Reason why nVidia is failing hard and Apple is bailing on them

[Joshuarocks]

Another failure round of nVidia.

Ok, can you recommend for me a really nice, and quiet or "semi-quiet" video card for my just acquired G5? Again, I still use my 6-core mac pro for some heavy duty things, but for everyday I am using my G5 + I have older games I play, such as Quake III, DIABLO 2, etc..

I just want to get rid of the excess noise in my machine which is caused by this video card, the 7800 GT. Someone told me the Quadrofx4500 is not a noisy card?

 

[handheldgames]

Add android/tegra as a factor.

Ever wonder why Apple suddenly went with ATI/AMD with almost every Mac's GPU selection?

Well, ladies and germs, boys and squirrels, the answer is simple. nVidia produces GPUs that either:

A. Burn down
B. Have high power consumption
C. Barely within 1% of competition
D. Made from woodscrews and with terrible 1.7% yields

However, let me allow nVidia or rather one of their GPUs show you what I mean.

nVidia GPU burned/zapped.

Not even a moderate overclock. This is nVidia's flagship competing vs AMDs HD6990 and it couldn't even hold an overclock down without blowing up.

Don't get me wrong, nVidia has made great GPUs, but as of late, their offerings are really bad in the high end sector [GTX460 and GTX560 are exceptional products for their prices].

 

[jav6454]

Ok, can you recommend for me a really nice, and quiet or "semi-quiet" video card for my just acquired G5? Again, I still use my 6-core mac pro for some heavy duty things, but for everyday I am using my G5 + I have older games I play, such as Quake III, DIABLO 2, etc..

I just want to get rid of the excess noise in my machine which is caused by this video card, the 7800 GT. Someone told me the Quadrofx4500 is not a noisy card?

QuadroFX cards are bad for gaming. Quadro cards are workstation cards that will never perform well under gaming conditions.

You can use the GeForce 6000 series GPUs... I believe the Power Mac G5 (the last one) used the GeForce 6600 GPU with 256 MB of Graphics RAM. Optional were the GeForce 7800 or QuadroFX4500. None of those suit you so, you need to go back down to the GeForce 6600.

 

[Joshuarocks]

QuadroFX cards are bad for gaming. Quadro cards are workstation cards that will never perform well under gaming conditions.

You can use the GeForce 6000 series GPUs... I believe the Power Mac G5 (the last one) used the GeForce 6600 GPU with 256 MB of Graphics RAM. Optional were the GeForce 7800 or QuadroFX4500. None of those suit you so, you need to go back down to the GeForce 6600.

Ok, I resolved the situation, but not quite.. it appears the 7800 GT was full of dust bunnies.. so without compressed air, I used my mouth to forcefully blow air into the fan intake and tons of black crap came out. However, the problem has still not been totally resolved as I hear the noise, though it goes in and out sometimes.. right now its semi-quiet, but i can hear it.. it sounds like a glass type sound.. but compared to yesterday it sounded horrible.

At this point I just want a silent video card with great performance.. and someone told me the Quadro fx 4500 512MB is a very silent card, but has a fan rather than a heatsink.. I do have on order a 6600 nvidia(256mb, not 128).

Too bad I can't use a GT 120 in this thing

 

[DarwinOSX]

Not true at all that ATI have always performed better.
Also Apple supplies the drivers.
As others have said it is cyclical. People trying to make an absolute statement about either AMD or Nvidia gpu's and Macs don't know very much about the subject.

Well, ATI/AMD cards have pretty much always performed better in OS X for the same approximate power level.

I think that's almost entirely due to drivers, but personally, I see no reason to bother with Nvidia if the situation is never likely to improve, and it really hasn't, yet.

And if drivers are being improved to the point where we'll have multiple choices that don't even necessitate flashing, well, then OS X users will be running out of reasons to use Nvidia cards unless they need a Quadro.