Two ATI 5770 or one 5870 ?

Hello All,
I am using MacPro Early 09 model with default GT120 Display card and connected with two 1920x1200 displays, graphics not smooth at all, lag even in Finder effects such as changing spaces and expose.
Recently, I would like to upgrade to TWO Apple 27" display, But I can't make the decision on display card, Two ATI 5770 better or just One 5870 is better ? Can anyone give me some opinion ?
(Two 5870 is not affordable for me).
Thanks.

Why do you think you need the 5870 to begin with? just to drive two displays? they have the same amount of RAM.
Did you look up any articles, reviews, benchmarks?
http://discussions.apple.com/messageview.jspa?messageID=12370032&stqc=true

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Is it better to have two ati radeon HD 5770 or one ATI radeon HD 5870 for video editing?

Is it better to have two ati radeon HD 5770 or one ATI radeon HD 5870 for video editing? I'm basing this question based on the current options when configuring a Mac Pro. Currently there are three options
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB
Two ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB [Add $250.00]
ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB [Add $200.00]
Between the second and third options I am wondering which will provide a better more productive experience for video editing. Such as using FCP or FCPX. I know how many monitors that are in use will affect the answer to this questions. While I'm more focused on which option will deliver a better video editing experience, lets just say for argument sakes that the Mac Pro is running a 30" cinema display and a small generic monitor. About 18". Its an older VGA monitor for web development.
I hope thats enough info to get an answer on this subject.
Thanks

Ya in my research of this question, I came across this whole issue of Mac not being able to use CrossFire. I didn't thorugly investigate what this CrossFire issue was, but if it makes more sense with the singel 5870 rather than the 2 5770 then thats helpful to know.
If the Mac can't make the most out of two 5770 because it doesn't make use of CrossFire, it seems silly that Apple even bothers to offer it as an option. Plus its cheaper with the singel 5870 versus two 5770. Unless you really needed to run several monitors.
Thanks. This satisfies a long curiousity I have had.

What's best.. ATI 5770 or 5870 1GB Graphics Card?

I have to buy a new Mac Pro, so I'm looking at the 3.2 Quad-Core with 16GB ram. I run large image files with many layers in CS5 extended and will be moving up to CS6 extended. All of my image management is through LR4 as well as several plug-ins. So is the ATI 5870 1GB card worth the extra $150 upgrade price over the ATI 5770. I'd prefer to wait for the new Mac Pro models coming in 2013 but I do have to make a living. I've been using the ATI 5770/1GB with no issues on a 2.66 MacPro running Mountain Lion. I'm running dual NEC 27" PA271w displays.

The upgrade price I see in the Apple Store is $200 for the 5870.
Personally, I'd skip the 5870 GPU upgrade (which I understand runs loud and hot and is a power hog) and grab the 6 core upgrade for $500 instead. The RAM for the quad core 3.2GHz runs at 1066MHz and the 6 core 3.33GHz RAM runs at 1333MHz.
So for a $300 difference (vs quad core with 5870) you pick up 50% more processing power across the board.
Check out www.barefeats.com for speed comparisons like this one http://www.barefeats.com/pscs6.html
PSCS6 features the Mercury Graphics Engine (MGE) which takes great advantage of GPU, but only certain filters are accelerated: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4289204#4289204
For my money a MacPro that's faster on all fronts is the better deal. You can swap out the GPU later, but the CPU is definitely best ordered up-front. I have the 2010 6 core 3.33 Westmere and combined with an SSD runing just the OS and APPs, it really sings. Plus the price has come down quite a lot on the 6-core option with the 2012 models (used to cost additional $1200 I think).
Here's Digilloyd's take on MacPro configuration http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToConfigureAMacPro.html NOTE that he suggests 24-48GB of RAM for intensive Photoshop work.
Here's another BareFeats test (from Sept 2010, but then these are old GPUs) http://www.barefeats.com/wst10g7.html
and you'll see that while the 5870 beats the 5770 for some things (but ties on many), the 6-core 3.33GHz Westmere beats everything else on the list -- and is roughly twice the overall speed of your 2.66GHz quad-core from 2006 even with a 5770.
Hope that helps!

