For anyone who does 3D graphics, the high-end NVIDIA Quadro cards are the shiniest of red bicycles. At the top-end, they've got more memory than most gaming cards, but they've got a price to match their premium features. At $1799 retail, the Quadro FX 4800 Mac Edition is over $1300 more than the 1GB Geforce GTX 285 and is the only Quadro option available to Mac users. Considering the lack of reviews by 3D professionals who know how to test the card, that's an expensive leap of faith that a potential customer would have to make. As someone who bought a Quadro FX 5600 for one of my older Mac Pros and Maya, that leap turned out to be quite an expensive letdown. So we thought we'd take another look at the faster Quadro FX 4800 to see if much has changed.
One thing has changed since then: NVIDIA has taken over official support of the Quadro cards and the drivers. Previously, the Quadro was supported by Apple, and while it was obvious NVIDIA had a hand in driver development, it was anyone's guess as to who was responsible for the lackluster speed. Since the Quadro cards are all about drivers, giving NVIDIA some time to get the Quadro up to speed on the Linux and Windows sides seemed only fair.
PNY Quadro 4000 2GB DDR5 DVI/DisplayPort PCI-Express Video Card for Mac From the Manufacturer. Mac OS X 10.6.7 Driver Update Apple's Mac OS X 10.6.7 system update overwrites any existing Quadro 4000 for Mac or Quadro FX 4800 for Mac graphics driver, resulting in a loss of graphics acceleration functionality, and also disables CUDA (if installed). The Quadro FX 4800 is capable of 10-bits-per-channel output, but the Mac edition only has dual-link DVI outputs, so there's no way to harness this color power. NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 GPU for Mac has a MSRP of $1,799 USD, and will be available starting May 2009 through Apple.com and select Apple resellers and workstation integrators. The Quadro FX 4800 for Mac will also be available through NVIDIA channel partners PNY Technologies (US and EMEA), Leadteck (APAC) and Elsa (Japan).
Nvidia on Monday announced that their high-end Quadro FX 4800 graphics card is now available for the Mac. The card is coming in May, 2009 and will be available for $1800 from Apple and select Mac.
I want to thank the people at NVIDIA for sending me the card, but also for their patience; we pushed this review back a few months since it was clear that OS X 10.6's arrival would have dated the review immediately. Then we had to wait some more because OS X 10.6.0 had OpenGL problems with Maya and the Radeon 4870's OpenCL was half-broken. We couldn't have benchmarked the card properly until those were fixed with 10.6.2. So here we are.
Test hardware
- NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 Mac Edition
- CUDA Cores: 192
- Memory Size Total: 1.5GB
- Memory Interface: 384-bit
- Memory Bandwidth: 76.8GB/sec
Test System
- Dual quad Nehalem Mac Pro 2.66 GHz
- 24GB RAM
- Dual 1920x1200 screens
- OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD startup disk
Test software
- OS X 10.6.2 and latest built-in Quadro FX 4800 driver
- Boot Camp 3 drivers with Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit
- NVIDIA Quadro driver 1.9.1 64-bit
All tests were performed running the 64-bit OS X kernel and drivers, except for CUDA tests, since CUDA is currently 32-bit only.
Nvidia Quadro Fx 4800 Specifications
How the Quadro compares to a gaming card
For those new to the benefits offered by a Quadro card, there are a number of things that differ from the Geforce 200 series part that the Quadro is based on. While it's true that the Quadro has fewer CUDA cores and a lower clock speed than the eVGA Geforce GTX 285, it has a long list of benefits:
- True quad-buffered 3D output
- 128-bit color precision
- 3D volumetric texture support
- 12 pixels per clock rendering engine
- 16 textures per pixel in fragment programs
- Window ID clipping functionality
- Unlimited fragment instruction
- Unlimited vertex instruction
- Hardware accelerated line stippling
- Hardware accelerated antialiased points and lines
- Hardware accelerated two-sided lighting
- Hardware accelerated clipping planes
Some of these features can add a bit of performance to programs that use them, but the major benefit to this card is its quad-buffered 3D output port. If you use a scientific application like Osirix or 3D animation package like Maya with a 3D-capable display or specialized 3D glasses, the Quadro is the only way to view that 3D output on the Mac. Unfortunately, I don't have a setup capable of displaying 3D output so I couldn't test it for myself.
For OS X's GPU-reliant Aqua interface and Core Image, the Quadro doesn't offer any benefit over the GTX 285, because the latter has more memory bandwidth (159GB/sec vs. the 4800's 76.8GB/sec). The Quadro FX 4800 is capable of 10-bits-per-channel output, but the Mac edition only has dual-link DVI outputs, so there's no way to harness this color power. The PC version has two 10-bit DisplayPort outputs so NVIDIA opted for compatibility over pro features on the Mac version. I've never been a fan of Apple's obscure mini DisplayPort, but if it was used instead of DVI, this could have been the only card capable of 10-bits per channel output on OS X. The 4800 does support 10-bit grayscale output over DVI though, which is popular in medical imaging. If you're hunting for tumors, you need all the help you can get.
