When I bought my current Mac Pro, it came with nVidia’s GT8800 that I ordered as a factory upgrade from whatever was stock at the time.  The upgrade was inexpensive and got me a better GPU and more memory.  The card also supported Dual Link DVI to two displays and I have to say that I got over two years of excellent service from it.

But as I embark ever more deeply into video editing, I discovered that likely through my own ineptitude and lack of proper training, I was able to strain the capability of the GT8800 so I started researching alternatives.  There was the ATI Radeon HD 4870  on the Apple Store that had a faster GPU but no more video memory, there was the nVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 for nearly $2,300 (argh, choke) and the EVGA GeForce GTX 285.  I was not aware of the GTX 285 or of EVGA for that matter so I went over to my local Canada Computers and talked to John and Samuel.  Canada Computers is a retail chain that deals in all manner of kit but this store at least, attracts some seriously hardcore gamers and gamers as we know tend to beat on video cards pretty hard.  Both Samuel and John admitted to no familiarity with the Mac Pro platform but did share that they had enjoyed a lot of customer success with EVGA cards and with the Windows release of the GTX 285.  They did tell me that the GTX 285 had been superseded by the GTX 295 on the Windows platform and also advised that there was a hack out in the internet on making one work in a Mac Pro.  As I depend on the Mac Pro for work every day, i chose not to go that route and had them order me the Mac version of the GTX 285.  With no disrespect to Apple or Apple resellers, I saved at least 10% off the price of the card by getting it from these folks.

Installation was straight forward once I disconnected the web of cables from the Mac Pro and pulled its mass out from under the desk and into the kitchen where I could work on it without crippling myself.  I did learn some tips that might be useful for anyone else.

1. When EVGA says read the instructions first, do it.  If you are not running a current build of Snow Leopard, be absolutely sure you follow the instructions about installing the display drivers BEFORE you take things apart to install the card.  I found that on my machine, running 10.6.3 at time of install, the drivers had already been provided in an Apple update.  If you find this too, well you’ve burned a whole minute, but if you didn’t have the drivers installed and tried to power up the Mac with the new card and no drivers you’d be seeing a black screen and the only fix would be to pull the new card, put in the old card, load the drivers…You get the point.

2.  The PCI-e slots on the Mac Pro have little card locking clips that you engage when removing a card.  Using a flashlight helps you see them and helps you cut down on the cursing when you cannot figure out why the stock card will not come free of the slot.

3. The GT8800 has only one power cable.  The GTX285 has two.  Disconnect the one from the GT8800 before you try to remove the card as you’re going to need it in a minute.  The GTX285 comes with two new power cables, so you could use both new ones of course.  I did.

4.  The motherboard location of the two power ports you will be using is best accessed if you have 14″ long rubber fingers that are impervious to cuts and scrapes.  If you are not Mr. Fantastic, take the time to do the motherboard connections before you install the new video card.  If you don’t, you will just have to pull it out to get the cables connected, and if that happens, remember point #1.

5.  Did I mention that making those connections can be challenging?  I found that a pair of bent nose hemostats worked fine.  Connecting the upper slot first makes things easier as well.

6.  Once the cables are connected and latched onto the motherboard (check that the latching mechanisms on the power connectors have engaged), place the card into the slot.  Slot 1 is best because like most other high end video cards, the GTX 285 is a double-wide.

7.  Replace the card slot locking bar, put all the other pieces back together, connect your cables and fire it up.

At boot time and in normal operations, frankly you won’t see much of a difference.  If you use iStat and watch temps very closely, you might find the system runs a bit cooler.  Or not.  The new card really comes into it’s own when you are doing some intense editing in Final Cut Studio or Premiere Pro or Logic Studio.  Screen draws are faster in Aperture, and Photoshop seems snappier.  I’m not a gamer but I did speak to a guy who uses Steam on the Mac and he says this card is better than what I had for gaming.

In summary, if you need more video horsepower, can handle the expense, and are willing to read the instructions you will like the EVGA GeForce GTX285 Mac Edition.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

For the last couple of years I’ve been using a Dell 24″ LCD alongside an Apple 23″ Cinema Display because I liked the flexibility and control available to me with two monitors. About a month ago, I heard Robert Scoble on TWiT talk about how he used two displays, one in portrait mode and one in landscape mode. So I tried that, rotating the Dell 24″ by 90 degrees. It had a powerful positive impact on my workflow.

BUT, every time I’m in an Apple Store I invariably drift over to the 30″ Cinema Display and remind myself how usable all that screen real estate would be for audio, photographic and video editing, not just for the editor window but for all the palettes I use. So on Father’s Day, I went to Dell’s site and ordered up their 30″ UltraSharp. I admit that I did it via phone because I wanted to ask a couple of questions and check for specials. Syed was very helpful and I got the order placed. The device showed up in five business days.