Basic GPU Mode only one available on ATI 5770

I am using:
intel i7 950 3.02 ghz
6 gigs tri channel ddr3
ATI 5770 1 gig card
SATA hdds 7200 RPM
windows 7 64 bit
ATI newest drivers as of 4/27/2011 (11.4)
after updating to these new drivers i am still only able to use basic GPU functionality instead of normal or even advanced. has anyone found a fix for this or know what the issue is? ive been crawling the internet since the last 2 driver releases and find it very frustrating, i would love to be able to split some of the work between myGPU and CPU etc.
thanks for any help,
Chris

There are well known problems (at least on the adobe forums) with
the 11.3 and 11.4 drvers and open gl for photoshop cs5.
The 11.2 driver is the one to try from AMD:
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/844086?tstart=60
MTSTUNER

2010 Mac Pro for FCP work: ATI 5770 or 5870? performance vs. fan noise

I'm planning to swap my old Mac Pro (2006 2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon, 4 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT) for a 2010 Mac Pro model, because I need more speed for video (FCP 7, Color, Magic Bullet Looks) and photo (Lightroom 3, Photo Shop CS5) work. I'm thinking of the 6-Core (3.33 GHz) Mac Pro with 24 GB RAM and ATI Radeon 5870. I read a first review which said, that the 5870 is VERY noisy (fans), and now I'm little afraid. Is the 5870 really that loud, and will it bring clear advantages over the ATI 5770 (I dont't do 3D work yet)? I'd really appreciate your help. Thanks in advance.

Our showroom unit arrived 8/24.
Set it up and loaded it with my demo content. Motion rendering is noticeably faster.
I have yet to thrash it hard, but it's certainly no louder than its predecessor as far as I can tell.
EDIT: I see that you are in Germany. Where exactly?

2010 Mac Pro for video work: ATI 5770 or 5870? performance vs. fan noise

I'm planning to swap my old Mac Pro (2006 2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon, 4 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT) for a 2010 Mac Pro model, because I need more speed for video (FCP 7, Color, Magic Bullet Looks) and photo (Lightroom 3, Photo Shop CS5) work. I'm thinking of the 6-Core (3.33 GHz) Mac Pro with 24 GB RAM and ATI Radeon 5870. I read a first review which said, that the 5870 is VERY noisy (fans), and now I'm little afraid. Is the 5870 really that loud, and will it bring clear advantages over the ATI 5770 (I dont't do 3D work yet)? I'd really appreciate your help. Thanks in advance.

I've got the 6-core w/5870 on order, so don't yet have it myself. I've been looking into this issue also, as noise is a concern.
This (http://techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/RadeonHD5870/29.html) test showed me that the card is pretty typical at idle, but fairly loud when loaded.
I don't expect I'll be loading my video card much with the work that I do right now, so wasn't as concerned. In the end, I guess I'll find out when my new machine arrives.
Mark

4 HD displays in 2010 3.33 MacPro using a 5770 and a 5870?

Can I run four Apple 23" Cinema HD Displays in a 2010 Mac Pro, Six Core, 3.33GHz, running Lion, with:
- an Apple ATI Radeon HD 5770, 1GB, AND
- an Apple ATI Radeon HD 5870, 1GB?
Will it work, and will I need any active adapters?
How about power supply issues?
Pram zapping or firmware issues?
Thanks in advance for your advice,
John in Palm harbor

The 5870 requires TWO Aux power cables and will run up to three of those displays with ACTIVE adapters to Single-Link DVI.
The 5770 requires ONE Aux power cable and will run up to three of those displays with ACTIVE adapters to Single-Link DVI.
The Mac pro silver tower models have TWO Aux power outlets, so to run the exact cards you specified, you would need an add-on power supply, such as one designed for the second DVD Reader slot. I recommend you forget about the 5870, get an other 5770 and live happily ever after.

Aperture + ATI 5770 upgrade

Will I see a significant improvement in Aperture 3.1 by upgrading the graphics card in my 2008 MacPro to the ATI 5770 from the currently installed ATI 2600?
More specifically, when working with RAW images using adjustment brushes and presets.
Thanks.

Or the 5870 though those aren't shipping until late December now.
There are half a dozen articles on Barefeats I put in one reply:
http://discussions.apple.com/messageview.jspa?messageID=12370032&stqc=true
I'd do it regardless just to get off the 2600.
Where is Aperture now?
What are you using for system boot drive?
Those two can also help make a difference.
Would a Quadro 4000 make a difference with its 2GB VRAM?

