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Graphics reccomendation

A

ashman70

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 20, 2010
980
13
I would like to replace the Apple 5770 in my Mac Pro 3,1 with a newer Nvidia card, just not sure what to get. I do game in OSX, and I recently got Batman Arkham City, the lag is noticeable with my current setup. I know I can put an Nvidia 670 in this machine, but not sure if I need to spend $400 to get better performance over my 5770. Other then gaming I do work with photos in Lightroom and Photoshop Elements 11, I sometimes encode video using handbrake, otherwise nothing else heavy.

What would you suggest? I would like to game, I run three 23" LED monitors currently and whatever card I get has to support this setup.

660ti?

Thanks
 
ashman70 said:
I would like to replace the Apple 5770 in my Mac Pro 3,1 with a newer Nvidia card, just not sure what to get. I do game in OSX, and I recently got Batman Arkham City, the lag is noticeable with my current setup. I know I can put an Nvidia 670 in this machine, but not sure if I need to spend $400 to get better performance over my 5770. Other then gaming I do work with photos in Lightroom and Photoshop Elements 11, I sometimes encode video using handbrake, otherwise nothing else heavy.

What would you suggest? I would like to game, I run three 23" LED monitors currently and whatever card I get has to support this setup.

660ti?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Half way through I thought 660ti, perhaps the 670 would last you longer though?
 
ashman70 said:
I would like to replace the Apple 5770 in my Mac Pro 3,1 with a newer Nvidia card, just not sure what to get. I do game in OSX, and I recently got Batman Arkham City, the lag is noticeable with my current setup. I know I can put an Nvidia 670 in this machine, but not sure if I need to spend $400 to get better performance over my 5770. Other then gaming I do work with photos in Lightroom and Photoshop Elements 11, I sometimes encode video using handbrake, otherwise nothing else heavy.

What would you suggest? I would like to game, I run three 23" LED monitors currently and whatever card I get has to support this setup.

660ti?

Thanks
Click to expand...

If gaming isn't your primary purpose and you just play some games in Mac OS X (Not the latest and very demanding titles) then I'd say go with a 660Ti. It's already a beast of a card and will last you quite some time.
 
I had a 660 ti, and I can honestly tell you for certain games you'll regret getting it. it's a great card but it has a gimped memory bus, and it hurts the performance pretty bad in bandwidth heavy games. Games like metro 2033 honestly aren't all that playable on it. My recommendation? Get the gtx 670, and overclock the thing to a stock gtx 680's clocks. You'll get close to a gtx 680's perfmance for less. Running 3 monitors, I don't think a gtx 660 ti could handle it, it's simply too gimped compared to it's older brothers.

Also, newegg has a deal going on for a gtx 670 that's already overclocked:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127685

It'll have much better cooling over the reference design gtx 670, which will allow you to overclock it even further, possibly surpassing the gtx 680 or atleast equaling it.
 
Got the 670 but I have to say I don't know if it was worth it. I think my system is still a little long in the tooth, the game I bought it for, Batman Arkham City is still laggy, not sure why, but I guess its because, as I say, my system is a little old? Or perhaps there is a way to make it a little faster. I will have to by an HDMI to DVI as the display port to DVI adapter I have does not work, so I am only running two monitors at the moment off both DVI connectors.
 
I also have a 3.1 MacPro and using a 5870 video card and wanted a graphics boost. I installed a 680 in it and everything seemed to be installed properly, but my gaming performance didn't seem to be much better than the 5870. In my opinion your options are limited, certainly don't see where putting any of the 600 series will give much of a performance boost.
 
ashman70 said:
Got the 670 but I have to say I don't know if it was worth it. I think my system is still a little long in the tooth, the game I bought it for, Batman Arkham City is still laggy, not sure why, but I guess its because, as I say, my system is a little old? Or perhaps there is a way to make it a little faster. I will have to by an HDMI to DVI as the display port to DVI adapter I have does not work, so I am only running two monitors at the moment off both DVI connectors.
Click to expand...

Brand new game, unsupported hardware, be patient :) You're probably CPU limited with a high-end card like the 670, and it might take an OS update or two (same for NVIDIA driver updates) for any driver improvements for a new game like this to be released.
 
I've played a few games on my 680 and they run far better in Windows than OSX. Perhaps it's a lack of effort on the Mac version, bit it's probably related to the drivers more than anything.
 
Mac OS X uses OpenGL drivers for games, try installing Bootcamp and Windows 7 on the same machine, you may see a difference with DirectX graphics.
 
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