More Mac Pro + Graphics Card questions

[DXoverDY]

Ok. I'm about a week or two away from ordering my MP. It says 24 hours to ship... I'm guessing the X1900XT will add a bit to that but it won't be 4-5 weeks... thus making me happier about ordering now.

My question is... to those of you more into the graphics card end of the business. The new NVidia card requires 400W and 450W of power respectively for power... the MP has 300W dedicated to the PCI-Express slots... too low for the new NV 8 series cards that will be coming out soonish. Do you think ATI or NVidia will have cards that don't require so great a power demand in the future? I'm not so keen on the X1900XT being the top of the line video card I can get for this machine.

Anyone know what kind of cards might be able to work on that 300W power in say... 18-24 months? I know it's a long ways away but trends to help I guess.

 

[Carguy172]

Both will So far I've heard ATI is coming out with a newer one with less power requirements and more power so that will be cool.

 

[DXoverDY]

Both will So far I've heard ATI is coming out with a newer one with less power requirements and more power so that will be cool.

Good deal. I don't play a lot of games but it is nice to know I can upgrade that GPU a bit.

Appreciate the reply

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

Are you sure the 300W limit on the graphics card isn't just the watt limit on the PCIe slot? I.e. not including the internal power connector that connects to the back of high end cards? People have run nVidia GX2s in their Mac Pros under Boot Camp without any issues.

 

[DXoverDY]

Are you sure the 300W limit on the graphics card isn't just the watt limit on the PCIe slot? I.e. not including the internal power connector that connects to the back of high end cards? People have run nVidia GX2s in their Mac Pros under Boot Camp without any issues.

I'm not sure. I'm not too up to speed on these new cards.

I wrote the CoreImage FAQ before Tiger came out, but that was a bit easier to grasp all the different cards... I haven't been keeping up as well lately on power consumption and all that jazz...