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NVIDIA’s Quadro 4000 for Mac, more affordable speed for the right application

Cheaper and smaller than the Quadro FX 4800, the 4000 can greatly compliment the right application.

By Scott Simmons | May 11, 2011

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It's been several months since NVIDIA released their newest graphics card for the Macintosh. The Quadro 4000 for Mac uses their newest GPU architecture called Fermi. This card packs a whopping 256 cores onto a card that is half the physical size of the older Quadro FX 4800 (it had only 192 CUDA cores, the slacker). The other bit of news is that the 4000 has a smaller price than the FX 4800 had, coming in at just over $700 (street price) from an Amazon search. On top of all that there's quite a few applications out there that are taking advantage of NVIDIA's CUDA technology that lets apps harness all this GPU power. Read on for a look at several post-production tools and how they work with the 4000.

I received one of the Quadro 4000's on loan from NVIDIA not long after the card shipped. As I had mentioned in a previous article on the FX 4800 I don't really understand all this talk of cores and benchmaking and what benefit "GPU Tessellation with Shader Model 5.0" might have. I just want to know how all this GPU power can be harnessed to get my work done fast and better. Coincidentally there's the usually long and detailed review of the Quadro 4000 for Mac that Ars Technica posted a few days ago. There you can find the standard benchmarking tests using 3D, CAD, gaming apps and lots of little fuel gauge bars. There's also discussion of the overall implementation of OpenCL and the current driver situation on the Mac. There's a little bit of discussion on the video post apps we use so if you're considering this card definitely give the Ars review a read.

I'll expand on the expansive Ars review by saying that I have not experienced a single kernel panic during my months using the card. I'm running only a single 30-inch cinema display so I can't comment on the card resyncing dual displays. There's some good reading in the comments of the Ars article too btw, if you can get past the section where the comments devolved into the usual Mac vs. PC debate.

4000 is smaller than 4800



Before talk of the 4000's power it's worth noting that the size of the card is much smaller than the FX 4800. The FX 4800 is over twice as big as the 4000 and takes up more of the precious space in the ever shrinking innards of a Mac Pro.


That would be a pretty tight fit with the Quadro FX 4800 and other PCI cards.


It feels downright roomy inside after installing the 4000 and plugging it into one of the available power ports.

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The 4000 is much smaller.


Connectors on the back include a dual link DVI connection and a DisplayPort connector:

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Adapters can be used to take the DisplayPort to DVI or Mini DisplayPort. If you look along the edge of the card you can see several connectors. They are used to connect the 4000 to other NVIDIA cards but are not implemented on the Mac OS. That too bad as one of those connectors is to the NVIDIA Quadro SDI Capture which could bring another option for video I/O to the Mac.

There's two drivers that need to be installed, the drivers for the card itself and then the CUDA drivers. For CUDA-enabled applications to be able to harness the card, the CUDA drivers must be kept up to date. That's easy with the CUDA Preferences pane in the system preferences:

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If you're going to run this card in a Mac Pro make sure you're running 10.6.5 or later as there were some issues with OSX versions older than that. There's also the issue of Mac OSX not supporting the latest version of OpenGL, the "industrial-strength foundation for high-performance graphics in Mac OS X and the gateway technology for accessing the power of the graphics processor." OSX currently supports 3.1 but the spec is at 4.1 and you can see on the NVIDIA product page that they require booting into Windows via Bootcamp to use 4.1. Then you're not running a Mac. There is also the OpenCL spec which according to the Apple website is described as "a new technology in Mac OS X Snow Leopard called OpenCL [that] takes the power of graphics processors and makes it available for general-purpose computing." Great. But if you do a little searching around the Internet it appears that Apple's OpenCL might not be entirely recognized by the Quadro 4000.

So there currently seems to be a bit of a disconnect between Apple and NVIDIA with OpenCL and Apple's lack of support for the latest OpenGL ... it just makes my eyes glaze over trying to figure out who isn't supporting what where and why not. There needs to be a simple graphic matrix to line all of this up.

But one thing we do know is that the NVIDIA CUDA technology is definitely supported in some very specific post-production applications. If any, many, or all of these tools are a part of your post workflow then you can see some very real benefits by investing in one of these Quadro 4000 cards.

Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5



Performance is the key when you spend $700 + on a graphics card. The real showcase for NVIDIA cards in a digital video application has thus far been Adobe Premiere Pro, beginning with CS5. That brought us the Mercury Playback Engine which enabled realtime playback of many processor intensive codecs including accelerated effects. Add a supported NVIDIA graphics card and the GPU acceleration made the Mercury Playback Engine quite stunning.

With the 4000 and Premiere Pro 5.5, performance is nearly as good as the FX 4800. Adobe has rightly targeted DSLR users with their marketing for PPro and Mercury so all the testing I did was with native Canon H.264 files (running off an internal 2 disk RAID on a 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Mac Pro).

Load up some DSLR clips, create a sequence to match and you're off to the races. Like with the FX 4800 card I was able to pile on a batch of accelerated effects without dropping frames during playback. And like the FX 4800 before it, performance worked best when dropping playback resolution to 1/2.

I replicated a similar clip stack that I did when testing the FX 4800, multiple streams of H.264 with RGB Curves, timecode, noise and a horizontal flip.

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The effects stack that I applied to all of the clips in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5.


Then I would duplicate the clip and add it as a picture in picture. The performance was similar to that of the FX 4800.

When playing back at full resolution PPro would start drop frames at 4 streams:

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This was whether PPro was playing back only on the computer screen or outputting via the Matrox MXO2 Mini. I was surprised to see a Matrox dropped frame warning that I had never seen before which popped up as I was adding streams:

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There's a preference in the sequence settings for toggling this dropped frame warning on and off when you're using a Matrox sequence preset:

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As with the FX 4800 performance dramatically improved when dropping the playback resolution to 1/2. I was able to easily get 7 streams of playback.

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And as before the 1/2 resolution is very good. You can see the power of Mercury and the CUDA card at work as turning PPro back to software only Mercury Playback would barely give two streams before it dropped frames.

One question that always has to be asked when trying to max-out a video (or something similar) card's playback is how often will you be really needing that kind of extreme performance. I don't often need 7 streams of realtime with all of those effects added on all 7 clips, so in everyday use, I would rarely hit the ceiling of performance with the 4000 card. While a bit slower in Premiere Pro performance than the FX 4800, it's still a very nice addition to PPro CS5 and 5.5.

And one more note on Premiere Pro and CUDA, this article from Adobe talks about how a CUDA card will allow PPro to do better scaling. There's some techo-babble in there about Lanczos 2 low-pass sampled with bicubic and stuff like that but it's good to know a CUDA card can do more with PPro than just allow for realtime playback of multiple video streams and effects.

DaVinci Resolve for Mac



Another of the big uses of NVIDIA's CUDA technology for post-production comes in the form of DaVinci Resolve for Mac. Its ability to provide multiple nodes of realtime color grading (at quite an unbelievable price) comes mostly from its use of NVIDIA hardware. With the introduction of the 4000 card that's yet another option for Resolve. While the upcoming Resolve 8.0 will use Open CL to get better performance out of non-NVIDIA cards (like the built-in graphics cards of an iMac as was being demoed at NAB) the best performance will be had when Resolve can harness CUDA.

I've seen some reports online that Resolve gets a bit better performance when using the older FX 4800 card even though the 4000 uses newer NVIDIA technology. Again, this moves into the super-geeky realm of understanding exactly what those differences in the cards are ... something that I don't really want to pour into my brain but the slightly better performance of the FX 4800 in the Premiere Pro test means that's probably true for Resolve as well.

With an earlier update to Resolve, Blackmagic Design added the ability for Resolve to use multiple GPU cards as well as an expansion chassis to house all the hardware. So now there's the ability to use multiple 4000 GPUs and build quite the powerhouse of DaVinci Resolve on a Mac.

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Sure there's going to be some cost when you buy three 4000s and the expansion chassis (besides the Mac Pro) but that's giving you some grading power that was previously unheard of at that cost.

