Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 confirmed for June release

I find this development very intriguing to say the least...

How much of a price markup do folks expect on this card? Double the PC price or more? That being, $700+ considering the 285 is around ~$350 currently.

I almost said on par with the PC price then immediately corrected myself :eek:


- Stan
 
iBug2 said:
I have 8GB ram and I can see 10fps if Dalaran is really crowded. Otherwise I'm at 90-100 fps as well.
Click to expand...

You should let WoW use more than 2 cores if you have a Mac Pro.
If you have 4 cores or more, you should modify the config.wtf

By default, it should read somewhere (I got a quad Nehalem MP, but it detects 8 cores because of HT)

SET coresDetected "8"
SET processAffinityMask "3"

You need to change "SET processAffinityMask" to 15 instead of 3.
This will allow WoW to use more cores. You will notice an increase in FPS and CPU usage.
WoW used like 3% of my CPU according to iStat menus before the tweak - and 22-25% after.

Save the config.wtf and fire up WoW - I got about 15-20 more FPS in Dalaran than before, roughly at 35-50 now when its really crowded.
There is also an blue post on the WoW forums regarding this.
 
10THzMac said:
OK, done that - what next?
Click to expand...

Did it too.

The Radeon HD 4890 even works ;)

Radeon4890.png
 
Yeah, in slot 2.

Inserting it alone in slot 1 will not boot OSX since the PC card does not carry EFI
I have a Mac Pro 06 and only my 1st slot is x16
 
Now that's just fantastic news, I can not wait to get one of these for my octo 3.2 MP anno 08.
 
Cindori said:
No, graphic cards are secured by 24 screws in 3 different sizes. Also you have to solder a power connector to the GPU processor. Failure to install a graphic card correctly may therefore lead to incorrect volt values, possibly frying each and every component in your computer. It's kinda common, you should google it.
Click to expand...

OMG! Now this is funny! LOL!
 
StanD said:
How much of a price markup do folks expect on this card? Double the PC price or more? That being, $700+ considering the 285 is around ~$350 currently.
- Stan
Click to expand...

I don't think much markup at all, if EVGA is the one selling the card. I would hope their price would be comparable to the PC variant. Apple for some reason likes charging double for video cards. And the EFI implementation and shoddy drivers they write are not worth double.
 
Wild-Bill said:
I don't think much markup at all, if EVGA is the one selling the card. I would hope their price would be comparable to the PC variant. Apple for some reason likes charging double for video cards. And the EFI implementation and shoddy drivers they write are not worth double.
Click to expand...

I'm wondering about the price as well. I think they'll mark it up because they can. The only competition (if you don't go the flashing route) is the 4870, so I imagine they'll take that price and add 25%.

Sorry for my ignorance, but I've not heard of EVGA before. Do they reproduce the cards under licence from Nvidia?
 
irishgrizzly said:
I'm wondering about the price as well. I think they'll mark it up because they can. They only competition (if you don't go the flashing route) is the 4870, so I imagine they'll take that price and add 25%.

Sorry for my ignorance, but I've not heard of EVGA before. Do they reproduce the cards under licence from Nvidia?
Click to expand...

Yes they do, I've owned two EVGA cards in my PC's prior to owning a Mac and I can't fault them.
 
Another interesting fact about EVGA is that when we were all pondering how to flash PC 8800 ROMs to have the Apple 8800 code, EVGA was one of the few manufacturers putting a large enough ROM on a PC 8800 to allow it to be flashed. Given that they will be making the Mac edition 285 it *might* be an easy task to rejig one of their PC cards to have the EFI boot stuff. If anyone has a PC285 can they find out how large the ROM chip is somehow? My PC 285 dumped a 64k file, but I do not know whether that is the file or the chip.
 
If you put a pc card in slot 2, and i mac card i slot 1,
will the pc card run full fans in mac os and make a lot of noise?
is there a way to turn the card of in mac os ?
 
MyRumors said:
If you put a pc card in slot 2, and i mac card i slot 1,
will the pc card run full fans in mac os and make a lot of noise?
is there a way to turn the card of in mac os ?
Click to expand...

AFAIK you'd have to swap the cards when booting into each OS, as it will only recognise the card in the first slot.
 
MyRumors said:
If you put a pc card in slot 2, and i mac card i slot 1,
will the pc card run full fans in mac os and make a lot of noise?
is there a way to turn the card of in mac os ?
Click to expand...

My 285 shuts up when the startup chime occurs, but others complain of fans blasting all the time.
 
To be clear . . .

Any idea on how much faster/better the GTX 285 will be over the 4870? Looked on Barefeats but see no testing on the GTX 285.

I believe the GTX 285 won't be a custom option by Apple so I will have to buy it on my own, correct? Naturally if that's the case then I would get the Pro with the GT 120 card. I could then try to sell the GT 120. Any advantage of keeping the GT 120 if I only plan to use one monitor?

Will installing the GTX 285 be as easy as installing a HDD in the Pro?
 
I don't know how OpenCL will work in Snow Leopard but in Cuda you can use an unconnected (to a monitor) graphics card for calculations. So, for example, the 120 could drive the monitor and the 285 do some powerful parallel computing without danger of interference from the display grabbing memory.

Given that you probably couldn't get much money for it anyway, it is probably worth hanging onto the 120 as it is always useful to have a backup should display problems arise.
 
Luba Cox said:
Any idea on how much faster/better the GTX 285 will be over the 4870?
Click to expand...

I made the following chart after looking at almost 60 benchmarks from numerous tech/gaming web sites.
I used Enemy Territory: Quake Wars because it is OpenGL.
This chart is for PCs of course but it may give you an idea of the power of the top 11 video cards and how they compare to each other.
Unless nVidia has improved it's Mac drivers, this chart is probably not apropos for Macs.

VC.jpg
 
If I did the calculation correctly, the nVdia 285 is 34% faster than the ATI 4870. And looking at Barefeats the 4870 is about (it varies) 25% faster than the ATI 4850.

Mathematically, can we say the 285 is 59% (34+25) faster than the 4850??

Topper said:
I made the following chart after looking at almost 60 benchmarks from numerous tech/gaming web sites.
I used Enemy Territory: Quake Wars because it is OpenGL.
This chart is for PCs of course but it may give you an idea of the power of the top 11 video cards and how they compare to each other.
Unless nVidia has improved it's Mac drivers, this chart is probably not apropos for Macs.

VC.jpg
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back