Mac Pro ATi vs Nvidia the real reasons...

[Alex Carr]

Anyone have detailed specs on the 8800GT and the ATI 2600 XT ?

So far I've discovered that only special edition 8800's have more than 700 mhz GPU, however an ATI 2600 XT has at least 800 mhz in cheapest model.

This would mean even though the ATI has 256 MB RAM the GPU is almost 15% faster than the 8800GT.

I do not doubt drivers for either of these cards, I doubt the actual Hardware itself.

So it seems Nvidia is not a faster GPU,

 

[Matthew Rogers]

Maybe the ATI runs at a faster MHz, but all the tests show that the 8800 is a MUCH faster card then the ATI. I have the ATI and like it, but will be getting the 8800 sometime in the future.

Matthew

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Edit > I don't know the clock speed of the current ATI 2600 model Apple is using. Not off the top of my head, I'll have to go dig it up or test one.

The 8800GT cards that Apple is shipping are clocked at 600MHz, some people are claiming success getting to 700MHz without overheating when tweaking the card under bootcamp / Windows. But this doesn't carry over into OS X obviously, unless someone as an EFI hack out there.

Either way, the 8800GT spanks the 2600HD all over the yard. Both in my own experience and in every benchmark I've seen. Apple and Windows...

Clock speed is only one factor, the 8800GT is just an all-around superior GPU compared to the 2600HD.

 

[Curran Giddens]

Either way, the 8800GT spanks the 2600HD all over the yard. Both in my own experience and in every benchmark I've seen. Apple and Windows...

Clock speed is only one factor, the 8800GT is just an all-around superior GPU compared to the 2600HD.

Just thought I would add that Rob said the 8800GT and the 2600HD performed about the same in RedCine....

 

[mgaldieri@gmail.com]

Hi guys! First post here!
According to barefeats.com's comparisons, the ATI 2600HD performs better than the nVidia 8800GT in applications that make use of the Mac OSX's CoreImage technology like Apple's Color and Motion. I'm not sure if Red Alert! or RedCine take any advantadge of this technology, but if your planning to grade your images in FCS, it looks like you're better off with the ATI route.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

Nvidia 8800GT 512 MB for sure outperforms ATI X1900XT 512 MB in all apps on Mac OS X and BootCamp XP on my "old" Mac Pro 8 core 3.GHz that has PCIe 1.0 specification.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

If there is an issue with slowness of the 8800GT in CoreImage, it would have to be a driver issue, the card stomps the ATI everywhere else. Then again, I have to say I haven't seen any evidence of this slowness -- Although, I haven't conducted any comparative tests.

REDCINE uses OpenGL, not CoreImage. RED Alert doesn't use any GPU acceleration at all. As for FCS, I'm not sure how Color is implemented but it (as Final Touch), predates most of the CoreImage / CoreAnimation stuff. I'd be curious to see how well Color performs on my system with the ATI, but I can grade 2K DPX sequences in real-time with my current setup. In my experience, Color depends more on a fast drive system and fast CPUs than on the video card.

 

[Patrick Tresch]

...I can grade 2K DPX sequences in real-time with my current setup.

Just interested about your current setup. Do you have a Tangent or JL cooper control? What HDrives...

Thanks

Pat

 

[ATF]

Hello,

The 8800gt upgrade that Apple offered for first generation Mac Pro users is suffering from a poor driver. Here are some tests performed over at barefeats.

http://barefeats.com/harper10.html

If you read much over at Arstechnica (http://www.arstechnica.com), some of the discussions have found the cards are generally fast in everything, but suffer in CoreImage applications (Final Cut Studio, etc.). Although some people have reported having problems in basic operations, such as the finder, with "stuttering" when moving things about.

I almost ordered it, but decided to wait for a bit until the get 10.5.3 out. Hopefully they'll have a updated driver for it.

I have a first generation X1900XT's which has a lot issues with dust and overheating causing visual graphics corruption in Leopard. I replaced the fan on it and now it seems to be functioning better.

Best!

ATF

 

[Alex Carr]

Have a look at this, These are all Windows tests... However Scores can be helpful determining how one could perform on a Mac,

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...1616,1612,1576,1588,1639,1638,1609,1607,1604,

I'm looking for more tests from ATi 3000 series... But this shows how much a 8800 compares to an Ati 2600 pro. And a X1950 has better performance than a 2600...

Video cards are separated into 300 400 500 600 800 and 900 950 etc... a 600 of one series is not better than a 800 or 900 of another series...

Meaning a 1950 is evenly matched to a 2600... and the 8800 are twice as fast as the 2600... however a 2900 is near the same as 8800...

Depending on the exact specs of the Mac cards these values could hold true, even in a PC world where you run Redcine these performances do compare considerably

 

[David Cox]

10.5.3

10.5.3

I just read this from the macworld website. Looks like we do have updated drivers for the cards. This necessitates a before and after test with the same exact render to see what, if any, speed improvements occur. I looking forward to a 8800GT performance increase. I will test when I upgrade. I will upgrade when I get the all is clear.

From MacWorld website:

Something that’s not mentioned at all in Apple’s note, but is clearly quite important, are the revised graphics drivers for ATI and Nvidia graphics cards. The 10.5.3 update supposedly delivers improved graphics performance—something that was hinted at in this week’s news on Delicious Library 2.0, which shipped with a warning that those not running 10.5.3 will experience graphics slowdowns. Digging through the installer file, I can see that there are updated extensions for a large number of ATI and Nvidia cards (including on-board video in the mini and MacBooks) in the 10.5.3 update.

Dave