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video card imac 2.8ghz 24"

A

andrewline6

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 28, 2008
41
0
im going to be buying a 24" imac 2.8 ghz with 4gb of ram.

ive seen lots of threads saying that everyone should upgrade their graphics processor for gaming but i dont play games. i am wondering.....



if i need to upgrade it for watching movies and my tv tuner?


what does the graphics processor do?


how much better is the upgraded one?


would it be worth the extra $220 just for movies and my tv tuner?


thanks
 
andrewline6 said:
if i need to upgrade it for watching movies and my tv tuner?

what does the graphics processor do?

how much better is the upgraded one?

would it be worth the extra $220 just for movies and my tv tuner?
Click to expand...

No you do not need to upgrade the video card to watch movies or for your TV tuner. The 2600 will perform as well as or better then the 8800 in these areas.

The graphics processor does what it its name indicates. The 8800 card is superior only for 3d games and a limited number of applications that use OpenGL to render 3d.

No it would not be worth the extra $220 for the reasons you described.

Apples future plans are for the operating system to begin to make use of the graphics processor to do more then render graphics, so down the road it will make more sense to have a more powerful one. How much it will help and whether applications will require a complete rewrite to take advantage of the technology is not yet known.
 
gehrbox said:
No you do not need to upgrade the video card to watch movies or for your TV tuner. The 2600 will perform as well as or better then the 8800 in these areas.

The graphics processor does what it its name indicates. The 8800 card is superior only for 3d games and a limited number of applications that use OpenGL to render 3d.

No it would not be worth the extra $220 for the reasons you described.

Apples future plans are for the operating system to begin to make use of the graphics processor to do more then render graphics, so down the road it will make more sense to have a more powerful one. How much it will help and whether applications will require a complete rewrite to take advantage of the technology is not yet known.
Click to expand...

I second that. The 2600 is going to be better for you for the price than the 8800. It beats the 8800 in Apple's pro apps, and really is only good for gaming (and that means windows, you can't be a serious gamer under OS X only, sorry Apple fanboys). Factoring that in, OEM windows XP + 8800 = ~$320 more dollars. Now, you said you didn't game, so that's not the best option for you.

I think that, if apple's current pro apps use the 2600 better than the 8800, then their future technologies (OpenCL) probably will too.
 
I wanted to know the answer to this question so I asked in the apple shop.

My question was: If I pulled up a photo of mine on Flickr on a 24in iMac with an Nvidia card would it look the same as if I pulled it up on a 24in iMac with an ATI card and the bloke said it would 'look different'. But not so different that I would notice. I could not get him to say whether one would render the photo better or worse. He just kept saying 'different'. Neither would he say in which way(s) different. He just kept saying: 'Different'.

Can anyone else help here?
 
Poncho said:
I wanted to know the answer to this question so I asked in the apple shop.

My question was: If I pulled up a photo of mine on Flickr on a 24in iMac with an Nvidia card would it look the same as if I pulled it up on a 24in iMac with an ATI card and the bloke said it would 'look different'. But not so different that I would notice. I could not get him to say whether one would render the photo better or worse. He just kept saying 'different'. Neither would he say in which way(s) different. He just kept saying: 'Different'.
Click to expand...

The person at the Apple shop is mistaken. If images look different on two different 24" Mac's it's because the display quality varies from LCD panel to LCD panel. Has nothing to do with the video card.
 
Poncho said:
I wanted to know the answer to this question so I asked in the apple shop.

My question was: If I pulled up a photo of mine on Flickr on a 24in iMac with an Nvidia card would it look the same as if I pulled it up on a 24in iMac with an ATI card and the bloke said it would 'look different'. But not so different that I would notice. I could not get him to say whether one would render the photo better or worse. He just kept saying 'different'. Neither would he say in which way(s) different. He just kept saying: 'Different'.

Can anyone else help here?
Click to expand...

That's ridiculous. The differences in the video cards will only affect speed for various tasks, not how the tasks are done. They will look the same.
 
Poncho said:
My question was: If I pulled up a photo of mine on Flickr on a 24in iMac with an Nvidia card would it look the same as if I pulled it up on a 24in iMac with an ATI card and the bloke said it would 'look different'. But not so different that I would notice. I could not get him to say whether one would render the photo better or worse. He just kept saying 'different'. Neither would he say in which way(s) different. He just kept saying: 'Different'.
Click to expand...

Well, I did hear that ATI cards produce better image quality while Nvidia cards are more softer in their image. ;)
 
Poncho said:
I wanted to know the answer to this question so I asked in the apple shop.

My question was: If I pulled up a photo of mine on Flickr on a 24in iMac with an Nvidia card would it look the same as if I pulled it up on a 24in iMac with an ATI card and the bloke said it would 'look different'. But not so different that I would notice. I could not get him to say whether one would render the photo better or worse. He just kept saying 'different'. Neither would he say in which way(s) different. He just kept saying: 'Different'.

Can anyone else help here?
Click to expand...

He was referring to the fact that Nvidia uses SuperUltraSparkly pixels and ATI use UberUltraShiny Pixels, to the human eye they look the same, but any advanced computer tech can tell the difference.

BTW, I would avoid having my computer repaired at that shop.

"Sir, your computer is all fixed, well technically it's still broken, but not so broken that you'll notice"

Brilliant :)
 
ihabime said:
He was referring to the fact that Nvidia uses SuperUltraSparkly pixels and ATI use UberUltraShiny Pixels, to the human eye they look the same, but any advanced computer tech can tell the difference.
Click to expand...

LOL! So which is better? My money is on the UberUltraShiny pixels, althougk I do like the idea of UltraSparkly. Decisions, decisions.
 
I could name the store...

OK, it's in Croydon in London. There are two branches of them there.

(They are different, but not so you'd notice.)
 
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