i am a newb when it comes to this arena.

i have an older mac pro (2008/8-core/3,1/gt8800/512) that i'm debating adding a graphic card and ssd for a boot drive.

i presently cut in fcp7 but am making the move to both fcpx and adobe cc when i finally upgrade to yosemite.

(this transition is my big end-of-the-year winter project)

i have read that adobe "prefers" nvidia graphic cards and there is a list of "approved" cards:

http://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/...uirements.html

i have also read that is is "easy" to add a given card to the list and then have premiere pro see the nvidia card.

do i have the above correct?

here are examples of cards that i'm thinking of adding:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130827

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814487027

neither of these cards, evga nvidia gtx 650 or gtx 750, are on the adobe list but i understand they can be added.

will these cards works with adobe cc-specifically premiere pro?

lastly, will these cards also work with fcpx?

how do know if these will work with each platform other than web-based anecdotal references?

thanks in advance to those who care to add to the conversation.

be well.

rob
smalltalk productions/nyc

I have an NVIDIA Quadro K5000 video card in my happy Early 2009 MacPro. It works just fine in both Final Cut Pro X and Adobe's Premiere Pro CC 2014 programs. NVIDIA does a pretty decent job in keeping the drivers to this card updated as Apple updates its Operating Systems. The Quadro K5000 is a bit pricey. But, it is helping to extend the life of my computer for (hopefully) a few more years. Additionally, my happy Early 2009 Mac Pro has nothing but SSDs (from OWC) housed within it, which makes for a rather pleasant video-editing experience for my very modest video projects.

(Edited to add: Final Cut Pro X has been very, very stable with my current system. So far, no crashes with the current update. Premiere Pro CC 2014 is somewhat stable. It has crashed on me a few times for a two-camera editing project. The fault of the crash doest not appear to be the video card, though.)

Another Mac Pro 3.2 8-core (early 2008 3,1) here. Run FCPX (so good to hear about the new update with it) and also run Motion 5 (very nice program but requires a lot of editing knowledge to get the most out of it).

Graphics card is an ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1 MB kit, that's a card and a cable. Open CL compliant. Note: Running the cable was a little bit of an effort as there was space the cable end had to fit through but nothing that a bit of patience couldn't handle.

The graphics card memory as you probably know is an important contribution to the overall speed so, knowing what I know now, it may have been worthwhile to opt for the 2 MB version of whatever card you get. Having said that, the 1 MB memory does okay.

Maintenance: Keep the fuzz out of the cooling fins on the graphics card.

Hard Drive: Also have a SSD for the applications but using a HD for the video files. The SSD is larger than what is needed because the thought was to move the video files over to the HD after editing but the effort isn't worth it so now there is a lot of empty space just sitting there.

With four drive bays this is a nice computer. If the main drive is upgraded to a SSD then there'll be a place for the old HD.

Like Ed's, this system has been very, very stable. The Internet is disconnected except for updates or when I need it for something.
Can't help with the other questions about Adobe. Editing in "X", once you learn it (it'll be a transition) goes really fast. I used a book to help me along since 10.0.1 and it has been a good resource but there has been a lot of additions since then.

The reason for the NVidia card recommendation is that Premiere Pro, After Effects, etc., use the "Cuda Cores" which are a feature of nVidia cards to hand off processing to the GPU. The adobe programs query your gpu card on loading and if it matches the list of accepted cards, can use it for MUCH faster rendering than non-GPU processing. In PC's, anyway (can't speak for Mac but should be the same or similar) the lists are simple text files to which you can add your card if it is not listed. Recent fairly higher end nVidia cards have enough Cuda cores and RAM to qualify.

In Premiere, on PCs, the file is called cuda_supported_cards.txt. The one for After Effects is called raytracer_supported_cards.txt. If you edit the file be sure that the name of your card exactly follows the format of the similar cards listed -- capitalization, spaces, etc.
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