Mac Pro Not A Gaming Powerhouse

You may want to think twice about gaming on a Mac Pro

Apple had just recently released a newer version of its Mac Pro. With a price tag of $3,499 you can expect to be getting a great system. The specs for this desktop are pretty much amazing.

Mac Pro Specs

• Two 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
• 6GB DDR3 RAM (6x 1GB)
• 640GB 7200rpm Hard drive
• ATI Radeon HD 4870 Video Card

With a spec sheet like this you would expect this to be an amazing gaming rig. If I were to guess on the performance for a desktop like this in a game like COD 4 I would almost guarantee 60+ frames per second. Everything in this rig is perfect for gaming, the only thing that would be holding it back is the CPU speed of 2.26GHz and since no games support 8 cores you will not see a performance gain from the extra cores. Overall though I would definitely think it would get 60+ fps. Well CNET also thought that maybe this new Mac Pro would be a gaming powerhorse also so they put it to the test playing COD 4. Well the results as you will see are far from Gaming Powerhouse.

chart from cnet.com

All of these tests were ran at a modest resolution of 1680 x 1050 with 4x anti-aliasing. The results are an improvement over the GT 120, but only get up to a meager 35 fps. Many people speculate that the low frame rate is caused by the OSX versions of these games, claiming that they are bad ports because the Radeon 4870 is one of the best cards on the market and there is just no way that it would perform this badly in a rig such as the Mac Pro

Bottom line, even though it is not made for gaming, any rig that costs $3500 you would expect much better performance.

Nvidea’s GTX 295

Nvidea’s Gefore GTX 295 is the most powerful single graphics card out right now. The card is essential two GTX 280 cards squeezed into one ultra powerful card. The GTX 295 offers a very noticeable performance gain over ATI’s previous successor the ATI Radeon 4870 X2.

The new GTX 295 sports 896Mb of GDDR3 memory, 240 shader cores, and a new more efficient 55nm process GPU. The GTX 295 comes with the normal set of ports including 2 DVI ports and a HDMI port. It also comes with Nvidea’s PhysX accelerated physics API, which is nothing to brag about since its hardly supported with any games.

If you are wanting this powerhouse of a graphic card expect to shell out some major cash. Currently EVGA’s version costs $500 for one, but that’s the price u have to pay to be number one.

Sapphire HD 4850 X2 – Dual GPU Graphics Card

Released last November as one of ATI’s intermediary graphic cards between the HD 4870 and HD 4870 X2, the HD 4850 X2 is a product designed as a great mid-ranged card.  Boasting two GPU’s with 800 stream process units, 256-bit memory each, and a combined total of 2GB on-board memory the HD 4850 X2 is not a card to be taken lightly.  If you think the HD 4870 is a bit slow while the HD 4870 X2 is overkill, then this may be the exact card you are looking for.

In a series of benchmark tests conducted by Neo Seeker, the HD 4850 X2 consistently beat one of its major competitors, the GTX 280 which is only a single-gpu card.  Among other cards tested for comparison were the BFG GTX 295, Palit HD4870X2, VisionTek HD 4870, VisionTek HD3870X2 OC, VisionTek HD 4850, and the HD 4850+ HD 3870.  Along with the benchmark tests, several games were run in order to compare frame rates and performance including Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Furmark, World in Conflict, Far Cry 2, X3: Terran Conflict, Devil May Cry 4, Bioshock, and Unreal Tournament 3.

Click here for the benchmarking results of the Sapphire HD 4850 X2. The testing rig is as follows:

• CPU: Intel Core i7 at 3.0 GHz
• Motherboard:  Asus P6T Deluxe
• Memory: 3 gigabytes of Quimonda DDR3-1066 triple channel
• Power Supply: Enermax Galaxy DXX 1000W
• Hard Drive: 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA, w/16 MB cache
• CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U 12
• OS: Vista-64,SP1

The Sapphire HD 4850 X2 is currently being sold for $299 at many major online retailers and has dropped by $100 since its November release and has become a very affordable card. However, one major consideration you should take is the amount of power required to run this card. The card itself takes one 6 pin and one 8 pin PCIe power connector and it is recommended that you use a 650 watt power supply. Regardless, if you are in the market for a high-end card capable of supporting high resolutions but are looking to save some money, consider the 4850 X2.  It is a very capable card as seen by the test results from Neo Seeker.

NVIDEA finally allows users to download Laptop Graphic Drivers

NVIDEA has finally decided to step up their game this Christmas by now allowing laptop users with dedicated graphics cards to download the drivers straight off of their website. There is two reasons why this is so great.

1. Before this update if you reformatted your computer and you did not have all the disks for the drivers you had to go to whatever manufacturers website you bought the laptop from and pray that they had the Graphic Card Driver available for download. If this did not work then you had to scour the net for an unofficial “hacked” driver download.

2. NVIDEA’s website offers the latest driver updates so anyone who owns a gaming laptop should hop on over to http://www.nvidia.com/Download/ and download their latest driver. In many cases you will be able to see a 5-10 percent performance increase.

To download these drivers now just follow this link to NVIDEA’S website and select your video card and click search. After searching a brief description page will pop up about your video card and all you need to do is accept the User Agreements and click download.

What Video Card To Get For Christmas

Well it’s that time of year again and you still do not know what you want for Christmas. Well with giant titles like Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 on its way this spring don’t you think it time to upgrade that old video card you have sitting in your computer. Well if you are there is very good news for you. Video Card prices have started to drop like never before, bad for NVIDEA and ATI, good for you the consumer.

Well after asking around I found that on average most people have about $200 to spend on their Christmas present. So at this price range, the way I see it, there is really only one real good hoice and that is EVGA’s NVIDEA GTX 260. This card is everything you could ask for and then some. Here it is a couple a couple reasons why it is so great.

2x Winner of Customer Choice Award – Desktop Graphics / Video Cards on newegg.com. If you have not heard of newegg I highly recommend you go check out their site if you are ever interested in building or upgrading a computer. They have the best prices on the net by far and can always be trusted.

Limited Lifetime Warranty- This is a great benifit. Also EVGA is one of the most trusted manufacturers on the market today so you can almost guarantee any problems you have will be taken care of.

Customer reviews on this card are amazingly high.

Price is also a great plus at only $219.99. I know it is a little over $200, but the extra $20 is really worth it and more than likely the price will drop to the $200 sweet spot just in time for Christmas.

This card is a huge upgrade for anyone with a card that is only 6 months old. Seriously that is how fast prices drop on video cards. With the GTX 260 you will be able to play every game at high quality settings and expect a very smooth frame rate of around 60fps. The only card that is truly better than this right now is the GTX 280 and that costs $375.

Quick points to remember before buying:
• Make sure your power supply can handle this card (recommended 500 watts)
• See if it will fit in your case (11 inches long!)
• It will not cover anything important that you need to get to on your motherboard
• Make sure your power supply has two 6-pin connector(Any new PSU will have these)

Also this card has all the same connection as a normal video card including to DVI outputs and 1 S Video output. I really recommend this card to anybody who is looking for a guaranteed good card at a great price with a lifetime warranty.