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quadro
- Thread starter cmaier
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For MacBook?? Ummm...
But if you meant MacPro then maybe - it depends. For Motion and other 3D aspects of FC studio yes, it would be the best card by far. For the 2D video editing and GUI bits I doubt you would notice much difference.Open GL games? Fantastically! Tho more on the beauty marks than the frame-rates. For DirectX Games in a PC - it would kinda suck! Not "bad" though... just not great.
It depends what you want out of a card. Workstation grade Quadros are balanced more for stability than break-neck frame rates in HL2 and etc. This card will kick total ass in OpenGL based games tho and be much MUCH more beautiful at the same time. Games like Quake4 and ut2k4 become just drop-dead gorgeous when tuned for beauty at maximum screen sizes. At that end the Quadros can achieve FPS rates that are very playable while Gaming cards would either choke or not actually render all the features you turned on correctly.
For gameplay it's certainly not worth the added (10x) expense tho. And for directx based games like HL2 performance (FPS) will be lower than many or most current $200 cards. I'll admit that it's pretty fun to turn on every beauty setting and max out all the quality levels on a 3840x1200 screen stretched across dual 24" LCDs and still get 65FPS in Quake 4.
Game/Consumer grade cards are designed from the ground up with a focus toward direct3d applications like 90% of the games. Workstation graphic cards are clocked slower for stability reasons, and focus heavily on OpenGL applications with more advanced rendering capabilities. Makers of apps like Maya, 3DS Max, and AutoCad and MicroStation actually tune their applications for use on Quadro cards and Quadro cards offer special features (plug-in API, etc.) just for those applications.
If you're working in Maya or your business is AutoCAD there is no substitute and the performance advantage to this card and others in it's class is astounding. If not, then this card is kind of a waste of money for you.
EDIT: Hehehhe I like this quote from the product page:
No mini-display port = Epic Fail!
Are you part of the target market for this video card?
For MacBook
If you're working in Maya or your business is AutoCAD there is no substitute and the performance advantage to this card and others in it's class is astounding. If not, then this card is kind of a waste of money for you.
I've been looking for good video card options for my Mac Pro for use with Maya. I can never seem to get straight answers regarding whether or not the mac version of Maya takes advantage of the various video cards. You mentioned other cards in this 'class'. What are you referring to? Any info would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Brian
Indeed, or even 240 cores. Which brings me to why I do not understand the price-performance of this card. It may be very good for folk doing high end 3D graphics. But my latest setup consists of an 8800GT and a 2Gig GTX 285 in an 08 Pro, with the latter sitting quietly doing no harm under OS X 10.5.6 and both cards zooming along under Bootcamp. The 285 has 240 cores, 2G RAM and the shader clock just under 1.5GHz. The Quadro may well have some good memory bandwidth and 3D stuff, but why does anyone imagine I want to spend 1800 dollars on it just to get the OS X boot of a mere 192 cores and only 1.5G RAM (for my purposes this is no better than the obsolete first gen 260 with a bit more memory). The 8800GT already has 112 cores. I just hope Nvidia fill the gap - if they have figured out the ROM and EFI64 for a Quadro under 10.5.7 they can do it for a 285/295 in hours. The 295 presents power issues but a decent 285 Mac version would be easy for them to ship with the right ROM and two PCI power cables. I would buy that card tomorrow - and probably several more if it works OK. Meantime credit card stays in wallet while I see what the ROM hackers get up to.
Keep your gaming cards i want a Quadro that i can use my apps on OSX and boot camp into 3D Max.
To my knowledge the Quadro FX 4800 uses a 384-bit memory interface, hence the lower memory bandwidth of 76.8 GB/s.
This isn't a new card after all.
One thing that strikes me as odd is that the BIOS equivalent comes with two DisplayPort connectors and one dual-DVI connector.
lets make some math, with 384-bus, memory should run on 1600Mhz ddr (800 mhz real), recent nv cards uses 2100-2200 Mhz ddr clock.
my little bro asked me if we can install this GPU in MBP unibody XD, wondering anyone know how big is it?
Mostly the Quadro line, yeah. But the ATI FirePro line too I guess. (?)
And yes, Maya takes full advantage of Quadro on Mac... Same as PC - and Linux too I think. (used to for Linux anyway.. I imagine they still do - tho I've partially dropped Maya since AutoDesk picked it up... I hate AutoDesk.)
For the hardware rendering I believe you still have to set some environment variables in the Maya.env file if you want the max performance from your Quadro (or GeForce too for that matter). I think the two are maya_enable_hwr_cg_programs and maya_hwr_cg_fragment_profile but you'll have to search a Maya forum to find out what to set them to as I forget just now.
Even without those set you'll get many times the performance in any quad-view, with all high-poly models, and anytime you use overlays of any kind - even menu drop-downs and stuff. Everything just feels more fluid and stable. It's a nice experience.
In gaming gfx cards you mostly pay for the hardware, here you pay for the driver capabilities.
Quadro cards are notoriously known to be clocked lower in regards to memory for stability reasons.
Instead of taking my words for it, why not get the words/text directly from the horses mouth - Quadro FX 4800 for Mac
No one has one yet. It needs 10.5.7 just to operate.
10.5.7 has not been released yet.
Some one asked how big the card was:
But do MBP's even have a video card slot??? No, right?
And why did you quote me?
I'm guessing those who are buying a $2k video card will be using something better and a lot more expensive than an Apple monitor, hence using DVI. You could use the MDP to DVI-DL, but have Apple got that working correctly yet?
Quadro cards are notoriously known to be clocked lower in regards to memory for stability reasons.
Instead of taking my words for it, why not get the words/text directly from the horses mouth - Quadro FX 4800 for Mac
Yeah , i saw.
That isn't even physically possible. Please look at your computer and then look at the card. The card is three times as thick as your computer. Read before posting.
Not to mention the fact that it is a laptop and no laptops exist with changeable graphics cards.
My goldfish's brother's owner's pet cat asked me if he could install this graphics card in a Mac Plus from 1986. Anyone?
Yes. In fact, it will run crysis at 200fps maxed out while it kills terrorists in couter strike by itself.
Doesn't Snow Leopard state that you need an Apple GPU to use it or something? How does that effect this..
"display attached to an apple supplied video card"
It's not about gaming for me (though it might well be for some) - it's about parallel scientific programming with CUDA and/or OpenCL, and getting value for money. Also, a noted already, Apple has a general OS/app GPU acceleration strategy with OpenCL - it won't exactly come to the masses with cards this far out on the price-performance graph.
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Wow. This is a great upgrade. I want one. I don't mind not having a mini display port.
Wow. This is a great upgrade. I want one. I don't mind not having a mini display port.