nVIDIA 6800 Ultra DDL

I got a 6800 GT DDL card directly from Apple and returned it a few days later - it was insanely noisy, which was surprising given the size of the cooling solution. I swapped it for the ATI X800XT and its MUCH MUCH quieter, close to silent.

Basically the ATI adds a very very slight increase in noise of the G5, and the system+graphics fans spin up as necessary under load (not by a huge amount thankfully). The NVidia card on the other hand doesn't seem to affect the system fans, but its own on-board fan is spinning very fast ALL the time.

Another plus for the X800XT is that there is a freely available overclocking utility ATIccelerator which allows you to get a bit more performance out of the card. Add to that the control panel which allows you to modify the performance/visual quality settings (something the NVidia card sadly lacks) means that although I prefer NVidia cards on the PC Platform, the ATI card seems to be the better engineered, better thought out card than the NVidia on Mac OS X.

Personally, I'd go for the ATI. You'll save a lot of time returning cards the way I had to. Performance seems to be equal, if not better than the 6800GT

NATO said:

Another plus for the X800XT is that there is a freely available overclocking utility ATIccelerator which allows you to get a bit more performance out of the card.

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ATIccelerator is dead, long live Graphiccelerator, which does work with the 6800 Ultra, too. So, this isn't a reason anymore.

I'm content with the 6800, though I believe that the X800XT is indeed even better.

Where ever you get your Card from just replace the heat-sink and fan after the warranty is up, else you will void any warranty remaining. It does not matter if you buy it off Ebay.

The HS & F cost around 33 USD / 28 EUR

http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vga2.php?idx=40&data=5&disc=/

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/Graphics/mac_6800ultra_review/

risc said:

I actually bought the 6800 Ultra DDL not the GT.

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Whoops, my bad. I didn't think of the Ultra, Apple don't seem to offer them on the UK Store, hence I missed it!

Cool thing about Graphicaccelerator, will have to give that a go later tonight

i would be extremely interested to know the difference between the 6800 GT DLL and the X850 XT as i am looking to purchase a dual 2.7 with one of those cards. they are both the same price but the apple site shows the nvidia to be slightly better. i also want to have 2x20" displays and the ati is saying someting about a adc to dvi converter. would i need that with the radeon?