FX 5800 (+$2000-$2600) or the GTX 480 (+$100)? Either in speed of playback or in output to external video monitors. The 5800 has 4GB RAM versus the GTX 285's 1GB, and the GTX 480 has 1.5 GB. Does this RAM matter for what I'm doing or are the cores much more important? Also, if I chose the GTX 480 then I'd have to pray that everything would be stable with a MPE/CUDA/GPU-acceleration hack, or hope Adobe comes through with full support of that card.
2. What is the 3rd output on the GTX 285? There are two DVI outputs and then something that looks like S-Video. Is it S-video out? Or an HD audio out that travels alongside the DVI output to an external video monitor?
3. Does it slow down the system to send the video at 1k or 2k to an external video monitor since you'd be using both DVI outputs simultaneously?
RED 4k PLAYBACK and RAM vs CPU
1. For day-to-day editing, I'm fine scaling to 1/4 resolution if necessary and monitoring video externally at 1k or 2k. Would my current system already achieve that smoothly?
2. From what I've gathered here and elsewhere, for better 2k or 4k playback it might be better to spend extra on CPU rather than RAM. I could spend
--$1000 more for 24GB RAM (instead of 12GB)
--$290 more for an i7 975 Extreme 3.33 GHz 8M Cache
--$686 more for an i7 980x Extreme 3.33 GHz 12M cache.
Given my needs and the current total system cost of $1950, which of these 3 would you choose? Or should I stay with the cheaper i7 930 2.8 GHz and overclock (which I've never done before).
ECBowen:
It sounds like you've used a system similar to what I'm buying to playback RED 4k on a timeline in full, 1/2, and 1/4 scale. I'd greatly appreciate if you could clarify YES/NO for which are possible to have SMOOTH PLAYBACK with your 980x/12GB RAM/GTX 285 system. I know it's a lot to ask, but it would make me feel so much better about this big purchase:
-full scale 4k of 1 layer with 0 video effects
-full scale 4k of 3 layers with 0 video effects
-full scale 4k of 1 layer with 3 video effects
-full scale 4k of 3 layers with 3 video effects (NO, right?)
-1/2 scale of 1 layer with 0 video effects
-1/2 scale of 3 layers with 0 video effects
-1/2 scale of 1 layer with 3 video effects
-1/2 scale of 3 layers with 3 video effects
-1/4 scale of 3 layers with 3 video effects
RAID CONTROLLER
1. I won't use the virtual/software controller. The GigaByte UD5 says it has RAID 0, 1, 5, 10. Does that mean it has an onboard hardware controller that I can configure in Windows 7 or using some software supplied with the mobo?

Can't Safe Boot with 10.6.2 and GTX 285

Can't safe boot with 10.6.2 and NVIDIA GTX 285 (2009 Mac Pro).
What the heck am I supposed to do, take out the graphics card every time I want to safe boot?!
Suggestions please!

No, I think what it is, is that the GTX 285 drivers somehow are being treated as 3rd party extensions not to be loaded on a safe boot, but the problem is that without those drivers, even if I switch my monitor over to my GT 120 card, it still won't boot. Ugh.
I am considering reinstalling 10.6 over on top of my current system, then putting the 10.6.2 on top of that. If I do this, do I risk losing any preferences or having to reinstall any 3rd-party software? At this point, I'll happily reinstall whatever it takes... I just didn't want to have to do a clean system where I have to track down every single bookmark file and saved preference for my main apps, but it could be this is now starting to take more time than it simply would have to do that from the get-go. Sigh.

GeForce GTX 285

Any scoop on what the new GeForce GTX 285 card will cost in the UK? Will it cost more that the ATI Radeon HD 4870?
What's the advise for gamers using windows in boot camp. Should we patiently wait for the GeForce GTX 285 if the price is right? From the reports and articles it out performs the ATI HD 4870.
Its a shame apple holds it customers to ransom. I use to be a PC user, I miss the easy of upgrading and changing.

I'm afraid not but, it is available in a week or two on the USA website. I think I'll keep an eye on the Barefeats.com site because they usually get onto these things before anybody else. I think the main problem will be - how good are the drivers, especially with the Pro Apps. One has to assume that they have got their act together with this one and that they have also tested it with Snow Leopard(which I shall be testing this weekend!. So here's hopeing :-))
http://store.apple.com/us/product/TW387ZM/A

Accelerating Compressor with NVIDIA GTX 285 or GT 120?

