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Graphics cards for Mac


Vectorlogic

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That would be the current model, I remember a conversation with Dave D. and the general thought was most high end graphics cards were not going to do much for the final q. render process as much as more memory, but that was quite a while back (late 06) I was looking to see if anyone had any performance gains with an upgraded card they have installed, as we are about to add some new machines to our shop. I'm looking at a 2.8 dual Quad Mac Pro w 4 gig mem, A 23' Imac and a new MBP 15" any comments are welcome, VW is the main application on all three, high end renders on the Mac Pro.

Thanks

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I have a current model 2x 2.8 ghz MacPro (8 Core) with the ATI 2600HD and 6 gigs of ram. It was a huge upgrade from what I moved up from, but as far as VW2008 the app itself only runs on 1-core, and can only access 3 gb (?) of RAM I think. RenderWorks uses more cores, but Radiosity doesn't. But hopefully that will change. So far I found it pretty stable, and am happy about the purchase. I bought the base model from apple and the got hardrives and ram 3rd party.

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Thanks for the tip Islandmon. I tried to make sure I got compatible stuff (I did not go the absolute cheapest route, but I have found Apples prices to be ridiculous, particularly on ram. No problem so far.

I can live with VW2008 not being multicore but radiosity? Come on, why is that render mode only using 1 core? It makes those modes a bit unusable for me, which is unfortunate.

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As long as your RAM is the specification of Apple, it doesn't matter who manufactures it. Apple dont manufacture RAM

I still dont understand why only one core is being used.

Also it is best to configure the Mac Pro with 4 slots of RAM, to quote from Apple.

"The Mac Pro now uses faster 800MHz DDR2 fully buffered ECC memory, an industry-standard memory technology that allows for more memory capacity, greater bandwidth, and better reliability. To take full advantage of the 256-bit-wide memory architecture, four or more FB-DIMMs should be installed in the Mac Pro."

Alternatively you have some faulty RAM

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I can live with VW2008 not being multicore but radiosity? Come on, why is that render mode only using 1 core? It makes those modes a bit unusable for me, which is unfortunate.

Same with me. I wind up only using Renderworks because it uses both cores of my machine making render times somewhat tolerable.

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As long as your RAM is the specification of Apple, it doesn't matter who manufactures it. Apple dont manufacture RAM

I still dont understand why only one core is being used.

Also it is best to configure the Mac Pro with 4 slots of RAM, to quote from Apple.

"The Mac Pro now uses faster 800MHz DDR2 fully buffered ECC memory, an industry-standard memory technology that allows for more memory capacity, greater bandwidth, and better reliability. To take full advantage of the 256-bit-wide memory architecture, four or more FB-DIMMs should be installed in the Mac Pro."

Alternatively you have some faulty RAM

VW only accesses one core, period. It is not multi-processor aware. Nothing to do with my particular set up. Using C4D all 8 cores ramp up and all ram is utilized, so I know every thing is working on my end.

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