Does the ATI 5770 graphics card have compatibility problems with early 2008 Mac Pro?

I have had advice from apple technical which contradicts the reviews on the web and on apple site? Apple say that the ATI 5770 is not compatibile while it seems that everyone else thinks it is?
Technical support have pointed me to the follow link
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3891?locale=en_GB&viewlocale=en_GB
Has anybody experienced this issue?
All help appreciated
(I know that I will have to upgrade OS)

you want the summary of pros and cons?
there is always the official - what we support, tested, marketing - that you can usually take with grain of salt (or two)
there is an official article on support for pre-2010
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3891
pre-2008 you will see Barefeats and users that PCIe 1.1 does limit the max bandwidth
Google, Bing http://www.barefeats.com/wst10g5.html
http://www.bing.com/search?setmkt=en-US&q=5770+performance
support for 3 displays is always a problem
Apple has taken the reference design with support for 2 x DVI and cut one out, and eliminated HDMI in favor of 2 x minidisplay ports.
http://www.groths.org/?tag=5870
I am not the best on GPU features but that is the ghist.

Question about configuration (ATI 5770) w/ 3 monitors

Ok I already know how to get three monitors running on the ATI 5770. I have one native mini DisplayPort, one mini DisplyPort to VGA and one native DVI or DVI to HDMI. What I need to know (before I buy another native mini DisplayPort monitor) is if the 5770 can run two native mini displayPort monitors and a native DVI? Has anyone done this?

i am currently running 3 displays on my macpro 1,1 with a 5770 card. here is my setup
mini display port to dvi (dual link active from monoprice) to an Acer 24" monitor
mini display port to dvi (sme as about) to and dvi to hdmi adapter to 65" 1080i television
dvi port to Acer 24" monitor.
i have to set it up this way because if i set both monitors to mini display port adapters and the tv to the dvi to hdmi adapter one of the monitors will not come on. setting it this way all three monitors are working. the only problem that i have is that my tv monitor flickers like the computer is refinding it all the time. i haven't really had a chance to look into it too much, but i can tell you that without the active link adapters only two of the three connections will work at one time.
hope this helps

OpenCL / GCD and new Mac Pro's HD 5770 and HD 5870

hey!
considering to buy a new MacPro but I can't find any information if OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch is supported by those new cards (HD 5770 and HD 5870). It seems that ATI Stream isn't that Mac friendly?!
Thanks for your comments!

A couple things -
1. I know you said you don't have any money for more drives, but I would not bother using your 160 as a boot drive - why cripple the mac pro by putting the OS on a slow drive? The new mac pro comes with a 1tb WD Black by default... The Current generation of 1-2tb drives are probably 3x faster than those old 160's. Even the green drive will be faster.
2. If you make money using aperture, using an SSD to store the OS and library on will pay for itself in one job. The OWC 120 SSD has the most impact of any aperture upgrade I've ever made - it is a substantial difference. In fact, when I got my new mac pro, it only took me 3 days to pull the SSD out of my macbook pro and put it in the mac pro - after using an SSD, using any traditional media based HD feels like going back to dial-up internet - it was that noticable and I couldn't take it... Opening a 30k image library (all referenced) took 18 seconds on the laptop drive, on the SSD on the laptop it took 1.5). I put the SSD in the optical bay and use the stock 1tb drive it came with for storing the referenced masters.
3. You'll gain some speed benefit (and maintainability benefit) from using a referenced masters setup and storing your library on a separate drive from the raw images. Since you have room for 4 internal drives, (or more if you use 3rd party brackets or mount a drive in the optical bay) I'd definitely consider it. It makes a raid setup sort of not make a lot of sense... Since ideally you'd want off-site backup anyway -
4. I was in your same boat when I got my first mac pro, I had to decide what to do with all the legacy drives... For me in the end I decided that time was money, and the time it took me to move stuff around across my collection of 5 hard drives was not worth the cost of just buying a few new 2tb drives (for around $120 US, and they are fast). I understand this may not be everyone's case -

Ati 5770 vs Ati5870

HI all, I'm reluctantly thinking about buying a new 2012 (ha ha) 12 core 3.06 Mac Pro, and was wondering if the Ati 5870 is worth the extra money. I do 3d modeling using Lightwave, and hope to get better viewport acceleration. I currently own a 2008 dual quad core with an ATI 5770 installed. The acceleration is much better than the 2600, but still unimpressive. What do you think? Thanks.

