That still is bad.
Yeah, for Windows gaming the 8800 GT is the card to have in the Mac Pro, but one would expect overall better performance in Mac OS X from better and faster hardware that the 8800 GT absolutely is than the 2600...
nVidia drivers are poor in Leopard.
TBO, I have seen below par performance on nVidia cards before compared to same-gen ATi's.
A few years ago my top-Mac was a Dual 1.25 GHz G4 MDD (FW 800), and I have played around with a couple of grfx cards in it:
ATi Radeon 9000 (default)
nVidia GeForce 4Ti
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro (128 MB VRAM)
The GeForce 4 Ti card and Radeon 9800 Pro were pretty much equals in Windows back then, but on the Mac, the Radeon 9800 was faster, and had far better driver support.
Games like MOHAA had visual artifacts on the GeForce, but looked gr8 on the Radeon. Also ATi had this amazing control panel which let you set FSAA and AF options on a per game base! Older games like F1 CS 2000 were made to look good on the Radeon using these extra 3D settings to the max.
But, I do feel nVidia / Apple got their act together with the GeForce 6800 Ultra, and later the 7800 GT in my Quad. Had no real comparisons myself though... Maybe the X800 XT was a better card too.
But now the situation is really bad.
How can a low-end card like the 2600 perform the "core-OS" tasks better than a mid-to-high-end card like the 8800... unbelievable really.
If a Pro wants advice, I tell him to wait for the anticipated Radeon 3870.
