People tend to have this idea that Macs are not upgradeable, and while it may be true some models, it is certainly not the case with the Mac Pro. NVIDIA just announced that its ultra powerful Quadro K5000 video card is coming to Mac Pro computers later this year.
The Quadro K5000 is built on the Kepler design and is "the most powerful professional-class GPU ever for the Macintosh," according to NVIDIA. Based on the specifications announced for this monster, that is quite believable.
The new video card supports up to 4096x2160 resolution, which has close to four times as many pixels as 1080P. This card exists so video producers can work on their craft in the highest resolution possible.
This card also includes a new engine that allows it to support up to four displays simultaneously. To support all those displays at such a high-resolution, the card needs to be powerful, and with that in mind, NVIDIA included 4GB of dedicated graphics memory. They also designed it so a single Mac Pro can support two K5000 cards.
Another key feature of the K5000 is ability to use Boot Camp to run Windows without losing any performance. This is critical if your workflow requires certain programs that are not available on OS X.
NVIDIA says that the K5000 "is ideal for professional applications such as video editing, color correction, compositing, design visualization and GPU-accelerated ray-traced 3D rendering." This is not the graphics card for the casual Mac Pro user, and it comes with an estimated US$2,249 price tag to match.
Source: NVIDIA