Why not check the GTX 570? get the 5770 and wait and see when GTX 670 or above shows as supported?
And check Barefeats for one to compare some apps benchmarks.

2012 Mac Pro / Mountain Lion won't boot with ATI 5770

2012 12 Core mac pro. I've got 2 GPUs installed:
- Quadro 4000 for mac
- ATI 5770
The Quadro is so loud and annoying that I'd like to unplug it for general use. Then plug it in for DaVinci or Premiere use.
Problem is when I unplug (power) from the Quadro and reboot, system gives me the Apple logo and then automatically restarts. Over and over. This is with Mountain Lion.
I tried booting to a drive with 10.6 and it booted up fine.
I keep searching for driver updates or something but everywhere says it's included in OSX?
Is this problem happening because there are 2 GPUs installed? Even though one is unplugged? Like PCI lane conflict or something?
Alex

I think you will need to remove it entirely, or plug the power back in. It does not seem to allow your Mac to work with a Bus connection, but no aux power.

Can I put two ATI Radeon X1900 XT's into a MacPro?

Hi
We've just bought a MacPro, with 3 NVIDEA 7300 cards. Sadly it seems the 7300 does not support the apple DVI-Video adapter. Our system requires three dual link DVI ports supporting the adapter, so on face value we should be able achieve this by removing the 7300's and installing two ATI Radeon X1900 XT's instead.
The question is is it possible to put two ATI Radeon X1900 XT's into a MacPro? Has any one done this? or indeed does anyone know how to get the 7300's to recognize a DVPAL device such as video projector or analogue video monitor?
Cheers
Nick
MacPro Mac OS X (10.4.8)

PCI-E (Peripheral Component Interconnect-Express) is a newer implementation of PCI which uses a much faster physical-layer communications protocol than older PCI bus architectures.
Rather than using a bus as PCI did, PCI-E uses dedicated, unidirectional, point-to-point connections known as "lanes" to communicate with PCI-E devices.
The Mac Pro features four PCI-E 16-"lane" connectors on the main logic board. In PCI-E, these are known as "x16" slots. These can be used for PCI-E-compatible cards, like the ATI Radeon card that is available as a configure-to-order option in the Mac Pro.
PCI-E cards will work in slots that are at least as large as the card is. This means that the "x16" slots in the Mac Pro computer also supports "x1" and "x4" cards as well. However, all four slots cannot simultaneously support four cards that implement the same lane configuration. Only one slot actually has 16 lanes going to it—you can put a x16 card into a slot that is only using one lane and it will operate properly, but it will operate more slowly than the same card in a x4, x8 or x16 slot.
The Expansion Slot Utility, located in /System/Library/Core Services, allows you to configure the PCI-E expansion slots and how many lanes each slot will support, as illustrated below. This example shows a "x16" graphics card occupying the first slot, and the other slots are configured to support an "x1" card in slot two and "x4" cards in slots three and four. The example shows the other options available. When you have picked the appropriate configuration of slots to support your compliment of PCI-E cards, click the Save and Restart... button to implement the configuration.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304122
Michael

Jagged text with NEC monitor & ATI 5770 graphics card

I just upgraded from a 23" ACD to the NEC PA271, which receives rave reviews in the design/photography communities.
Overall, I'm happy with the change. But one thing I've noticed is that some type appears jagged. It's almost as if anti-aliasing is behaving differently.
Display preference is set to native resolution (2560 x 1440). LCD font smoothing is turned on.
I've been on the phone with NEC. They had me send some screenshots. I also sent screenshots from my MacBook Pro for comparison. They agree that it's not right.
I told them I would see "snow" when the monitor first woke from sleep with the DVI connection, and they said that wasn't normal so they asked me to try the mini-display to display cable. I did, since I have the ATI 5770 card with 2 mini-display ports, but that didn't help.
Next step is they're going to replace the monitor. But it seems strange that it's only the text that doesn't display properly, and even then only certain text.
Just wondering if anyone here has any ideas before I go through the hassle of replacing the monitor.

In case anyone else has this problem:
I figured it out. It's described in this article:
http://macperformanceguide.com/Trials-FontSmoothing.html
I chose the "medium" setting, and it looks fantastic. The text is now dark, clear and smooth – even when small.

Two ATI 5770 or one 5870 ?

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