The Potential Draw: CUDA for Video Professionals
Given that the advantages listed above appeal to a very small segment of users, NVIDIA has been working on CUDA software for professionals to drive the Quadro sales. The CUDA-based Elemental Accelerator H.264 video encoder is one of these ventures, and at $499, it is definitely priced for professionals. It only works with Quadro cards and the Adobe CS4 Suite of video applications, so that adds a further premium to the software price. Nevertheless, H.264 compression for Blu-ray is very time consuming, so the benefits of the Quadro and CUDA could be significant for video professionals, many of whom use Macs.
Getting the Elemental package running is very straightforward: install the bundle for Adobe's suite and you're set. The next time you launch Premiere or Adobe Media Encoder, you'll have a new output option:
Nvidia on Monday announced that their high-end Quadro FX 4800 graphics card is now available for the Mac. The card is coming in May, 2009 and will be available for $1800 from Apple and select Mac.
I want to thank the people at NVIDIA for sending me the card, but also for their patience; we pushed this review back a few months since it was clear that OS X 10.6's arrival would have dated the review immediately. Then we had to wait some more because OS X 10.6.0 had OpenGL problems with Maya and the Radeon 4870's OpenCL was half-broken. We couldn't have benchmarked the card properly until those were fixed with 10.6.2. So here we are.
Test hardware
- NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 Mac Edition
- CUDA Cores: 192
- Memory Size Total: 1.5GB
- Memory Interface: 384-bit
- Memory Bandwidth: 76.8GB/sec
Test System
- Dual quad Nehalem Mac Pro 2.66 GHz
- 24GB RAM
- Dual 1920x1200 screens
- OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD startup disk
Test software
- OS X 10.6.2 and latest built-in Quadro FX 4800 driver
- Boot Camp 3 drivers with Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit
- NVIDIA Quadro driver 1.9.1 64-bit
All tests were performed running the 64-bit OS X kernel and drivers, except for CUDA tests, since CUDA is currently 32-bit only.
Nvidia Quadro Fx 4800 Specifications
How the Quadro compares to a gaming card
For those new to the benefits offered by a Quadro card, there are a number of things that differ from the Geforce 200 series part that the Quadro is based on. While it's true that the Quadro has fewer CUDA cores and a lower clock speed than the eVGA Geforce GTX 285, it has a long list of benefits:
- True quad-buffered 3D output
- 128-bit color precision
- 3D volumetric texture support
- 12 pixels per clock rendering engine
- 16 textures per pixel in fragment programs
- Window ID clipping functionality
- Unlimited fragment instruction
- Unlimited vertex instruction
- Hardware accelerated line stippling
- Hardware accelerated antialiased points and lines
- Hardware accelerated two-sided lighting
- Hardware accelerated clipping planes
Some of these features can add a bit of performance to programs that use them, but the major benefit to this card is its quad-buffered 3D output port. If you use a scientific application like Osirix or 3D animation package like Maya with a 3D-capable display or specialized 3D glasses, the Quadro is the only way to view that 3D output on the Mac. Unfortunately, I don't have a setup capable of displaying 3D output so I couldn't test it for myself.
For OS X's GPU-reliant Aqua interface and Core Image, the Quadro doesn't offer any benefit over the GTX 285, because the latter has more memory bandwidth (159GB/sec vs. the 4800's 76.8GB/sec). The Quadro FX 4800 is capable of 10-bits-per-channel output, but the Mac edition only has dual-link DVI outputs, so there's no way to harness this color power. The PC version has two 10-bit DisplayPort outputs so NVIDIA opted for compatibility over pro features on the Mac version. I've never been a fan of Apple's obscure mini DisplayPort, but if it was used instead of DVI, this could have been the only card capable of 10-bits per channel output on OS X. The 4800 does support 10-bit grayscale output over DVI though, which is popular in medical imaging. If you're hunting for tumors, you need all the help you can get.
The Potential Draw: CUDA for Video Professionals
Given that the advantages listed above appeal to a very small segment of users, NVIDIA has been working on CUDA software for professionals to drive the Quadro sales. The CUDA-based Elemental Accelerator H.264 video encoder is one of these ventures, and at $499, it is definitely priced for professionals. It only works with Quadro cards and the Adobe CS4 Suite of video applications, so that adds a further premium to the software price. Nevertheless, H.264 compression for Blu-ray is very time consuming, so the benefits of the Quadro and CUDA could be significant for video professionals, many of whom use Macs.
Getting the Elemental package running is very straightforward: install the bundle for Adobe's suite and you're set. The next time you launch Premiere or Adobe Media Encoder, you'll have a new output option:
If you're thinking that you can just install the bundle and run it on another CUDA-capable NVIDIA card, think again. It just crashes Adobe Media Encoder.
From there, you can further customize your output options as with any other encoder:
The Elemental Accelerator also GPU-accelerates audio encoding:
Video options include the standard CBR/VBR output, 2-pass encoding and CABAC entropy encoding. The output options are limited but adequate: Encore-compatible Blu-ray H.264 stream output with separate audio file or multiplexed MP4 or MPEG2 containers. Be careful if you enable CABAC, since many devices like iPhones can't handle this decoding. The 2.1-profile muxed MP4s played fine on my iPhone 3G.
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Nvidia Quadro Fx 4800 Drivers
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