While the instructions say installation takes two people, it really doesn’t as the screen is not heavy. (those 21″ CRTs were HEAVY). Connections are easy to make and in addition to DVI-D and power, there is a USB 2 connection and a built-in USB hub as well as a memory card reader. The reader supports Compact Flash, SM/SD/MS/MMC so covers pretty much everything.

The screen has no contrast controls and rudimentary brightness capability. There is an OSD, but the manual instructions to launch it don’t work for me and the software provided only works with Windows (BAD DELL!!) Max resolution is 2560 x 1600 and requires a dual link DVI connection. I recently upgraded to the nVidia GTX 285 in the Mac Pro and it has two dual link DVI connections on the back. The card drives both the 30″ at 2560 x 1600 and the 24″ in portrait mode at 1920x 1200 without issue.

The colour at first was a bit wonky and using the OS X built in calibration made decent corrections in advanced mode but the lack of a contrast adjustment throws off the Apple calibration a bit. I have been using a Pantone Huey Pro for a while because of its size and my expectation that if anyone understood colour it would be Pantone, and after running the calibration on the new screen, I am very happy with the outcome. I set the Huey Pro software to do automatic roomlight compensation and that helps more than you might expect.

The display goes to sleep from a power perspective when the Mac Pro sleeps the screen and restarts pretty much immediately. Several days in I’ve noticed that the colours have settled and are even better than when I first set the display up. Fonts are smaller of course because I sit further back now, and the only real downside is that I find myself punching up the font size in browsers and the zoom in applications, but I am loving the increased space.

As noted, I kept the Dell 24″ in play and in portrait mode, the only change is moving it from the left side to the right side, mostly to make fitting into the desk layout easier. I use Hyperspaces to manage Spaces and backgrounds and find running Word or NeoOffice Write in portrait so much more efficient. It’s also perfect to stack BusyCal above Things for workflow management.

When it comes to working with Aperture, or any of the Adobe CS5 apps, the increased space is incredibly empowering and I think I’m more productive although that could really be subjective justification for the expense.

And that’s the only downside. 27″ displays of very good quality (I really like the Samsung) are now under $500 where I live, but the jump to 30″ significantly reduces the option pool and more than doubles the price of entry. If the past is any indicator, expect prices for 30″ displays to plummet now that I’ve bought one. The Dell unit has a richer contrast ratio than the Apple Cinema Display according to specifications. The Apple unit has not changed in years and is still nearly $2,000, still too much for me. Would I have preferred that Apple display? So far I am very happy with my Dell purchase. The display is height and angle adjustable, where the Apple is only angle adjustable. The height adjustment is important to me as I want to have the upper third sightline in line with my eyes and as I have a longer torso the Apple display would be angled up for me, whereas the Dell is exactly parallel to my face (or pretty darn close). Kudos to the Dell monitor guys because adjusting the height is finger strength easy with no goofy latches or slippage or any of the other annoyances found in some other vendor’s height adjusters; this one is brilliant.

For a 30″ LCD display that does excellent 2560×1600 for around $1,200 the Dell UltraSharp cannot be beat.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

GarageBand has a built in function to help you build ringtones for your iPhone from music in your library. Since GB comes with every new Mac and is part of iLife, free is a good price. However, folks who haven’t experience with audio recording apps or who want to make a specific ringtone for everyone of their friends, as does my daughter, (perhaps not THAT many), often find that while GarageBand works, it doesn’t “just work”. Pocket Mac, who gained notoriety building software to sync Macs to a variety of smartphones, build a utility called Ringtone Studio that makes the process of making your own ringtones incredibly simple.

The UI is user friendly and super easy. Just drag the sound file, video file or iTunes file onto the “iPhone” and then using the sliders select the portion of the clip you want for your ringtone. Ringtones should be kept short, about 8 seconds before it starts looping is a good place to start.

The only real downside to the app that I have found is the price. Frankly $20 USD is a lot to pay for what this thing does, but I see other apps in similar price ranges that do much less. One that remains unnamed inserts ringtones onto your phone. That’s it. So I suppose Ringtone Studio isn’t completely out of line, but I think that these folks would sell a lot more copies if they brought the price below $10.

The net of things is that it works. You drag your file on, you select the region for the ringtone, save it (goes to iTunes directly – or at least it did for me) then sync your iPhone, adding the ringtones you’ve created via the Ringtone tab on the sync page in iTunes. I’m not sure it could get much easier.

There are people who just burn up when your phone sounds like anything but a phone, but if you want it to sound like “you” this can work pretty darn well. Of course tastes vary so just because the ringtone was easy to make, doesn’t make it “good”.

RECOMMENDED