Advices before buying a mac pro

[lakeeee]

Hi everybody,

I'm planning on buying a mac pro tomorrow, and i have few questions before.
Im' hesitating between the hd4870 and the gtx285. I'll be using the graphic card for photoshop and games (COD, CSS, etc), so is there a big diference between these two cards ?
Also, i heard that the hd4870 was noisy, is that true ? and is it noisier that the gtx 285 ?
I saw that the driver in leopard wasn't very good for the gtx285, does that changed with SL ?

Thanks, and sorry my english is not very good.

regards,

 

[lakeeee]

up

 

[J the Ninja]

Hey, it's the middle of the night in the North America, cut us some slack.

No, there isn't that much difference. At least in the stuff you'll be doing. The GTX 285 is a hell of a lot better at OpenCL (possibly due to driver issues, although I've found some claims that it's due to some hardware the HD 4000 series lacks that Nvidia has been including since they adopted unified/programmable shaders). The 285 is somewhat faster at gaming too, but IMO, it's not worth the price difference.

 

[lakeeee]

I'm sorry huhu.

Ok, then i think i'll take the gtx285, and we will see how it works.
Thanks!

 

[ungraphic]

Get the ATI 4870. Down the road if you need more horsepower in windows you can add another and crossfire those suckers. You can't do that with the Nvidias since the mobo isnt supported.

If noise is an issue, and it very well may be, I would get the Accelero S1 rev2 passive cooling heatsink. To be honest, I'd get it either way; the gpu runs cooler and is COMPLETELY silent. I got my Accelero S1 yesterday for my ATI 3870 (its compatible with both the 3870 and 4870) and my video card seems to run between 35-40 degrees celsius.

Also, dont by any ram from apple. Hell, if it were possible id ask apple to sell me a mac without any ram in it, they overprice like crazy. Same goes for hard drives. I upgraded my ram at a fraction of the cost of what apple would charge, and then tossed out the stock hard drive for a better one which i bought for cheap.

Hope this helps.