The 5870 is more powerful than the 6870. I know, I was a little caught off guard by this also. I guess the 6870 is pretty close in performance tho, and it does use a lot less power, if that matters to you. Based on what I've read, the 6870 will work out of the box with 10.6.8 & Lion. You will not have a boot screen, (until the drivers load) and DVD player won't work. You can flash a EFI bios onto a card and remedy this. For sheer power, the Apple 5870 is the best thing on the market that completely 100% works out of the box on a mac. It's a great card, but most certainly on the tail end of it's life. the 7000 series cards are already just around the corner, and the higher end 6xxx cards are better, but are not really that supported in a mac pro.
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Upgrade Nvidia 8800GT (3,1)?
- Thread starter BigYellow
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The 5870 is more powerful than the 6870. I know, I was a little caught off guard by this also. I guess the 6870 is pretty close in performance tho, and it does use a lot less power, if that matters to you. Based on what I've read, the 6870 will work out of the box with 10.6.8 & Lion. You will not have a boot screen, (until the drivers load) and DVD player won't work. You can flash a EFI bios onto a card and remedy this. For sheer power, the Apple 5870 is the best thing on the market that completely 100% works out of the box on a mac. It's a great card, but most certainly on the tail end of it's life. the 7000 series cards are already just around the corner, and the higher end 6xxx cards are better, but are not really that supported in a mac pro.
If you want a Pre Flashed card this is the place.
I flashed my own Sapphire Vapor-X HD5870 card last year and use it for everything I do on my MP. It doesn't have a boot screen but if I want to switch OS I can do so from System Preferences/Start Up Disk in OS X and Control Panel/Bootcamp in Win 7 it just requires booting into what ever it was previously set to first.
If you want a Nvidia card pre flashed then check out this seller on eBay he charges a reasonable price for his efforts: http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/macvidcards/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686
I flashed my own Sapphire Vapor-X HD5870 card last year and use it for everything I do on my MP. It doesn't have a boot screen but if I want to switch OS I can do so from System Preferences/Start Up Disk in OS X and Control Panel/Bootcamp in Win 7 it just requires booting into what ever it was previously set to first.
If you want a Nvidia card pre flashed then check out this seller on eBay he charges a reasonable price for his efforts: http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/macvidcards/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686
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The 6870 is close but not quite as powerful as the 5870. Less than half the price (mac version of 5870) makes it very good value though.
The drivers in 10.6.8 and Lion mean the card works out of the box but there is no boot screen unless you have a second video card. I suppose you could work around this using startup disk in OSX and Win7 or do it without visual confirmation.
8800GT vs. 6870 no contest.
Anandtech's bench for 2010 GPUs shows the 8800GT as less than half the speed of a 5870.
A 6870 being 90% of the power of a 5870 means that the 8800GT will have its arse handed to it by that too.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU/88
Note all their tests are under Windows, some using DirectX others OpenGL.
Anandtech's bench for 2010 GPUs shows the 8800GT as less than half the speed of a 5870.
A 6870 being 90% of the power of a 5870 means that the 8800GT will have its arse handed to it by that too.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU/88
Note all their tests are under Windows, some using DirectX others OpenGL.
Sooo... Biggest bang for my buck:
1. Upgrade to 4gb ram ($80ish)
2. Upgrade to 14gb ram ($180ish)
3. Upgrade to 6870 ($200ish)
2GB is just too little.
Even with the fastest card you'll be having hiccups because you run out of RAM.
I have a GTX285, which is a bit slower than the 5870, but far faster than the 8800GT, and with 6GB RAM I usually have like 1-2GB free ram while gaming.
Even with the fastest card you'll be having hiccups because you run out of RAM.
I have a GTX285, which is a bit slower than the 5870, but far faster than the 8800GT, and with 6GB RAM I usually have like 1-2GB free ram while gaming.
In that case, 4GB more would probably do it.
I'm looking at 2x 2GB for $79, vs 6x 2GB for $155. As much as the "value" is attractive, 6GB total would probably be the most I would find useful? It's been a long time since i shopped for RAM... I don't know how many more years I would need to be using this computer for ANOTHER 6 GB to be useful to me
Take into consideration that FB-DIMM prices will most probably raise, as the technology is outdated by now. So _if_ you would need more Ram later down the road you would probably have to pay (perhaps significantly) higher prices than today.