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Cancelling HD 4780 for GTX 285. Who else?

Tesselator said:
Yeah;


Looks pretty cool! I hope it works in a 2006 MP 1.1 system! :D
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If Apple is making it then no they want you to buy a new Mac Pro. If nVidia or someone else is building the cards then I would say it will most likely work as PCIe 2.0 is backwards compatible with PCIe 1.0. Except possibly the GTX295 or Radeon HD4870x2 I don't think any current cards saturate PCIe x16 1.0 yet.
 
Hmm. That second screenshot being posted has the analog port, which I'm certain the OS X version probably won't have - and doesn't in the Engadget screenshots.

That aside, I definitely wouldn't cancel for it. I highly doubt 's suddenly going to have much better Nvidia drivers. It'd be better for windows stuff, but I'm willing to bet the 4870 will outperform it in OS X, unless they overhaul it all or a ton of CUDA support get spliced into snow leopard. That said, nobody knows whether or not ATI or Nvidia cards will perform better on OpenCL and Snow Leopard, but in the here and now, I'll stick to the higher OS X performance of ATI cards.

The 8800 GT fiasco was a little galling.
 
Whilst under Windows and gaming, the GTX will certainly beat the Radeon, I get the feeling that under OS X and pro apps, the radeon will smoke it. Nvidia's OS X drivers suck ass. Just like the X1900 XT beats the 8800GT under OS X.
 
It wouldn't surprise me to find the mini DisplayPort on the Mac Edition of the GTX 285.
Must admit, I would like to have the 24" connected to the GTX 285... ;)
 
nick9191 said:
Whilst under Windows and gaming, the GTX will certainly beat the Radeon, I get the feeling that under OS X and pro apps, the radeon will smoke it. Nvidia's OS X drivers suck ass. Just like the X1900 XT beats the 8800GT under OS X.
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Exactly why I'm keeping my 4870. Same experience here, hte x1900 XT blew away the 8800, so sad.
 
pprior said:
Exactly why I'm keeping my 4870. Same experience here, hte x1900 XT blew away the 8800, so sad.
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this is why I love the macrumors forums - i can get a lot of good information here. my initial reaction when they announce the GTX 285 was that I wanted it (instead of the 4870). So I cancelled by order for the 4870. But now, it seems that the 4870 may be better in some cases than the GTX 285 (specifically the drivers for nvidia cards seem to be notorious).

however, I'm not regretting canceling the 4870 because I want to wait. Not necessarily to buy the GTX 285, but more because I can afford to wait. So far, Aperture and Final Cut Express have been performing quite well with the stock 2600XT (I did add 8GB of RAM though). it's probably also cause I'm going from a dual core 2.0Ghz Powermac G5. so i'm just going to keep this configuration for awhile and revisit the video card upgrade in 6 months or so. by then the 4870 should be readily available as should the GTX 285 and many people will have done benchmarks which are relevant to what i'd be using. maybe the prices will even drop a bit by then.

of course i'll be following threads like these closely so I can see how each card is working out for people - presumably after snow leopard finally ships. always better to wait if you can afford to right?
 
nick9191 said:
Whilst under Windows and gaming, the GTX will certainly beat the Radeon, I get the feeling that under OS X and pro apps, the radeon will smoke it. Nvidia's OS X drivers suck ass. Just like the X1900 XT beats the 8800GT under OS X.
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Latest drivers place the 8800GT squarely in front of the X1900XT and 3870… and even the 4870 in some tasks.
 
If the mac pro's could run SLI, I would cancel my 2 ATI's in a heartbeat. Xfire setup is nice for win. The 285 is ever so tempting though over the Xfire setup...and they are pretty much neck and neck performance wise.
 
Tallest Skil said:
Except DisplayPort is a free port, an internationally adopted standard
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The Displayport on my Dell remains unused though, thanks to Apple taking this standard, and limiting it in their own special way. Displayport eh... well, here's MINI displayport.

Got a display, but want a new Mac? Better buy our adapter. Want our display? Better buy a new Mac. Lol.
 
nick9191 said:
Whilst under Windows and gaming, the GTX will certainly beat the Radeon, I get the feeling that under OS X and pro apps, the radeon will smoke it. Nvidia's OS X drivers suck ass. Just like the X1900 XT beats the 8800GT under OS X.
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Not really. 8800GT is almost twice as fast than X1900XT on any games I play. Sorry but that's wrong information you have there. And yes, this is on Mac OS X.
 
Does that include any cider games?

I can assure you 100% that that is not true for BF2142
 
pprior said:
Does that include any cider games?

I can assure you 100% that that is not true for BF2142
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Cider is crap.

If it comes down to AIDS or being forced to play Cider ports for the rest of my life, I'll take AIDS. At least I'll be able to have fun until I die.
 
grue said:
Cider is crap.

