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New Mac Pro Help

A

AppStoreGamer

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 8, 2008
2
0
Hello. I currently own a 2.4 Ghz MacBook Pro, 4 GB of ram, 256 of V-ram. I have made the decision to upgrade to a Mac Pro tower for expandability reasons. I do A LOT of work with 3D models in Motion, Maya, Shake, and Cinema 4D. I do a little gaming through Boot Camp and I also use Final Cut Pro most of the time. I was looking for a little faster render times and encoding times. I do realize that this relies heavily on the processor but I noticed that rendering relied heavily on the RAM and Vcard.

I was wondering about the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 (512Mb) because I don't think that the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT (256Mb) is going to cut it. On the Apple website, there is an option to select one, two, three, or four HD 2600's. Would this essentially equal 1GB or Vram (256 x 4)? If so, could I do this with the 8800? (512x4=2GB)

Is this possible to "add" the processing power together (much like SLI) or is adding another graphics card just for adding monitors?

Answers would be much appreciated!
 
Currently adding another graphics card just for adding monitors. But will 10.6 change this?

Barefeats:
"As a 3D accelerated GPU, the GeForce 8800 GT looks like a great addition to the "early 2008" Mac Pro. It's significantly faster than the two Radeon options and at $200 CTO, it's a no-brainer. The advantage should also apply to pro 3D apps that use 3D OpenGL code for animation."

The ATI 2600 is faster for 2D. Also might want to check out the ATI HD 3870.
 
Thanks

Thanks a lot you guys. And from what I've read, it does seem like 10.6 will change this, based off the fact that Apple is trying to take a lot of the strain off of the CPU and put it on the GPU....its only time before they do this....but do you think that they'll have to incorporate a newer motherboard to achieve this "adding of V-ram" effect or will it simply be a software update that is needed (10.6)?

Also, does boot camp support this "adding of V-ram"? Someone said that this may be supported but only under Vista. Can anyone confirm?
 
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