[Doofy]

2008 MP, standard cheapo card installed. 10.5

Thinking of popping some horsepower in there for a bit of flight sim action on both Mac and an XP partition.

Notions:
1) Don't want to go 10.6 as this will degrade stability of some Mac apps in use on machine.
2) Don't want to do any messing - just buy card, slot in and go.

Nvidia GTX 285 Mac Edition make sense?

[Waragainstsleep]

What apps are unstable under 10.6?

[P]

That is a very expensive (and hot) card for "some flight sim action". I'd take a look at a used 8800 GT or something. That model used to come with an 8800GT as an option, so there should be enough cards of that type around. I don't know about exact prices, but hopefully the launch of the 5770 upgrade cut resale prices a bit. A 4870 is also an option which supports 10.5.x, which should be available for less than a GTX 285.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

What apps are unstable under 10.6?

A lot of music apps and sound card drivers are very finicky as to what OS they're running on.

Originally Posted by P 

That is a very expensive (and hot) card for "some flight sim action". I'd take a look at a used 8800 GT or something. That model used to come with an 8800GT as an option, so there should be enough cards of that type around. I don't know about exact prices, but hopefully the launch of the 5770 upgrade cut resale prices a bit. A 4870 is also an option which supports 10.5.x, which should be available for less than a GTX 285.

I'm not keen on used, so I've had a look around and my options are:

1) 1 Gb GTX 285 @ 3 weeks wait @ £400 ish.
2) 512 Mb HD 4870 @ no wait @ £275 ish.

So a £125 difference. Is the GTX worth £125 more?

[Don Pickett]

Keep in mind that nVidia's OS X drivers are awful. With X-Plane--speaking of flight sim action--an ATi card will get you up to three times the frame rate of a comparable nVidia card.

[P]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

I'm not keen on used, so I've had a look around and my options are:

1) 1 Gb GTX 285 @ 3 weeks wait @ £400 ish.
2) 512 Mb HD 4870 @ no wait @ £275 ish.

So a £125 difference. Is the GTX worth £125 more?

For "some flight sim action"? No. Lists like these are always useful. The GTX 285 is bin number 4 from the top (beaten only by dual chip solutions and the top cards from the next generation - the GTX 480 and the 5870). The 4870 is number 5. It is still, today, a very very powerful card- you're fine in almost any game up to 1920*1080 res at least. For comparison, your current card is bin 16 from the top.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Don Pickett 

Keep in mind that nVidia's OS X drivers are awful. With X-Plane--speaking of flight sim action--an ATi card will get you up to three times the frame rate of a comparable nVidia card.

Right, that swings it then.

On further research, seems like FSX isn't all that dependant on outright GPU capability anyway, as it's very CPU bound.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by P 

That is a very expensive (and hot) card for "some flight sim action".

Originally Posted by P 

For "some flight sim action"?

Let me clarify "flight sim action".
I won't be gaming - I'll be using it to simulate flying in order to ascertain whether I'm up to the job and confident enough to go for a PPL. X-plane for the physics, FSX for the G1000 familiarity.

[Doofy]

Thanks chaps!

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

Right, that swings it then.

On further research, seems like FSX isn't all that dependant on outright GPU capability anyway, as it's very CPU bound.

All flight sims are CPU bound, but you need a good video card to handle texture data, 3D data for planes and eye candy. X-Plane making better and better use of multiple cores, but a good GPU helps.

[Doofy]

OK, took a look at what's doing what on the old graphics card. Seems like the card is slowing things down, since XP9 is only pegging about 30% on a single core. Running maybe 25fps until I bump the number of objects up, then it hits 19fps and fogs everything more than a mile away.

4870 due to be delivered today, so we'll see what happens.

[Doofy]

4870 installed. Slightly better than the default card. Turned the anti-aliasing up to 2x, bumped the textures up to max. About 40 fps. Clouds look nice.
It'll do for now. Thanks chaps.

[MM-o4]

Hey,

had my 7300 go in my Mac Pro. Apple wanted $860 AUS to replace. Picked up a flashed firmware 8800 GT from eBay for $180 AUS. Works great so I'm super happy

Works great in windows 7 also.

My 2 cents

[Waragainstsleep]

Check your 7300 for bulging caps. Apple should cover it OOW if it has them.