willofmaine Posted September 22, 2006 Share Posted September 22, 2006 Does anyone have any advice as to whether or not it is worth paying for and waiting for an upgraded graphics card for a Mac Pro 2.66 GHz with 1 GB RAM? (The ATI Radeon X 1900 XT in lieu of the NVIDIA GeForce 7300) Thanks! Quote Link to comment
Christiaan Posted September 22, 2006 Share Posted September 22, 2006 I'm not an expert and I don't know how important it is that you have your machine as soon as possible, but if I were getting one of these machines for work at the moment I would certainly get the X1900. You can read what Apple have to say about it here: http://www.apple.com/macpro/graphics.html I'd also advise putting some more RAM in it as soon as you can. Quote Link to comment
willofmaine Posted September 22, 2006 Author Share Posted September 22, 2006 Thanks Christiaan, I called NNA tech support, and they suggested that upgrading to the X1900 wouldn't make that much of a difference. But I know so little about it, that I may have presented my question poorly! He did mention something about Rosetta, though how that relates to the graphics card I'm not sure. But your link to Apple was certainly informative, and in that context the X1900 looks like the way to go... Decisions, decisions.... anyway, thanks! Will Quote Link to comment
Jonathan Pickup Posted September 22, 2006 Share Posted September 22, 2006 here is another recommendation for you: http://www.interiorcad.com/weblog/support/archives/003341.html Quote Link to comment
Ray Libby Posted September 22, 2006 Share Posted September 22, 2006 http://www.interiorcad.com/weblog/support/archives/003341.html The title of this is "Graphics cards for photorealistic rendering" when it should be "Graphics cards for OpenGL rendering". If you are using Renderworks which uses the processor and not the Graphics card, most of the advise on graphics cards does not apply. IMHO if you are not relying on OpenGL, the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 is more than enough. Quote Link to comment
willofmaine Posted September 23, 2006 Author Share Posted September 23, 2006 Okay, well that is all very interesting, indeed... Explains why my Open GL suddenly started working properly when I updated my PC's graphics card, and it seems consistent with NNA's recommendation that the graphics card won't make much of a difference when 'rendering,' if he'd assumed I'd meant Renderworks. My understanding is that the OpenGL is just a quick, cursory form of rendering, to preview things & work in 3D (where it seems to continuously update), before doing final renderings with Renderworks... so, aren't we all relying on Open GL, at least to that extent?... Thanks! Quote Link to comment
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