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New Mac Pro Octo-core / 8800GT / Crysis
- Thread starter jrichman63
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yeah i know. The Mac Pro allows you to upgrade the GPU, too... you can't in most other macs.
The first mac that was every "personally" mine (as in, located in my own room) was a PPC 6400 running at 160 MHz... think it had a 603 processor. THAT was readily upgradeable, and I remember my father buying me a new video card for it... I believe it was a voodoo card with TWO WHOLE MEGABYTES of vram. No performance problems... starcraft ran very nicely
Then I bought an iMac DV, with a g3 running at 400 MHz and the GPU soldered onto the mother board. It had EIGHT megs of vram. I believe that the iMacs started the tradition of non-upgradeable GPUs in macs.
My next mac was a REV A iBook G4 running at 933 MHz with 32 megs of vram... soldered onto the mother board.
Now, I game on a REV A intel Imac... 2 GHz intel core duo and an x1600 with 256 megs of vram... once again, the GPU is soldered onto the motherboard.
The towers though, (such as the old g3 towers, g4 towers, g5 towers, and now the mac pros) have always allowed to upgrade more than the all-in-ones, which generally only support upgrading the RAM.
So I haven't owned a computer since I was in 7th grade (in 2000) that would let me upgrade the GPU at all, nor could I upgrade the hard drive in them unless I was willing to pry open the case and compromise my warranty.
You'll be fine though with upgrading
I have a Mac Pro 2.8 with all the goodies ($7535) no monitor included waiting for me to pick it up but I was under the impression you could crossfire two ATI cards in boot camp windows vista 64, now I hear you can't, also to add to my frustration I hear the video card (8800gt) will remain their flagship card for the next year or two, no plans to upgrade it, thats my problem, no one really seems to know for sure. Intel is coming out with the Skulltrain mother board also octo like the Mac but can support for Nvidia SLI and four ATI in Crossfire and will be available in late summer, so I am not sure what I should do.
but I was under the impression you could crossfire two ATI cards in boot camp windows vista 64, now I hear you can't, also to add to my frustration I hear the video card (8800gt) will remain their flagship card for the next year or two, no plans to upgrade it, thats my problem, no one really seems to know for sure. Intel is coming out with the Skulltrain mother board also octo like the Mac but can support for Nvidia SLI and four ATI in Crossfire and will be available in late summer, so I am not sure what I should do.
I have a Mac Pro 2.8 with all the goodies ($7535) no monitor included waiting for me to pick it up
well if you customized it then they're probably not gonna let you return it or anything, but honestly, you'll probably be fine.
You could spend forever waiting for upgrades... things are always being upgraded...
Now, even if apple doesn't start selling anything besides the 8800gt, that doesn't mean you can't use other cards.... i'm not an expert on the issue, but even if something doesn't offer official mac support you might be able to flash the ROM or something like that.
And you might even be able to switch out the motherboard in the future (not totally sure about that one). I think it would work though... since they sell g4 boards that you can install in old g3s or older g4s
Regardless, you're gonna have one hell of a computer.
honestly..i could build a 1k computer that could game better than the mac pro in crysis...
mac pros really aren't good for gaming. FB-DIMMS decrease performance from ram by about 40% for instance...which compensates for any advantage it would have with xeon processors.
add a macbook and you could have both your bases covered for less than a mac pro...
mac pros really aren't good for gaming. FB-DIMMS decrease performance from ram by about 40% for instance...which compensates for any advantage it would have with xeon processors.
add a macbook and you could have both your bases covered for less than a mac pro...
Actually a Mac pro does a great job in Crysis, I used a Mac pro with the Ati 2600 xt at 1200 x 1024 with medium setting and had nice smooth game play. Its not a supper gaming Machine but it does run games well in boot camp, Call of Juarez maximum fps 37, my PC with a 8800gtx fps 49, my other gaming PC with the ATI 3870 x2 gpu, 107 fps. Not bad if you ask me. I am not a Crysis fan, sorta boring. COD Airborne is way better, but thats just me. So what woul the Mac Pro do with the Nvidia 8800gt, I would guess around 58 fps on Call of Juarez, so side by side I would chose the Mac. a $7,000.00 dollar Gamer machine with dual ATI 3870 and a Intel MOBO would be pretty extreme to, but in the business world useless. If you dont need cutting edge I would go Mac less headaches. FB-Dmms, well thats another ball game, depends how you set up you rig and what your going to use it for.
Yes, but what you people don't know is that since the video card's drivers are specificaly for the mac os, and not the windows os, the peformance drops A LOT. If you had a video card for pc you would gain more fps.
Really? I'm getting slowdown on my Quad Core 2.8GHZ Xeon, 6GB RAM, 8800GT with Vista at resolutions a lot less than that....maybe need to tweak it.