what's the best graphic card for a MAC PRO WITH 24GB OF RAM

[GRENCH]

What's the best graphic/video card for my MAC PRO TOWER. I will be running the latest CS Suite, as well as FCP 7 and Maya.

Specs:
Mac Pro "Eight Core" 2.8 GHz intel Xeon (2008).Processor Speed:2.8 GHz .Processor Type: 2 x Intel Xeon Quad-Core E5462 “Harpertown”.Memory installed.24GB.(32GB Max).RAM Technology: PC2-6400 DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM.Hard drive: 2 TB GB SATA (7200 RPM).Video card:ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT with 256MB GDDR3 VRAM.Video Output / Interface Type: 2-dual-link DVI out.8X DL "SuperDrive".USB Ports:5 (2.0). Firewire Ports: 2 (400), 2 (800).Operating System: OS X 10.5.6

 

[arniepix]

Premiere will work better with an NVIDIA card that supports Cuda. The Quadro 4000, the GTX 285, or if you can find a GTX 470 or 480 that's been flashed for the Mac.

 

[firehawk]

Hi,
Your system is similar to mine.
Mine's a MacPro (8 core) Dual 2.8 with 20 gigs of RAM. I was going to upgrade to more RAM but only 16 is recognized plus it costs $300 per module for mine. It uses the older, more expensive RAM.

I replaced the orginal 256MB Radeon with a PNY (NVIDIA) Quadro 4000 Workstation Card with 2 GB of VRAM and CUDA enabled.
I like the card a lot. I dual boot from MAC OS 10.6 Snow Leopard to run CS4 and FCS3 and then to Windows Vista 64 to run CS5 and 3ds Max 10.
I did notice that when in Premiere there is somewhat of an "initialization" moment where the card seems to kick in/load with a screen flash and then everything is fine. Kind of reminds me of how my old Matrox G400 used to do when the MJPEG hardware would intialize when working in Premiere, but not iriitating like that was.
In fact it's never even crashed, yet (Wish I could say that about my other computer running the orginal Creative Suite Production Premium).