Best graphics card for the MAC Pro 4,1

Question

I am using the 4870 card, but, is there a better graphics card for doing photography with Adobe CS5 Extended and Lightroom 3?
Thank you.

Answer 1

While recently discontinued, you can probably get your hands on an nVidia GTX 285 fairly easily. It's not only faster than your Radeon HD4870, it has double the video memory, and more importantly it's on the shortlist of cards that are support hardware acceleration of the Mercury Playback Engine in Adobe CS5. That's a HUGE feature, if you use Premiere or After Effects, it's probably worth the price of admission right there. I've got one in my machine, works wonders. Aside from a zippy system, lots of basic stuff that used to have to be rendered in order to preview no longer require it.
The nVidia Quadro FX 4800 is also a bigger/faster card, and provides even more powerful support for the Mercury Playback Engine in CS5, but it's also vastly more expensive. As I type this the price is $1799 at Apple, and $1399 most everywhere else (Apple store managers, if you're seeing this you might want to check for a price drop).
That's the current max, but it's possible that new graphics cards are right around the corner. In the spring nVidia introduced their next generation of GPU, there are a range of new GTX 4xx series cards on the mainstream line, and just last week new Quadro cards were launched for the high end. Adobe does not support either of them for CS5's Mercury Playback Engine hardware acceleration at this moment, but Adobe employees have said that it's coming in an update soon.
It's also likely that the ATI Radeon HD 5770 & Radeon HD 5870 will be released for the Mac. My understanding is that the 5770 performance is on par with your HD 4870, and the 5870 will blow it away. Both the new ATI cards also boast two mini displayport plugs as well as a DVI out. Neither card is likely going to get support for hardware acceleration in CS5 anytime soon (not really Adobe's fault, ATI are still in their infancy on the high performance/OpenCL front compared to nVidia).
My advice, if you need something now, chase down a GTX 285 and you won't be disappointed (especially in CS5). Otherwise, you may want to wait it out and jump on the next generation if/when it becomes available.
Hope that helps!