On my particular system I have only the 4000 card. Blackmagic recommends, as the most basic configuration, running the interface of Resolve using a smaller ATI graphics card and using the Quadro to do all the heavy lifting. In other words hook your monitor to the ATI card and put the Quadro in the 2nd PCI slot.

This won't work if you might also want to run Premiere Pro (there's a whole other debate about whether Resolve deserves its own dedicated system) so in my test system I was running only the 4000 with a 30 inch Apple Cinema Display hooked to the card.

Performance was great with five nodes of grading playing back in realtime on 1920x1080 H.264. A few more when working on ProRes. As a reminder this is really an "unsupported" Resolve system running a single Quadro 4000 card. A tweet from earlier in the year on a system running two NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285s yielded some 22 nodes at 720p. Multiple GPUs for Resolve can be a good thing.

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If I was building a dedicated color grading suite I would look to the multiple GPU option for Resolve as that would pretty much guarantee your realtime playback without Resolve even breaking a sweat when working on compressed HD formats like ProRes and DNxHD. For the smaller shop or one-man-band operations, then the single NVIDIA card doing a Premiere Pro / Resolve workflow will probably be plenty of horsepower. I've also run Final Cut Pro and Avid Media Composer quite extensively using the NVIDIA graphics cards and haven't seen any problems whatsoever.


Next Up: Squeeze 7, Kronos and others that can utilize the GPU for big speed gains.


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Comments

lightprismtv: | May, 13, 2011

Scott:
Do I understand this correctly - the 3.1 driver is to be used until Apple supports the 4.1?

I am in the middle of a changeover as follows:

Leopard-32bit to Snow Leopard -64bit
CS3 to CS5.5 (got tired of waiting for FCP Studio update)Left CS3 installed in the CS5.5 upgrade.
Quadro 4000 card for Cuda acceleration

We used the Snow Leopard UPGRADE versus clean install.

Having instability problems. Part of it may have been clicking to update the Cuda driver to 4.1
After reading your helpful article and links, I rolled back to the 3.1 driver - but still get wierd quirks and stuttering playback of h.264 dslr files.

Any ideas - there are 2 drivers required for this Quadro 4000 card - some issue there when I went to 4.1 and back?

Scott Simmons: | May, 13, 2011

No I think you’re talking CUDA drivers and the discussion in the article is the OpenGL drivers. This is from the NVIDIA page:

“¹ OpenGL 3.1 on Mac OSX, OpenGL 4.1 on Windows using Bootcamp”

That’s different from the NVIDIA drivers. My current CUDA driver is showing 4.0.14 with no updates anyway.

ianim8: | May, 17, 2011

After numerous stressful dealings with installing this card into a new Mac Pro 12core, the last driver Retail.256.01.00f03v7 downloaded from Nvidia solved some of my problems. I was an early adopter with card. I was warned by PNY that they were having issues but glad most are taken care off.
If you want to run this card with CS5, Maya, REDCineX, etc.. but in a simple set-up e.g. single 30” and a Mac Pro, you should be fine. However I have mine in a Dual 30 mixed in with a Gefen DVIDL switcher.
The nightmare of black screens and unsuported res pops up time to time raspberry

lightprismtv: | May, 17, 2011

Ok - now I am really confused.

There are only 2 drivers with this card:

The base driver that must be installed PRIOR to physically installing this graphics card. The Retail.256.01.00f03v7 is the driver that comes on the driver CD with the new card as of last week.

Then there is the Cuda driver that must be installed AFTER the physical installation of this graphics card. The driver that ships on the CD with the card is Cuda 3.2. After you load this, the Cuda panel come up with telling you there is an update for Cuda - it suggests updating to Cuda 4.0.14. And within this Cuda.

I apologize for my confusion, but I am having serious issues with this entire change over from 32bit to 64bit op sys, 32Gb ram, and this highly recommended graphic card for use with CS5.5.
Cannot play a single track of any HD video without dropping frames - even a 1/4 resolution. The whole new mess runs far worse than our old 32bit. The Mac definitely meets all the specs and exceeds them - and just trying to eliminate my having made an error with the Quadro 4000 for the Mac driver install. Thanks for bearing with me.

