Whats the fastest video card for osx?

[venturi]

Yes, the official answer is a 5870 from apple.

But my Q is what is the most vid card I can get (fully functional) for a 2010 mac pro that will run in OSX ?

Can a 2gb ram 5870 run in OSX, fully functional?
Can a gtx 590 run?

CAN A GTX 480 be made fully functional under OSX???

Saphire toxic 2gb 5870, can it be flashed, tricked, etc?
Eyefinity 6, 2gb?
Anything?

I have tried the quadro 4000, bitter diappointment, lathargic. Card sucked, slower than 285gtx. Slower than 5770. Lots of driver issues as well.

GTX 285, was ok, but the 5870 radeon from mac was better.
Radeon 5870 is ok but at 2560x1600 it slows down substantially.


So, in OSX, my only choice is a 1gb 5870?

I'm willing to flash and do the driver tweak thing and put in inhectors, etc - but at the end of the process it needs to perform better than the appleapproved radeon 5870.

So are there any choices or the best that can be done is the current approved offering? What can be flashed, tricked, fooled etc into running flawlessly in OSX?


My current build is a Dec build mac pro, 12 core 2.93, 64gb ram. I only need to run 1 or two or three monitors at 2560x1600 each



Thank you

 

[Mackilroy]

As far as I'm aware the 1 GB 5870 is the fastest card you can currently easily get working – I know in the past that the Rominator and others had found what they referred to as a '2 gig bug' where cards with that much VRAM had a lot of issues working.

I believe that people have gotten the GTX 480 to work, but I don't recall if it was their sole card or if they also had a helper card in to enable booting.

 

[CyberCat]

The GTX 590 hasn't been released yet, so it's anybody's guess if it would work with a Mac Pro, but from what I've seen it would be your best bet as far as high end gaming performance. From what I understand it will require 2x 8-pin connectors so you'd probably need some kind of auxiliary power supply to drive it. I'd say if gaming is a priority your best bet might be to go the hack route, good luck!

 

[derbothaus]

The fastest supported card is the ATI 5870. Fastest supported card for CUDA and current gpu acceleration is the retired GTX 285. You can read up and try your luck flashing PC cards like the GTX 580 but the GTX 480 sucked anyways. In most cases the 5870 keeps pace with it and needs 50% less power to do so.