What are the practical benefits of ATI 4870 vs. the GT 120

[Garvo]

I'm in the early stages of planning to buy a new Mac Pro. Just waiting for Snow Leopard before I pull the trigger.

I've read over the Apple site a few times, but don't really understand what the practical differences are between the Nvidia card and the ATI.

I'm primarily using After Effects & Photoshop, driving 1 (may go to 2) 23" DVI display, and may occasionally play some Windows games (BF2, et al) under Bootcamp.

Given that kind of a workload, will I see any benefit to ordering the ATI card, or should I spend the money on more RAM instead?

 

[Mackilroy]

For games I'd go with the 4870 (and probably for Photoshop too) but I don't know exactly how much difference it would be for those programs between the two cards. At any rate, 12 GB of RAM seems to be the sweet spot for speed. Some links with more info:

3D Games on the Nehalem Pro.

Core Image

Pro Apps

EXTREME 3D gaming (his title, not mine )

 

[Mac Husky]

Just waiting for Snow Leopard before I pull the trigger.

So am I, but latest rumours are like it will at the earliest be August or September when Snow Leopard is finished to be available in the shops - even if it will be announced in June. But it would be of interest to me, how SL will influence the speed of 4-core and 8-core systems especially for single core apps to decide between a quad and an 8-core. Hoping that SL will increase the speed in single core use of the 2.26 8-core significantly. Have no idea if this is realistic? Otherwise I would go for the quad. On the other hand: August is kind of to far away...

By the way: did you see this thread on same topic?

 

[Garvo]

Thanks for the info & links guys.

From what I've read, it looks like the real benefit of the ATI card is strictly 3D. AE & PS won't be impacted very much.

Thanks

 

[NRose8989]

I thought AE (or specifically Media Encoder CS4) off loads H.264 exports to the GPU. Or is that only on the windows side?

EDIT: Also a quick look into the AE CS4 preferences says "enable openGL", so a faster GPU could help with some things in AE.

 

[Garvo]

I'd like to see some benchmarks on h.264 encoding with the GT120 vs. 4870. If it's significant, it would be worth it for me.

 

[Garvo]

For anyone looking for the answer to this question, here's the best article I've found on the subject:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/04/266ghz-8-core-mac-pro-review.ars

 

[UltraNEO*]

For anyone looking for the answer to this question, here's the best article I've found on the subject:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/04/266ghz-8-core-mac-pro-review.ars

lol....

The Good

• Ridiculous speed for multi-threaded 3D rendering in certain applications
• Even better internal layout than previous models
• Still a very quiet workstation overall
• Good power consumption-to-speed ratio

The Bad

• Eight-core machines are very expensive
• RAM slot count not well matched to triple-channel memory
• No adapters included for mini DisplayPort to DVI
• No workstation-class 3D card option and GT 120 graphics card is painfully underpowered
• Currently, very few applications make full use of eight cores and sixteen threads

The Ugly

• Anyone want to buy a used Quadro FX 5600?

er... nope!