So which is the right

lightprismtv: | May, 17, 2011

And just to add to the confusion, this is a copy/paste moments ago from the nVidia website for the most up to date Cuda driver for their “Quadro 4000 for the Mac” card:

CUDA Mac Driver
Latest Version: CUDA 3.2.17 driver for MAC
Release Date: 11/16/2010

So unless nVidia has not updated their website, then Cuda 4.0.14 is not for their Mac card???

Hoping someone can unlock the key(s) to my problems with my changeover. Hopefully I have done something wrong with this graphics card that makes the video play like butter like I saw at NAB on far lesser powered laptops.

Scott Simmons: | May, 18, 2011

That’s a good question lightprismtv .... it appears that a CUDA update is available (via the software update pref) but the website doesn’t reflect the info. I’m not sure what exactly is recommended in that case. Maybe they are just behind on the website update since it’s probably easier to push an update through the Software Update method.

lightprismtv: | May, 18, 2011

Well this debacle just gets better and better ..,

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/faq.html

You will now notice that Adobe NO LONGER LISTS THE “QUADRO 4000 for the Mac” as an approved card for CS5.5.

Adobe still approves the Windows version of the Quadro 4000 for CS5.5 on Windows.

This card for the Mac was on their approved list for over a month at least. And it was there yesterday when I was re-checking all their specs required.

Well this is sweet! Now I am stuck with a $750 card and untold hours of work for nothing? The card is pulled without a peep from Adobe - just silently disappears off the approved list.

Either it was an error on the website ... or something much more sinister - if people are telling you they are having problems after following specs - you should own up to the problem so people don’t keep beating their heads against the wall.

Off to the nVidia site to see if they have pulled their touting of this card for CS5.5 - if it’s also suddenly missing from their site as well that would certainly answer some questions as to whether this is just a website error or an intentional removal.

Scott - could you tell us something about the spec on the Mac you have been able to use this card for - it could be that the CPU in a 3,1 MacPro just isn’t up to the task - maybe your MacPro is a beefier CPU.

lightprismtv: | May, 18, 2011

False alarm - Adobe responded that this webpage is just very outdated and this card should be listed there - they referred to another of their web pages where this card is still listed.

And nVidia also still shows it as a card for CS5.5 on the Mac.

Going onto their developer’s forum for Cuda, there are lots of posts noting what Scott is talking about in his article in reference to the lack of Apple support for OpenCL in this card.

Maybe when Lion comes out. There is an odd recent reference at the end of the developers forum thread on this issue about some way to open up OpenCL on this card - but nothing a yockall like me could use.

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=196112

Posted 08 May 2011 - 10:52 PM
OpenCL now works on the Quadro4000 series. Please do not sent me e-mails about this search the web instead. Safely buy this card. You will have OpenCL and CUDA. You just need to inject some kexts.

Cheers,
Alexander.
Dr. Alexander Agathos
Degree in Maths, PhD in Computer Science (specialization in Computer Graphics)”

And this is all waaaay too much work to move to CS5.5 Mac system
——————————

lightprismtv: | May, 19, 2011

Ok - another piece of the puzzle that seems to indicate a problem with the Quadro 4000 for the Mac or it’s drivers.

Imported a nanoFlash XDCAMHD 422 1080p 30fps file into a matching Sequence in Premiere CS5.5. Dropped the video only - no audio onto timeline.
Mercury with GPU acceleration set for Project Settings.

Glitchy-stuttering-dropped frame playback at any playback resolution.

Rendered the entire work area - get green bar above clip on timeline.
STILL GET GLITCHY-STUTTERING-DROPPED FRAME PLAYBACK!!!

Tried the same experiment by going to Mercury software only for the project settings. Get the green bar on timeline again. Same stuttering dropped frame playback.

Scott Simmons: | May, 21, 2011

On the driver question, the word I got back from NVIDIA was the correct driver for the Quadro 4000 for Mac is 256.01.00f03v7

http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-macosx-256.01.00f03v7-driver.html

The 4.0.14 CUDA driver is listed as a “release candidate” which means it hasn’t been fully vetted yet so I’m not sure why it pops up in the update preferences. Seems it shouldn’t be pushed out in Software Update until it is fully recommended and supported.

