I am an avid games and video cards are very important. Now that Apple is going to have more big names games on the mac having a good graphics card becomes even more necessary (not to mention being able to run windows). On the Apple store site at the build a powermac page it has different configurations for video cards. The two I was looking at was the 1X ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB (2 x dual-link DVI) and the 4X NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB. I was wondering which is a better choice for gaming and if there were any other cards that I could use that are mac compatible that I should be looking at. With the 4X Nvidia, does it mean they are all working in conjunction or that they run independently and are there to run separate monitors. Thanks in advance.
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Graphics cards on a new MacPro
- Thread starter RMD68
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Th X1900XT is the faster card for games. It performs adminrally on my Mac Pro with a 20'' Dell Widescreen. I've run all my games at 1680x1050 without issue.
The X1900 line from ATI is getting a bit long in the tooth. They've just recently released the X2900 series, which according to reviews, isn't stacking up well against Nvidia's latest. I suspect you'll see new video card choices for the Mac Pro sometime between now and September.
Lastly, keep in mind that the Mac Pro is not built to be a gaming machine. The fully-buffed ecc memory it requires inflicts a performance penalty when running games.
Besides the ecc memory problem how can I get my Macpro to be an excellent gaming rig.
RMD68 I too am an avid gamer and I really hope that mac gets some really great cards in the future, especially from Nvidia, as well. I am holding off getting a mac pro till later this year for 2 reasons. First for the Intel Price drop. Secondly, for the chance that there will be some great cards to go along with the great games coming out for the mac!
Like nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX, ATI Radeon HD X2900 XT and ATI Radeon X1950 XT. I could see those cards being on the next Mac Pros, at least as options.
Well, the only thing you can do at the moment is put in the X1900XT video card. There's nothing else you can do.
If you were to compare the Mac Pro against another Intel box that with an equivalent CPU and the same amount of regular DDR2 memory, all other things being equal, the other intel box will perform better in games purely as a result of the increased memory performance.
I suppose anything is possible but do you think it would be likely if Apple would release a gaming rig MacPro to coincide with the release of the new mainstream gaming titles (EA, etc.) or at least set it up so the regular MacPro's can handle the load thats required for gaming. Just a thought.
No, apple doesn't cater to gamers in the least.
The whole deal about bringing games to mac is just media hype. The two developers that announced "full mac support" are in reality doing nothing of the sort. Rather, they're just releasing their Windows games wrapped in an emulator. (yeah, yeah, wine is not an emulator...we'll save the geek lessons for later).
Inside each of these wrappers is your standard 'ole .exe windows program.
Though hell may have another winter storm like the one that brought us intel chips in the first place, I wouldn't put any faith in Apple releasing a machine ideal for gaming anytime too soon.
We can only hople they'll upgrade their hardware to stuff less then a year old before the "new" hardware is itself a year old.
It still takes a significant amount of extra developer time (and consequently $$) to program for two platforms. Also, Windows uses mainly DX9 (soon 10) and OSX uses opengl which are two completely different rendering engines.
Not to start a flame war, but Direct X is widely considered a far superior graphics engine for gaming as well. . . so no incentive to code in OpenGL on both platforms.
Couple that with the negligable footprint of macs in the consumer market and the completely miniscule number of Mac gamers and programming games for mac is a lose-lose situation.
Even the stalwart mac gaming supporters like Bliz have readily admited in interviews that they lose money on the Mac market, but program for it anyway out of love for the platform.
Only the richest and most successful gaming companies can afford to code for love and love alone.