Video card options for Mac Pro
As I’ve blogged about earlier, I am the proud owner of a Mac Pro. I love it. One thing I don’t love about it though, is the video card. My box came with the default nVidia 7300 GT and it’s a dog. I can draw polygons by hand faster than this thing.
So I went to the Apple store and checked out what options I had for upgrading. Turns out there are three options, nVidia 7300 GT (the one I have), ATI X1900 XT and an nVidia Quadra FX 4500. This is a joke. The Quadra is of no use to me and costs a rediculous amount of money, so I’m left with the ATI X1900 XT. Thing is, this card is so old I wasn’t even able to find it in Swedens two largest online PC stores anymore. The closest thing is the successor, the X1950 XT. This card costs about $285 if you buy it for a PC. Guess what Apple charges for the X1900 XT here in Sweden? $550!
Dear Apple. Please get a grip and start to offer some modern video card options for the Mac Pro. How about an nVidia 8600 GTS? It’s dirt cheap and still packs a punch. Just slap on your custom BIOS or whatever and get it out there!
2 comments
Mate I agree completely. I have a MBP right now, and will buy a 8 core Mac Pro as soon as they support the Nvidia 8000 (G80) series cards.
I’ve owned a Mac Pro (2.66 GHz, Dual dual-core) since August 2006, and it’s been a great machine. Of course, I bought the stock configuration, because that was all you could get back then. Within two weeks, I purchased the ATI X1900 XT card (for $499 USD) from the Apple Retail Store, and initially things worked fine. Sure, the fan on the video card was 4x louder than the other six fans in the Mac Pro combined, but performance was excellent and I was happy with World of Warcraft and my other apps.
Then, my X1900 XT started crapping out. After a few weeks, I started getting artifacts such as torn polygons and extending vertices when playing WoW. Reports surfaced on the Blizzard and Apple web sites of similar problems from other users, with the Apple site quickly squelching and deleting threads relating to the issues. The ‘fix’ was to run SMC Fan Control, jack up the PCIe and CPU/RAM fan speeds to the point the case sounded like a jet engine, and lo and behold - the artifacts went away. Clearly a cooling issue. Problem is, after a few more weeks, had to jack up the fan speeds even faster, and faster, and faster, until — it no longer helped at all. Artifacts no matter what, and getting worse!
Yes, the X1900 XT got a regular blast of air to keep the heatsink and cooling fan clear of dust. Yes, I verified the fan was running and blowing air out of the back of the dual-slot cooler that felt like a hair dryer on high. Yes, getting worse.
The card died 11 months after purchase. The Mac Pro was locking up after just a few minutes of use, artifacts so bad you couldn’t play WoW, and desktop image corruption just sitting at a blank desktop in OSX. The card had to come out.
Warranty? Ha! 90-days on parts. The card wasn’t ordered as part of a Configure-to-Order package, so the card itself isn’t covered under my system’s Apple Care. Ignore the fact the card was bought two weeks after the system from a retail Apple Store. You’re in the cold.
My eventual solution was to stick the broken Apple card back in the box, and return to my sloth-slow 7300 GT factory card. Performance is terrible in comparison, but the system works great.
What are my options today? Same as they were 1.4 years ago — nothing. EFS may be the wave of the future, but I have seen no proof of that in the industry. There are no reasonable alternatives. Another X1900 XT for $299 from Apple (at least the price has come down) — but you can’t find one in stock because ATI hasn’t made a X1900 Radeon chip in over 1.5 years - they’re making 3800 series chips, TWO full generations newer now.
Apple - Get on the ball, and produce some BIOS/driver packages for a modern card or two. A 8800 series nVidia, or 3800 series ATI/AMD card would be splendid.
Greg