Is there a relatively inexpensive video card upgrade for my MacPro?

[M A V I C]

rjmacs wrote:
[quote=M A V I C]
[quote=rjmacs]
You'll get more speed boost in day-to-day activities by maxxing out the RAM and getting a 10K RPM spindle-speed boot drive, not replacing the video card. What do you have in this machine?

Check the numbers of 2TB drives and compare them against the 10k RPM drives. In many castes, the 2TB drives are faster.
Link?
Tom's Hardware has a ton of numbers.

[Ted King]

I think you'd appreciate more of a boost in the faster boot-up times (both system and application boot-up times) you would get from installing a SSD drive:

http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-LightingFast.html

http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-InstallingSSD.html (Scroll down to Installation in older Mac Pros (2006 - 2008))


You can buy a small capacity (30 gig) SSD with decent performance for about $110 here:

http://www.buy.com/prod/ocz-technology-v...57607.html


Or you could go for a bigger capacity (60 gig) SSD for about $164 (after rebates):

http://www.amazon.com/OCZ-Technology-Agi...slickdeals&ie=UTF8&s=pc&qid=1269968588&sr=1-1

Of course there are plenty of other SSD choices if you look around - I'm sure Other World Computing has really fast SSD's, though they may cost more. And I think you need this for about $20:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20T...y/MPQXES2/


I haven't tried this with my 2006 3GHz Mac Pro yet but I'm tempted. Maybe someone else here has given it a try and can tell how much difference it made.

[DRR]

I agree Gene - while you could upgrade your video, you'll probably get more bang for the buck elsewhere.

For that machine I'd have 4GB minimum, 6-8GB is even better. If you are still booting off the original hard drive I'd say go for one of the newer, faster, hard drives (1.5TB is a value sweet spot right now)

Either one of those upgrades would be money better spent than a video card at this point.

[Doc]

M A V I C wrote:
If you're not in Photoshop or other graphics or video editing apps a lot, the then only advantage you're going to get is if you like to have a ton windows open or play really high quality videos.

Snow Leopard uses GPU acceleration for the GUI.

Note the supported graphics cards:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html

OpenCL

requires one of the following graphics cards or graphics processors:

* NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 9600M GT, GeForce 8600M GT, GeForce GT 120, GeForce GT 130, GeForce GTX 285, GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GS, Quadro FX 4800, Quadro FX5600

* ATI Radeon HD 4670, ATI Radeon HD 4850, Radeon HD 4870

[SKYLANE]

I bought the following card at Fry's for $50 with $10 rebate a few weeks ago: PNY GeForce 210

I installed it into a Dell GX280, not sure if it is Mac compatible. It drives my Samsung 23" 1080 monitor just fine.

[jdc]

SKYLANE wrote:
I bought the following card at Fry's for $50 with $10 rebate a few weeks ago: PNY GeForce 210

I installed it into a Dell GX280, not sure if it is Mac compatible. It drives my Samsung 23" 1080 monitor just fine.

Its not. Not even sure why you would mention it?

[AllGold]

Probably because long ago when Apple went Intel, many thought the promise of cheap video cards interchangeable between Macs and PC would finally be fulfilled.

Unfortunately, the switch to Intel did NOT make PC video cards Mac compatible. You still have to buy cards specifically engineered for Intel Macs (or dig deep into geekdom to flash them with Mac-compatible PROM images).