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06 Mac Pro Owners, what are our options? (GPU's)

FF_productions

FF_productions

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Apr 16, 2005
2,822
0
Mt. Prospect, Illinois
I've been out of the loop with GPU's, it seems the GTX 285 was made for the new gens, are we SOL?

From what I remember, we got the 7300GT, 8800, 3870, and X1900. Is there any new cards we can run in these? Motion 3 is slow as a turd with my GPU..
 
Oh silly me..with an EDU discount, I can get it for $315, and it does work in the Mac Pro...I assume there is nothing else?

I just noticed the GTX 295 came out recently...ugh Apple and graphics cards are just pathetic.
 
Of the cards mentioned so far in this thread I think I would be afraid to run anything other than the 4890. The others eat too much power for me.
 
From Barefeats:



"One advantage of the Radeon HD 4870 over the GTX 285 is that, though it isn't officially supported by Apple in the 2006-2007 Mac Pro, we can testify that it works fine in all models of Mac Pro"

That is basically saying that the GTX285 does not work.
If they tried or not, is not clear.
 
Tesselator said:
Of the cards mentioned so far in this thread I think I would be afraid to run anything other than the 4890. The others eat too much power for me.
Click to expand...

Want to clarify, Tesselator? Just curious.. You need that power for your HDDs? Or is it something more ill, along the PCI-E lanes?
 
Dr.Pants said:
Want to clarify, Tesselator? Just curious.. You need that power for your HDDs? Or is it something more ill, along the PCI-E lanes?
Click to expand...

http://archive.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=2&c=7&t=9354&p=0

I haven't looked it up myself but someone here said that the 4890 is nearly half the power draw as the 4870 that Apple is selling. The 4870 is a 80W - 130W card and that's a big draw! My current card is 13W - 29W for comparison. I leave my machine on 24/7 pretty much and 100 extra watts is just nuts IMHO. I mean for sure the speed of that card would not help me type this message any faster nor could I tell the difference between it and the 7300GT in 23 of those 24 hours. To me 1 hour of joy is not worth the (about) $30 a month I would have to pay for 100 extra watts.

That and also the closer you run a machine to the edge of it's max limits the more trouble you're asking for in heat, repair, longevity, and even possibly performance. If the 4890 is really 45W - 70W then I can deal with that. It seems a good trade-off. 130W - not so much. And the NVidea 285 is even worse I guess - like over 200W? :(
 
Cards draw much less power in idle of course. How can it draw the same amount of power when there is no calculations to do?


Here is a comparison by toms hardware:


image032.png




http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4890,2262-13.html
 
That (and in another thread I just read too) shows that the 4890 consumes more than the 4870 so I guess I'm wrong anyway! :p

Anyway 175W at idle is a lot IMO. It's certainly going to cost more per month than the 7300GT which is 13W at idle. :eek:

I pay ¥24/kWh here so that card will cost me ¥3,024 (about $30.00) every 30 days if it runs in idle the entire time. This is in comparison to the ¥224 (about $2.25) that the 7300GT will cost me in 30 days of use.

What is it where you folks live?
 
Tesselator said:
That (and in another thread I just read too) shows that the 4890 consumes more than the 4870 so I guess I'm wrong anyway! :p

Anyway 175W at idle is a lot IMO. It's certainly going to cost more per month than the 7300GT which is 13W at idle. :eek:

I pay ¥24/kWh here so that card will cost me ¥3,024 (about $30.00) every 30 days if it runs in idle the entire time. This is in comparison to the ¥224 (about $2.25) that the 7300GT will cost me in 30 days of use.

What is it where you folks live?
Click to expand...

Hmmm.... You got me curious about the different between the 1900 and my 4870 so I looked it up - the 1900 draws 29W at idle and 120 at peak. The "hidden" upgrade cost!
 
Tesselator said:
That (and in another thread I just read too) shows that the 4890 consumes more than the 4870 so I guess I'm wrong anyway! :p

Anyway 175W at idle is a lot IMO. It's certainly going to cost more per month than the 7300GT which is 13W at idle. :eek:

I pay ¥24/kWh here so that card will cost me ¥3,024 (about $30.00) every 30 days if it runs in idle the entire time. This is in comparison to the ¥224 (about $2.25) that the 7300GT will cost me in 30 days of use.

What is it where you folks live?
Click to expand...

Hold on a second, that 175W is the Global Wattage at AC source. I.e. its to total amount drawn by the test computer at idle and so includes the CPU, memory, mainboard, optical drives, fans, etc etc. Idle power draw of a 4870 is meant to be 90W while its meant to be 60W for a 4890. However, their results show that both cards have approximately the same wattage at idle, whatever that might be. It would have been interesting if they'd included a bootup without a graphics card in at all or if they'd used a motherboard that has an integrated graphics card. Or maybe tried it with two graphics cards in etc.
 
Tesselator said:
=
Anyway 175W at idle is a lot IMO. It's certainly going to cost more per month than the 7300GT which is 13W at idle. :eek:
Click to expand...

It did say Global Wattage at AC source, it did not say that 175W is the wattage from the graphics card alone. Sure is 7300GT runs idle at 13W, but have you consider your overall MP wattage at AC source...?

Spanky Deluxe said:
Hold on a second, that 175W is the Global Wattage at AC source. I.e. its to total amount drawn by the test computer at idle and so includes the CPU, memory, mainboard, optical drives, fans, etc etc. Idle power draw of a 4870 is meant to be 90W while its meant to be 60W for a 4890. However, their results show that both cards have approximately the same wattage at idle, whatever that might be. It would have been interesting if they'd included a bootup without a graphics card in at all or if they'd used a motherboard that has an integrated graphics card. Or maybe tried it with two graphics cards in etc.
Click to expand...

Damn, you beat me to it...!
 
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