Is there any way to accelerate Compressor using OpenCL with NVIDIA GTX 285 or GT 120? Plans to do this?

RedTruck wrote:
the standard? really…?
Yes. Every consumer camcorder that we sell at my camera shop records to AVCHD. Every Blu Ray player sold at WalMart, Best Buy, Target, etc. etc. etc. etc. uses AVCHD. It's the standard. Period.
Apple needs to get with the times! Sorry, but it's the truth. I'm not denigrating Apple, but they are living in a false reality if they think that AVCHD/Blu Ray is not the standard now, or that it's just going to go away because they refuse to acknowledge it or incorporate it into their products.
The assumption for many years has been that if you had a video camera, you should buy a Mac and it will be able to edit your videos right out of the box and burn them to a disc for playback on your computer. But it's simply not the case anymore.
I have customers come to my store and purchase AVCHD camcorders, and I got really tired of having to explain to people who came back with patches of hair missing where they pulled it out, that, "Sorry the Mac does not support the current HD standard."
"Huh? What?"
"That's right, it does not support AVCHD playback nor does it support Blu Ray."
"Really? Why?"
"I don't know."
"OK, well, what am I supposed to do? I just want to copy HD files to my Mac from off my camcorder and watch them."
"Sorry, not possible. Well, you could try VLC... but it will be choppy and horrific, unless you can somehow decipher its arcane preferences and get it to play those files back smooth, but I've been doing this for 20 years and I have no clue how to make VLC work for smooth AVCHD playback on a newer model iMac."
"OK.. well, how do I get them burned to disc?"
"Well, you could import them into iMovie, which requires transcoding the video into a much, much larger format, that takes a lot of time --"
"-- but wait, I bought a flash memory camcorder because I wanted to avoid the long camera to computer transfer times that plagued my life with a tape-based camcorder. But you're telling me now I have to wait hours and hours to capture my 120gb hard drive full of AVCHD video to my Mac in HD?"
"Yes, that's correct. Oh, and if you want to burn it to AVCHD/Blu Ray, you'll have to buy Toast and an external Blu Ray burner. That'll run you about.. $400. Oh, and when you do this, it will have to re-encode the video back into AVCHD, which will take *at least as long* as when you captured it in iMovie in the first place. And that 120GB of video is going to require... a LOT more than 120GB to store on your computer."
"$400?! I thought Mac came with the latest technology and supported the latest standards! More than 120GB? What the heck, why?"
"I'm sorry, but Apple transcodes it out of its native format, into some intermediary codec that eats up exponentially more space."
"Why the heck do they do that?"
"I don't know. Adobe Premiere Elements is the only consumer editing package that supports AVCHD natively, yet it only runs on PC. You could buy Premiere Pro CS4 but .. don't ask the price of that. Look, I don't know what to tell you. Buy Windows, install it, buy Premiere Elements, install that, and then buy Roxio Creator 2010 Pro, to burn your Blu Rays, and buy an external Blu Ray burner."
"Or just buy a PC that ships with Blu Ray?"
"**** no. Just wait.. until some undetermined future time.. when Apple finally decides to get with the times... <<sigh>>"
Anyway look. Currently Mac doesn't support the latest standards. I frequently have customers come to my camera shop, which is in the same mall as an Apple store, and I've had this conversation over, and over, and over again.
Anyone who disagrees that AVCHD is the standard needs to consider the fact that they are totally wrong.
Message was edited by: DaddieMac

Possible to Use Radeon 4870 AND EVGA NVIDIA GTX 285 at the Same Time?

