Mac 4,1 Nehalem question.

[milcom]

Well, before I begin, I know this would probably be better suited in another threat; however, dont have enough time to look through all the older ones atm.

I'm finally switching over from a pc to a mac. Got tired of all the little window errors that crash the system, auto updates that give you critical errors, and rebooting from the oem windows cd saying it's not compatible version to repair with; even though it's the exact same disc installed when the computer was built. I found a nice 4,1 Nehalem 2.8ghz quad core that I'm looking at. The main question I have is I do a little lite gaming, such as star craft 2 and other similar games. Will the 120gt handle that or shoudl I upgrade to the radeon 5770/80. And another thing I've been reading is that mountain lion has driver support for radeon 6950, which I woudl love to just swap over if drivers allow. Would like to get a little input as to what people think. Oh, on a side note. I've read that crossfire/sli are not supported on a mac platform, so a second gpu doesn't enhance performance at all, just gives independant gpus for each monitor that you use. Is that the case; or have I misunderstood how that is working?

 

[ActionableMango]

5770 is fantastic for "a little lite gaming".

Anything that is not an official Apple card will have various degrees of incompatibility and/or increased effort to make work. It is not well documented because it is a constantly changing environment.

 

[strwrsfrk]

The main question I have is I do a little lite gaming, such as star craft 2 and other similar games. Will the 120gt handle that or shoudl I upgrade to the radeon 5770/80. And another thing I've been reading is that mountain lion has driver support for radeon 6950, which I woudl love to just swap over if drivers allow. Would like to get a little input as to what people think. Oh, on a side note. I've read that crossfire/sli are not supported on a mac platform, so a second gpu doesn't enhance performance at all, just gives independant gpus for each monitor that you use. Is that the case; or have I misunderstood how that is working?

1) For "light gaming," I really like the 5770. I've had a ton of success with XFX -ZHFC and -ZNFC models on eBay. Then I use ATIFLASH to rewrite the ROM with a Mac-specific ROM (though many people say you don't have to this explicitly, I prefer to play it safe).

2) You can run SLI and Crossfire in Windows, but not in Mac OS.

 

[VanneDC]

5770 is fantastic for "a little lite gaming".

Anything that is not an official Apple card will have various degrees of incompatibility and/or increased effort to make work. It is not well documented because it is a constantly changing environment.

ive got a GTX470 and have not had any incompatibilities...

love the card

 

[ActionableMango]

ive got a GTX470 and have not had any incompatibilities...

love the card

I said either incompatibilities OR extra effort.

Either you don't have a boot screen or you flashed the card.

 

[Inconsequential]

Well, before I begin, I know this would probably be better suited in another threat; however, dont have enough time to look through all the older ones atm.

I'm finally switching over from a pc to a mac. Got tired of all the little window errors that crash the system, auto updates that give you critical errors, and rebooting from the oem windows cd saying it's not compatible version to repair with; even though it's the exact same disc installed when the computer was built. I found a nice 4,1 Nehalem 2.8ghz quad core that I'm looking at. The main question I have is I do a little lite gaming, such as star craft 2 and other similar games. Will the 120gt handle that or shoudl I upgrade to the radeon 5770/80. And another thing I've been reading is that mountain lion has driver support for radeon 6950, which I woudl love to just swap over if drivers allow. Would like to get a little input as to what people think. Oh, on a side note. I've read that crossfire/sli are not supported on a mac platform, so a second gpu doesn't enhance performance at all, just gives independant gpus for each monitor that you use. Is that the case; or have I misunderstood how that is working?

The 5870, then the 5770 are the two best cards that will work out of the box with Apple's support.

The 6870 works without flashing, but you get no boot screen and some other things don't work.

Flashing is easy and takes 10 minutes and works perfectly. Also the best performing option per £ (Nearly the performance of the 5870, and much cheaper than an Apple 5870!).

The 6950 kinda works in ML, but does NOT work as well as the 6870 currently does when flashed.

You could get MacVidCards to build you up a GTX580 that would work well too.

Easiest option: 5870/5770
Cheapest option: 6870 < 5770 < 5870 < GTX580 (roughly from memory)
Fastest to slowest: 580 >>> 5870 > 6870 >> 5770 > 4870