If it comes down to AIDS or being forced to play Cider ports for the rest of my life, I'll take AIDS. At least I'll be able to have fun until I die.
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eek.gif
 
grue said:
Latest drivers place the 8800GT squarely in front of the X1900XT and 3870… and even the 4870 in some tasks.
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In OS X? In pro apps and core image? I don't think that's true - that's not what I've read or experienced. If you're talking about games, fine, but I think the 3870 and 4870 beat it in core image apps and video applications.

Also, we've got a driver update coming that should kick the 4870 up a notch or three.
 
grue said:
Cider is crap.

If it comes down to AIDS or being forced to play Cider ports for the rest of my life, I'll take AIDS. At least I'll be able to have fun until I die.
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Whatever...:rolleyes:

While I'm not a cider fan, for those of us who will NOT boot windows, it's the only way to play a number of games "released" for mac.

So if you're buying MAC software and not bootcamping, I stand by my assertion.

BTW, I get really tired of people making all kinds of claims about video cards and performance and drivers, etc, and the whole time they're referring to bootcamp of XP! If I wanted a freaking PC, I'd buy one.
 
pprior said:
Whatever...:rolleyes:

While I'm not a cider fan, for those of us who will NOT boot windows, it's the only way to play a number of games "released" for mac.

So if you're buying MAC software and not bootcamping, I stand by my assertion.

BTW, I get really tired of people making all kinds of claims about video cards and performance and drivers, etc, and the whole time they're referring to bootcamp of XP! If I wanted a freaking PC, I'd buy one.
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Not once have I referenced boot camp for benchmarks in this thread, so I don't know why you're lashing out at me.

If you want to run inferior versions of games, that's your business. If I'm running top notch hardware, I'd like to have good performance in games when I want to destress.

However, games that are actually written for Mac rather than being run in some third-rate compatibility layer run significantly better than Cider ports… and Windows versions typically run better yet.
 
grue said:
Yes, yes and yes to the first three.

http://barefeats.com/nehal06.html
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I probably should have specified. That only applies to Nehalem owners. The reverse is true for us Penryn users, as that set of tests is showing. Again, we've got an imminent driver update. Though I'm willing to admit that an Nvidia driver update is possibly incoming, I'm also skeptical - why would everything be cleaned up all of a sudden, now?
 
TheStrudel said:
I probably should have specified. That only applies to Nehalem owners. The reverse is true for us Penryn users, as that set of tests is showing. Again, we've got an imminent driver update. Though I'm willing to admit that an Nvidia driver update is possibly incoming, I'm also skeptical - why would everything be cleaned up all of a sudden, now?
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Ah, ok re: Penryn.

For what it's worth, it's been implied to me that there've been -vast- improvements in the nvidia drivers on the Mac, and of course people aren't moving the nvidia drivers from the 09s onto their 08s when they install 4870s… Could be BS, so keep in mind that rumors and implications are worth precisely what you pay for them :D
 
My 4870 just arrived. I'll probably return it.
I'll take the GTX 285 under consideration.
I know the GTX 285 is very powerful but is it's Mac driver any good?
I would like to own either a 4890, 4870 X2, or the GTX 285.
It will all depend on what's available and benchmarks from Barefeats.
 
grue said:
Cider is crap.

If it comes down to AIDS or being forced to play Cider ports for the rest of my life, I'll take AIDS. At least I'll be able to have fun until I die.
Click to expand...

pprior said:
Whatever...:rolleyes:

While I'm not a cider fan, for those of us who will NOT boot windows, it's the only way to play a number of games "released" for mac.
Click to expand...

grue said:
If you want to run inferior versions of games, that's your business. If I'm running top notch hardware, I'd like to have good performance in games when I want to destress.

However, games that are actually written for Mac rather than being run in some third-rate compatibility layer run significantly better than Cider ports… and Windows versions typically run better yet.
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I've heard of cider but never had it nor seen it in action. What's it like? Are there any videos of it being used? Why is it so bad (if it's bad)?
 
Tesselator said:
I've heard of cider but never had it nor seen it in action. What's it like? Are there any videos of it being used? Why is it so bad (if it's bad)?
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It's basically a hack layer to let Windows games run under MacOS. EA uses it for all their Mac versions, which is why they all suck so hard in terms of performance.
 
!

grue said:
Not once have I referenced boot camp for benchmarks in this thread, so I don't know why you're lashing out at me.

If you want to run inferior versions of games, that's your business. If I'm running top notch hardware, I'd like to have good performance in games when I want to destress.

However, games that are actually written for Mac rather than being run in some third-rate compatibility layer run significantly better than Cider ports… and Windows versions typically run better yet.
Click to expand...

I wasn't clear in my post - I was making the bootcamp statement in general, not directed towards you, my bad on that.

I DON"T want to run inferior versions of games, but that's what people seem to put out for mac, dude! You want to play C&C - it's cider, you want to play Battlefield, it's cider...

those happen to be the games I enjoy playing, and they happen to blow chunks with the Nvidia cards because of who knows why, but it's reality. Sure I wish (and would pay for!) native mac game software, but we all know that doesn't happen much.

In case I wasn't clear, I'm not running torrented cider hacks of PC games or rolling my own, I'm buying the games directly - EA specifically.
 
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