Hello,
I just tried to connect a second 30 inch Cinema display to my early 2009 8-core MacPro with a Radeon 4870 card.
The second display maxes out at 1280 x 800 resolution.
I think that is a function of the second port on the 4870, rather than a limitation of the card itself.
To get around this, I ordered the EVGA NVIDIA GTX 285. At $499, that's a big yikes.
Here is my question: Will I get better performance running one 30 inch from the Radeon, and the second from the Nvidia? Can I even install both at the same time? Or should I remove the Radeon and use just the Nvidia?
FWIW, I use this Mac for Photoshop and other image software, and for some stats work. No games. I am using CS4, which would never recognize my 4870. Maybe I will do better with the EVGA NVIDIA GTX 285?
I would appreciate any and all help on this!
Thanks!
Charles

I just tried to connect a second 30 inch Cinema display to my early 2009 8-core MacPro with a Radeon 4870 card.
Are you using the Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter?
<http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB571Z/A?fnode=MTY1NDA5OQ&mco=MjkyNjI0Mg>
The second display maxes out at 1280 x 800 resolution.
That's the resolution the 30" will run at with a single-link DVI connection.
I think that is a function of the second port on the 4870, rather than a limitation of the card itself.
It depends on the adapter you use.
To get around this, I ordered the EVGA NVIDIA GTX 285. At $499, that's a big yikes.
It has twice the graphics memory, so may be better if you are processing lots of large images at once.
Here is my question: Will I get better performance running one 30 inch from the Radeon, and the second from the NVIDIA?
No. For only two displays, one card is better because it can handle moving windows between displays, or windows spanning both displays. With the displays on different cards, the main computer has to do more work. Even if the windows are never going to cross display boundaries, there is no way for the applications to know that, so they won't let the graphics cards do as much as they could.
Can I even install both at the same time?
No. There are only two auxiliary power connectors, and one card will use both.
Or should I remove the Radeon and use just the NVIDIA?
Try each card and see which gives the best results with your applications.
FWIW, I use this Mac for Photoshop and other image software, and for some stats work. No games. I am using CS4, which would never recognize my 4870. Maybe I will do better with the EVGA NVIDIA GTX 285?
The extra video RAM may give better performance with lors of large images.

GTX 285 installation

The 8800GT in my Mac Pro recently died (a second time; I baked it back into life previously), and I decided to replace it with a GTX 285.
I installed the card, and I can tell it's running, because it's a heck of a lot noisier than the 8800. But there's no video. I know that at one point, you had to install the nVidia drivers before you installed the GTX, but this wasn't an option for me. So I have three questions:
1) Do nVidia's drivers still need to be installed manually? Or would these have been included with Lion?
2) If they do need to be installed manually, is there any way to do this without booting up the machine (which is impossible, since, no video). For example, I put the Mac Pro into target disk mode and installed the drivers onto my Mac Pro boot drive via my Macbook Pro, but I don't know if this actually does anything.
3) Should I be able to get any video at all, regardless of the state of my drivers or card? The select startup disk screen for example, does that require a GPU? Because I can literally see nothing.
Thanks for any help,
Ben

NO drivers on Nvidia site for Lion.
That is totally unacceptable. Can it really be true?
Are there so few GTX 285s running Lion? doesn't ring a bell that I read of this.
Looks like 10.6.8 was the last CUDA. Have a look yet on Nvidia forum?
Dual Quadro 4000 CUDA 4 Kernel Panic
Apple Drops nVidia from Mac Pros
NVIDIA Forums
CUDA on Mac OS X
NVIDIA Driver Advanced Search
NVIDIA quadro mac osx 256.01.00f03v5 driver
cuda_3_2_downloads
OpenGL 4.1 support

EVGA GTX 285 Mac Edition - No OpenGL in Photoshop

Has anyone else had experiences running the new GTX 285 and Photoshop CS4?
I have a 2008 Mac Pro here, RAID 0 1TB, 32GB RAM, Three Displays (ATI Radeon HD 2600 driving one, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 driving two).
OpenGL used to work fine with my previous card, the ATI Radeon HD 3870 - however after upgrading to the GTX, Photoshop cannot detect and use OpenGL with it.
AfterEffects CS4 picks up the card fine (and by that I mean in the preferences, it's listed along with everything 'Supported').
Any thoughts?
Regards,
Robert Tolton

Ah ha, that might explain why it worked with my all ATI setup.
And now that you've mentioned it, I don't think I ever had OpenGL support when I had the nVidia 7300GT and the ATI HD 3870 in my 2007 Mac Pro - again, a mixture of graphics cards.
I do still have that old nVidia card in the 2007 Mac Pro - might do a swap. If it works, then I'll plant down more cash for the nVidia GT 120 from the Apple Store. Which says it's not compatible with 2008 Mac Pros, but tests have proven that it works fine.

