My new card arrives tomorrow. I already have the 174.74 driver installed. Is it really going to matter that the driver is installed before the card?
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NVIDIA 8800 GT (1st Generation) Graphics Upgrade Kit for Mac Pro!
- Thread starter Tbarr
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My new card arrives tomorrow. I already have the 174.74 driver installed. Is it really going to matter that the driver is installed before the card?
Yes I'm impatient, but I'm annoyed. I ordered the card as soon as it was announced and it STILL hasn't shipped. *sigh* I want my 8800!
I got an email from Apple Saturday night saying that mine had shipped and the delivery time was the 21-22nd. Well it's the 22nd and I still haven't seen it. I get nervous ordering things online so I'll be rabidly tracking the package tonight. There is still time that it may show up today and I hope it does.
I'm not overly impatient but it is giving me a sense of "awww man" from time to time.
I'm not overly impatient but it is giving me a sense of "awww man" from time to time.
Where do you guys live? I live in Sweden, and ordered the card from Apple Store yesterday. Today I gladly installed it in my Mac
Canada.
Where do you guys live? I live in Sweden, and ordered the card from Apple Store yesterday. Today I gladly installed it in my Mac
US. Illinois to be exact. Chicago to be even more exact.
I received an e-mail on Saturday too saying that mine had shipped. I paid for 2-3 day shipping. According to Purlator's tracking system mine is Ontario as of this morning. This means I likely won't see the card until the end of the week because I'm all the way in Alberta. Ugh.
If you paid for 2-3 day shipping, that is what you should be getting (2-3 business days). At that speed, they usually fly it out between major shipping centers, and then drive it out to the local center that delivers it to your address.
I got my 8800GT yesterday and messed around with Half Life 2: Episode 2 and was disappointed that my frames were actually dipping down to 30FPS quite a bit during outdoor scenarios with MAX settings. I really hope this is just because of the 174.74 beta drivers from Nvidia I'm currently using.
How does it compare to the ATI X1900 or the Nvidia 7300? Is it a lot better or is it pretty much the same?
Weird, I ran the Portal demo at max settings on a 1920x1200 display, and had to turn /on/ vsync to keep it from tearing due to a high frame rate.
Nothing weird about that, vsync on does just that, keeps everything in sync, doesn't let it do more fps than the refresh rate and keeps it from tearing.
I know what it does... I am just saying it is an odd experience for the same game engine to have one situation where the frame rate is much higher than the refresh rate, and another where it is much lower.
Tiger Trouble
The card arrived yesterday, missed shipper and finally have it in hand after paying overnight rate for it. But now I read from you power users that it requires Leper to run.
Dang.
Anybody guess if someone will develop a Tiger driver (or hack) for this thing in the future? And what's with the strange framerates that Krevnik is seeing? Is the performance O.K. for pro apps/games... or are you guys unsure yet?
Thanks!
I guess I'll have to learn Leopard now....
The card arrived yesterday, missed shipper and finally have it in hand after paying overnight rate for it. But now I read from you power users that it requires Leper to run.
Dang.
Anybody guess if someone will develop a Tiger driver (or hack) for this thing in the future? And what's with the strange framerates that Krevnik is seeing? Is the performance O.K. for pro apps/games... or are you guys unsure yet?
Thanks!
I guess I'll have to learn Leopard now....
I have no clue, I did it the other way around. I would have waited to install the driver after the card was installed but nothing bad is going to happen so you may just want to re-install it after the card is in.
To all the people who are asking about the performance of this card vs. the x1900, it is WAY better. For one I can now run all of my games without using smcfancontrol at all which is a huge plus. The card is really smooth and can run all games really well. I was playing around with the Crysis SP Demo with 1680x1050 resolution on HIGH settings and it was running smooth as butter.
Hi Guys,
For those running it and getting poor framerates it may be something else wrong. I haven't received my 8800 for my MacPro yet, but I can tell you that running in Vista on my PC I can run unreal tournament III on my 30" Cinema display at full setting and at 2560x1600 and it's absolutely butter smooth.
