ATi or nVidia for Mac Pro? (ATi has buggy driver?)

[thermodynamic]

Howdy! I am a Flash developer. On my Macbook Pro, Flash animations play fine.

On my Mac Pro (early-2009, ATi 4870), the Flash movie window flickers and sometimes goes black.

Should I spring and get a nVidia GTX285??

Or could my 4870 be faulty?

Thx for any advice/help!

 

[jav6454]

Might I suggest waiting a bit? I am sure Apple is working on drivers for either the ATI Radeon HD 5850 or 5870.

Also, bear in mind nVidia's Fermi architecture based GPUs are around the corner, although personally, I wouldn't pay for nVidia anymore, not after the whole 1.7% yields, wood screws, 275W low end cards, 20% missed clocks and wiring noises. However, we won't know Fermi until Q2 2010, that is if nVidia doesn't decide to delay the launch again...

 

[gotzero]

My (flashed) 4870 is running swimmingly. I am looking forward to OpenCL improvements, but nothing is impacting my user experience.

 

[thermodynamic]

Might I suggest waiting a bit? I am sure Apple is working on drivers for either the ATI Radeon HD 5850 or 5870.

Also, bear in mind nVidia's Fermi architecture based GPUs are around the corner, although personally, I wouldn't pay for nVidia anymore, not after the whole 1.7% yields, wood screws, 275W low end cards, 20% missed clocks and wiring noises. However, we won't know Fermi until Q2 2010, that is if nVidia doesn't decide to delay the launch again...

I know the 5870 is a powerhouse; I wouldn't be surprised Apple is working on drivers, either. (I think my 4870 might have a flaw, but reading how much faster the 5870 is over the GTX285... )

Thx for the advice. I WILL wait for the HD 5870 and not go back to nVidia -- that's astounding, about nVidia's screw-up. I know they had the video chipset snafu a couple of years ago, but wow...