NVdia GTX 285, Radeon 4870, GT120

Hi, I plan on only using one monitor so if I want the GTX 285 I should buy the Mac Pro with the GT 120 (and think of it as a throwaway GPU) since I'll have to buy the GTX 285 on my own, correct?
Or should I buy the Radeon 4870, see how it goes and if I need to get the GTX 285, I could get it later. The thing is if I upgrade does the other GPU have any use to me. I mean, I can't somehow link and make the 2 GPU work together can I?

I don't mean to rock the boat even more, but the 4870 on built to order is a fairly good deal (on apple standards) at $200. The upgrade kit if bought after is $350.
It's a tough decision no doubt, but if I were you I'd wait; in fact if you can, wait on buying the mac pro all together. A lot of things are happening this month: WWDC for one on June 8th, plus the release of the 285.
http://developer.apple.com/WWDC/
Even though there probably won't be anything announced for the mac pro (aside from snow leopard), it will be good to see all your options. See some benchmarks when the 285 is released. Make a decision after that. Patience, (if you can) is a virtue

Accelerating Video Compression w/NVIDIA GTX 285, Mac Pro?

I want to harness the powarrr of the 8 cores and NVIDIA GTX 285 to transcode video to and from various formats. But I don't see OpenCL support listed for Final Cut 7's Compressor. I don't see any mention that Adobe Media Encoder CS4 is accelerated by such GPUs. I'm trying out Toast right now and it's using less than two cores, and going kinda slow (not booted into Snow Leopard at the moment tho).
So the question is, how can I take advantage of the extra power of the GTX 285 for encoding? I know that Qmaster and Compressor will take advantage of the extra cores... but I want to use the FULL power of this battlestation.
Thanks for any tips

Optimize performance in Photoshop CS4 on Mac OS
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404440.html
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/10/adobe-cs4-review.ars/4
GPU and OpenGL Features and Limitations in Photoshop CS4
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404898.html
http://www.nvidia.com/object/productquadro_cxus.html

GTX 285 Superclocked 675MHz...overkill?

I'm buying a new system and a 30" monitor and want to minimize heat buildup in a small room as much as possible. Is an EVGA, GeForce® GTX 285 Superclocked 675MHz, 1GB GDDR3 2538MHz overkill for CS4 on a 30" monitor? If a lesser/cooler GPU would do the trick, which one?
Also, I have a budget of only +/- $1300 for the 30" monitor. Any recommendations in that price range?
Thanks.

Thanks for the reply, Ricky-T. As for the graphics card not being much used by CS4, here is something from Tom's hardware in August last year:
"Some time ago, we quoted an Adobe employee and reported that the next version of Photoshop, will include GPU acceleration, which got Adobe extremely upset. Adobe later retracted a bit and said that it simply does not want to promise any features that may be included in the alpha version of its software (code-named "Stonehenge") to also be available in the final version...this software in fact will be named CS4 and industry sources have reiterated...that CUDA can run features that are “directly” available in Photoshop, we wonder: Why wouldn’t Adobe include GPU acceleration in CS4?"
Are you saying that CUDA is currently used too little to make a difference? If "CS5" adds better use of CUDA (let's hope), I can always get a better card later. I'll have plenty of CPU and RAM with an i7-965 oc'd to 3.7GHz and 12GB of DDR3, so it looks like a lesser card will be the way to go.

GTX 285

I was thinking of picking up a GTX 285 (For the future Mercury Playback Engine) and wanted to get some opinions on which one might be best.
They have some different specs and was wondering on which ones are more important speed wise.
Here is a link to the models I am considering...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=40000048&Description=gtx%20285 &name=Desktop%20Graphics%20%2f%20Video%20Cards
Any opinions would be great...
Thanks!

Unless you are talking about a new system build, I would consider staying with your current card. In our office we're waiting until the Mercury product becomes available before buying new cards. As I'm sure you know, a war raging between ATI and Nvidia. Great for us consumers because the prices continue to fall. It's tough to predict... Mercury available along with CS5 in March 2010?
I think there will be lower prices and a better card available by the time we can buy Mercury. That's just my gut feeling.

Any GTX 285 owners?

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