Okay, I'm buying a G5... Which G card do I get?

idunnoidunno
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
I'm completely hopeless when it comes to graphics cards... and you only have 24 hours until I walk down to my local reseller to order my new machine. (I get a "Key Customer" discount which is better than the student discount)



I would be using it primarily for Maya and Photoshop.



I am looking at getting the Dual 2ghz and splurging for the NVIDEA Ge Force 6800 Ultra DDL... am I heading in the right direction? Argument for or against this set up would be greatly appreciated... but I am ordering tomorrow.



I am sick of using Maya on my G3 400!



iDunno

PS. Onlooker and hmurchison, advice would be greatly appreciated

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    o4blackwrxo4blackwrx Posts: 383member
    If you have that much money laying around why not get a Dual 2.5Ghz?? I got the Dual 2.0Ghz with the ATI Radeon 9600XT and Maya 6 runs great on it. I also use Final Cut Pro and the entire Adobe Creative Suite. But I had a budget to work on since I wasn't paying for it. Up to you though. My suggestions if go 2.5GHz with Ultra or 2.0Ghz with 9600XT (save some money). Depends on if you are going to get a 30" Apple Studio Display as well. If you are not then I don't see getting it even though it is like the best GPU on the planet right now...
  • Reply 2 of 7
    idunnoidunno Posts: 645member
    So you are happy with the Performance with the ATi card and maya 6? I have heard that the nvidea's are better because they use openGl, whereas ATI is Direct X (I am just repeating stuff I have heard - I'm not a techie person)



    Believe me, I would love to save money and go with a cheaper card... I was going for the top nvidea card because I have used the normal nvidea card on a dual 1.8 and I couldn't even open a particle file I had been working on.



    iDunno
  • Reply 3 of 7
    nguyenhm16nguyenhm16 Posts: 203member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by iDunno

    So you are happy with the Performance with the ATi card and maya 6? I have heard that the nvidea's are better because they use openGl, whereas ATI is Direct X (I am just repeating stuff I have heard - I'm not a techie person)





    OpenGL and DirectX are just software interfaces (API) to the video hardware. OpenGL is an open standard, hence the name, available for a number of platforms, though it originated from SGI. DirectX is a proprietary Microsoft Windows-only API.



    What a card support is a matter of the drivers for that card for that particular OS. For MacOS, only OpenGL matters. What you probably heard was that on Windows, NVidia writes better OpenGL drivers for their cards than ATI, which seems to be the case since Doom 3 runs significantly better on a 6800 family card than an X800 card, and it's an OpenGL game. DirectX games show the ATI matching or slightly ahead. Of course, just because, say, NVidia writes awesome OpenGL drivers for Windows does not mean they do so for MacOS X, though again, that actually seems to be the case in reality.
  • Reply 4 of 7
    o4blackwrxo4blackwrx Posts: 383member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by iDunno

    So you are happy with the Performance with the ATi card and maya 6?

    iDunno



    I love it. My iMac G4 800Mhz with Superdrive had an nVidia GeForce 2 and let me tell you this ATI Radeon 9600XT leaves it in the dust. I am using an old Apple Studio Display CRT that is clear on the sides and hooks up to the ADC and I can still run a max resolution of 1600x1200. Now that may not seem impressive but considering this monitor is as old as it is this graphics card pushes it to the extreme. I also play Halo, Unreal Tournament 2004, & Call of Duty and they are simply stunning (yet again I have never played on a $500 GPU). I can't imagine how great a new Apple LCD would look with the resolution (just got to get someone else to buy that for me too \) Sorry for the long answer but if you want to save money I say get a Dual 2.0Ghz simply because you might want more the 4GB of RAM that the Dual 1.8Ghz limits you too. I plan on putting in between 6-8GB because of the size of some of these files. Anywho that's just my :two cents:



    P.S. Save the extra money and get a 23" Apple LCD
  • Reply 5 of 7
    whisperwhisper Posts: 735member
    If you want to be able to use that 30" LCD that Apple's selling, you need to get the 6800. Right now, that's the only Mac graphics card that can drive it.
  • Reply 6 of 7
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    I'd just stick with the 6800 DLL. That card won't get old. Ever.
  • Reply 7 of 7
    playmakerplaymaker Posts: 511member
    stick with the 6800 you will never look back and say I wish I would have saved the extra money. The 6800 should deliver unparaleled performance and especially when working in 3D.
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