Seems should be similar effect in bootcamp playing games there with the same card.
Good luck everyone, can't wait to get mine in the mail.
For those running it and getting poor framerates it may be something else wrong. I haven't received my 8800 for my MacPro yet, but I can tell you that running in Vista on my PC I can run unreal tournament III on my 30" Cinema display at full setting and at 2560x1600 and it's absolutely butter smooth.
Seems should be similar effect in bootcamp playing games there with the same card.
Good luck everyone, can't wait to get mine in the mail.
Not according to an earlier post from bearfeats:
"Let me remind you that our testing has shown this to be a strong 3D OpenGL gaming card but a weak Pro App card (Motion, Aperture, FCP). We believe a Mac OS X compatible Radeon HD 3870 would perform better for Pro Apps. We are urging ATI/AMD to release such a card and will alert you if and when that happens."
my card arrived today
i have a mac pro 2.66ghz
on my 20ich (1680x1050) monitor, wow used to run at average 15fps with my 7300 that shipped with the machine
the 8800 has 55 fps on average
this is both with all settings maxed out
i kind of expected even higher fps rates, the barefeats website gets 116 fps with all settings on max, but with the 2008 macpro
i suppose they use a lower res, or the cpu is part of the bottleneck here
overal i am pretty happy, wow is smooth now all the time
i dont really notice a diff in aperture, but i had no problems with that app speedwise anyway
i have a mac pro 2.66ghz
on my 20ich (1680x1050) monitor, wow used to run at average 15fps with my 7300 that shipped with the machine
the 8800 has 55 fps on average
this is both with all settings maxed out
i kind of expected even higher fps rates, the barefeats website gets 116 fps with all settings on max, but with the 2008 macpro
i suppose they use a lower res, or the cpu is part of the bottleneck here
overal i am pretty happy, wow is smooth now all the time
i dont really notice a diff in aperture, but i had no problems with that app speedwise anyway
Can someone post a photo of the card installed?
I don't seem to have as much clearance as I think I should between the card and the RAM cover (they are touching in my machine).
Thanks!
I don't seem to have as much clearance as I think I should between the card and the RAM cover (they are touching in my machine).
Thanks!
Mine came yesterday. Installed it this afternoon.
I ran the OpenGL benchmark OpenMark on it and my previous graphics cards...
The 8800GT scored 21,621.
X1900XT scored 18,874.
X2600XT scored 7,936
7300GT scored 8,128 (yes, for what ever reason, the 7300GT gives a better OpenGL OpenMark score than the 2600XT, though in Unreal Tournament 2004 the 2600XT was clearly faster).
Leopard effects (dock/stacks, etc) seem much smoother than with the 2600XT. My 1900XT fried itself about 6 months ago, so I can't retest anything with it.
I ran the OpenGL benchmark OpenMark on it and my previous graphics cards...
The 8800GT scored 21,621.
X1900XT scored 18,874.
X2600XT scored 7,936
7300GT scored 8,128 (yes, for what ever reason, the 7300GT gives a better OpenGL OpenMark score than the 2600XT, though in Unreal Tournament 2004 the 2600XT was clearly faster).
Leopard effects (dock/stacks, etc) seem much smoother than with the 2600XT. My 1900XT fried itself about 6 months ago, so I can't retest anything with it.
What strange framerates? My framerates are just fine.
I second the 55fps someone else saw in WoW, but I also hit the 120fps barefeats saw simply by turning down the multisampling to 1x instead of using 4x. For whatever reason, multisampling in WoW on OS X is a huge perf hit. It is a known issue, and has been discussed ad nauseum on the Mac WoW forums. And I run @ 1920x1200 on a 24" display.
But overall, this card has hit the sweet spot for me... C&C3 on max settings at 1920x1200 is smooth, as is Portal (which is a bit /too/ high in the fps department), Sins of the Solar Empire, Supreme Commander, WoW, and so on. The stuff I play is all smooth and looks good.