Mac Graphics Card Upgrade Question

[Gentle Fury]

I have a MacPro 3,1 with a geforce 8800GT in it...the card is starting to show its age. The only upgrade cards Apple has available is the GT120 which is worse than what I have, the ATI 5770 which is a lot better, and the ATI 5870 which is a LOT LOT better.

Anyone have any of these cards that could make an informed suggestion...or maybe even someone that knows of a PC card that works amazingly in a Mac? I have read that the ATI 6970 will run on Bootcamp but not on Mac side....so that would be great to have the added support in Windows...but I really want the power Mac side too...but the 5870 is a 2 year old card and at this point pretty outdated.

Also if anyone knows of a way to force Mac to work with a better card, like the 6970 or preferably an Nvidia card I am all ears!

[postageallen]

we have two ATI Radeon 4870s which is, I guess last years Mac model. One in an 8 core and one in a quad. They work well enough for everything from GL to intense 3D renderings to smoke, etc etc. I recommend the card and company and compatibility. Unfortunately can't help with the specific models you mentioned.

[Gentle Fury]

Well my past issues have been with ATI in general so I'm just looking if anyone has used the current mac atis with no problem...so that is a positive so far

[ryanfyffe]

Hello Gentle Fury,

Hope this helps: I currently have a Mac Pro Desktop (early 2008 model) and a while back I upgraded to an ATI Radeon HD 4870....now that I bought Nuke, I'm in the market for a CUDA capable graphics adapter.

I see you last post on this topic was Feb...did you get a new card? If so, what did you get? I'm very interested in hearing your experiences. Many thanks.

[ryanfyffe]

My current specs:

Specs: NukeX 6.3v2, Furnace 4.2v5, MacOSX 10.6.8 (Early 2008 Mac Pro Quad-Core Intel Xeon 8xCore w/ 12MB L2 Cache, 6GB 1.6GHz DDR2 FB-DIMM, ATI Radeon HD 4870 x16 512MB)

[robles06]

Friend, in my case i would go directly for Quadro, i just purchased a Quadro 4000 few days back, and all good so far, i like rendering speed.

[ryanfyffe]

Sounds good robles06 , thanks for the reply. I'm curious, are you running Nuke on a Mac?

[robles06]

Sounds good robles06 , thanks for the reply. I'm curious, are you running Nuke on a Mac?

Hi, nope, im not using it, but as i know if you want excellent results on 3D rendering deffinatelly go for a Quadro, i´ve had many pro´s from other friends of these for great 3d results.