[©öñFü$íóÑ]

I'm just curious...

First:
What is the highest-end (the fastest AND has the most memory) graphics card for the MacPro today? While I do realize that there are Mac versions of NVidia and ATi cards out there, I also recall seeing certain PC/Wintel graphics cards that are able to be "flashed" to work on the Mac.

Second:
If a gfx card is "flashed" to work on a MacPro, would it be possible to use that same graphics card under BootCamp or Parallels? While I would desire for my Mac programs to get full access to the gfx acceleration of the gfx card, I would certainly want my PC games to take advantage of the FULL capabilities of the card as well.

(btw, I won't consider any dual gfx card options)

[Xyrrus]

Originally Posted by ©öñFü$íóÑ 

If a gfx card is "flashed" to work on a MacPro, would it be possible to use that same graphics card under BootCamp or Parallels?

I can't offer an authoritative response on the rest of it so I won't even try, but Parallels does not (yet) have any 3D Hardware acceleration. A minor point, but worth making.

I'm running the X1900 in my Pro and that's generally considerd to be one of the better cards of the last generation. I've been very happy with its performance under OS X. There are faster cards, but they basically all (from what I've read) require some degree of swapping around cards and cables to get a working solution in both OS X and XP.

-Xy

[Abbas]

On the PC side, the x1950XTX from ATI and 8800GTX from nVidia are the fastest by these manufacturers. I think the x1900XTX is the fastest you can get that works under both OSX and Windows without any problems.

-a

[mduell]

1) ATi X1900 and nVidia Q4500 are the fastest cards available for the Mac Pro; which is faster depends on your application.

2) Yes yes yes. All the flashing is doing is making the video cards firmware compatible with the Mac Pros firmware. The number of pipes/shaders/units is unchanged.