The current release driver for CUDA is 3.2:

http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-toolkit-32-downloads

lightprismtv: | May, 21, 2011

Thanks so much Scott for your followup and effort.

BUT ......

It’s time for me to eat some major crow.

Problem was a very stupid one - installed wrong ram.

Had 800Mhz ram originally in this early 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 model.

Upgrade for CS5.5 installed 32 Gb of 667Mhz ram.

Doh!

Installed original 8Gb of 800Mhz ram and Adoble CS5.5 runs sweet!!!
Mixed XDCAMHD422 clip with an h.264 Canon clip - added Fast Color Correction, added Gaussian Blur, stacked 2ea XDCAMHD422 clips overlapping picture in picture on top of an Artbeats HD MJPEG clip for backround and directionally blurred it.
It all runs smooth as a hot knife through butter at Full Res Playback. CPU’s - all 8 just churn along at about 15% to 50%.

Really stupid mistake. Sorry for the trouble and thanks to all who tried to help me solve what was clearly not a CS5.5 problem nor an nVidia Quadro 4000 for the Mac problem. Both look to be a fine system in an Intel Mac starting at 3,1 and later.

I hang by red-faced head in shame.

lightprismtv: | June, 25, 2011

OK - W A R N I N G !!!

Apples recent 10.6.8 breaks this card’s GPU acceleration in Premiere.

It also totally broke FCP7 and X temporarily until nVidia released a new driver the same day this OS update came out. New driver fixed the Apple Apps but it has not fixed whatever it did to Premiere. Hmmmmm…. Apple put out a “security” recommended update that broke their competitor’s apps.

tpf1952: | August, 29, 2011

I’m eager to install my recently acquired nVidia Quadro 4000 for Mac, but the lack of solid and consistent information on installation makes me cautious. Engaging folks at nVidia via chat yields some contradictory advice.

Are the following steps for hardware and software installation correct?

1.) Install the “retail” driver
2) Shut down MacPro. Insert card in slot, connect power cable (the vNvidia people said this was not necessary)
3) Power up MacPro. Install CUDA driver.
4) Pray it works.

If it doesn’t work, any mojo involved in reinstalling my older ATI card?

Thanks,

Tom

Scott Simmons: | August, 29, 2011

Tom, that’s a good question as to the exact order of install. Looking back I don’t remember exactly the order I installed. I see now and I’m sorry I don’t as that’s a flaw in this article I wrote since it is important.

Kinda weird your advice from NVIDIA isn’t perfect. I think they are having a hard time dealing with Apple these days (just my observation).

One thing I did do is clone my system onto a clone drive (I always keep one around) before I did this in case there were boot issues. Easy to pop it in and keep working. I think I did do that same order, installing the driver first then installing the card. Good luck and report back if you can.

tpf1952: | August, 29, 2011

Scott,

Thanks for the feedback. I’ll definitely make a clone drive before beginning the install. I’ve got a couple of projects due in the next week and I can’t afford a goof-up.

In my chat session/e-mail exchanges with NVIDIA people, I couldn’t help but think they were talking PC when I was asking Mac. Matters such their suggestion that a power cable not being needed for the 4000, when the product ships with it. Not confidence inspiring. Regardless, I’ve transitioned from FCP to PP, and need all the speed I an get.

Will report back on the install.

Thanks,

Tom

tpf1952: | August, 30, 2011

Tried the Quadro 4000 for Mac. Short version: I’ve gone back to the ATI card.

The Quadro was bliss and then heartbreak at the same time. Indeed, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 seems unleashed. But alas, funky things happen in my After Effects comps added to the PP sequence. Somehow, fade ins and outs, created in the AE comps, simply don’t work. What appears in the video channel below flashes in abruptly. Bummer.

Maybe someday, but not today.

BTW, the installation worked fine:
1) Install the “retail” driver before leaving the ATI setup.
2) Power down. Swap cards. Install the power cable.
3) Power up, install the CUDA driver. BTW there’s a newer version, but it made no difference regarding the performance of AE comps.

Sometimes when I’m not on a deadline, I may revisit the PP/AE problem, starting from a new sequence.

Tom

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