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Nvidia Announces High End GPU for the Mac Pro (and Hackintosh)

11.16.10 @ 4:38PM Tags : hackintosh, hackintosh-update, macpro, nvidia

One problem Mac Pro owners face is a lack of available nVidia graphics cards for creative professionals, which is important because of Adobe’s utilization of nVidia cards for Premiere Pro and other CS5 apps. Today, however, nVidia announced that their Quadro 4000 — a serious GPU based on their latest “Fermi” generation of chipsets, designed for 3D rendering and other professional uses — will be coming to the Mac Pro. This is a card for high-end post-production (not just in Adobe apps), and it’s great that it’s coming to the Mac Pro. However, while it’s a good thing for Mac Pro owners, it’s even better for Hackintosh builders. Here’s why: More »

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New Mac Pros Now Available to Order

08.11.10 @ 4:15PM Tags : apple, macpro, nvidia

It’s official: there are no nVidia options in the new Mac Pros. At the time of their announcement, some had speculated that Apple might slip in nVidia cards as a build-to-order option at launch, but nope: you can get one 1GB ATI card, or two 1GB ATI cards. That’s it. If you edit using Premiere Pro CS5, this is a problem, but if you’re a Final Cut editor, these new machines should be fine. Plus, if you run an editing house or work in front of clients, you can’t exactly run a hackintosh, in which case the Mac Pro is still your best option. So — where are the best deals on these new beasts? More »

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PPBM5 Can Settle the Mac-vs-PC Editing Debate with Hard Numbers

08.4.10 @ 11:30AM Tags : adobe, apple, cs5, editing, mac, nvidia, pc, performance

Mac vs. PC is a never-ending debate, but when it comes to video editing, what we need are hard and fast numbers. It would be impossible to generate a comparison of apples to apples (zing?) by using Final Cut Pro, since that NLE is only available on one platform. Instead, Adobe’s CS5 suite is the ideal candidate — and considering CS5 is 64-bit native on both OSes, it should be a fair fight. The best way to settle this would be to open the exact same CS5 project file on a Mac and a PC, play it back, render it out, and measure it in other ways — on various machines, at different price points — and compare the results. If only someone would create such a benchmarking tool and upload the results to a database… As it turns out, someone has done just this. More »

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Apple Drops nVidia from New Mac Pros to Snub Adobe

07.27.10 @ 4:17PM Tags : adobe, apple, cs5, finalcut, macpro, nvidia

Apple today announced new Mac Pros, marking the first updates to the fruit company’s pro line since March of 2009. Pricing starts at $2,500 for the base 4-core model, $3,500 for the 8-core model, and a wallet-annihilating $5,000 for the 12-core model. The new machines use the latest Intel Xeon processors, there are new SSD options for storage, and higher-powered ATI graphics cards are now standard. No USB 3.0 or Lightpeak as rumored, and still no Blu-ray option. None of this is particularly surprising, but there’s an interesting angle to this announcement concerning the ongoing feud between Apple and Adobe. More »