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View Full Version : Mac/Intel Graphic Card - Quadro or X1900?

okfir
01-23-2007, 06:35 AM
Today "The Big Boss" came to me and told me that he wants to upgrade the old workstations in the office (quad G5) to brand new Intel Quad core Xeon 3.0Ghz and he wants me to look for the right specifications.
My only problem is the graphic card, there are two cards, the quadro 4500 and the ATI X1900 XT. I know that in the old G5 it was a waste of money to buy the quadro cause it did not brought any big advantage on the the 7800gt, but now with the new intel xeon I have no idea which one is better. I Looked in apple web site on the only comparison was on games like doom 3 and quake 4 and we need the workstions for high end apps like final cut pro, motion, C4D and very big and high res photoshop work.

Can someone please direct me to a relevant comparison between the two?

By the way, money is not a problem.
tburbage3
01-24-2007, 05:26 AM
For use with professional graphics programs, especially OpenGL-based, I'd take the nVidia Quadro without a second thought.
penguinsrequiem
01-24-2007, 06:28 AM
i agree! go with Quadro
maX_Andrews
01-24-2007, 10:31 PM
The x1900 will be fine for your uses. In fact, it has a higher coreimage rating than the quadro, so it will perform better for final cut pro and motion. As you can see here, the x1900 can be up to twice as fast as the quadro for coreimage effects (things like live-rendered filters, dissovles, and masks in final cut). It also shows that the x1900 is the fastest card ever released for the mac: http://www.barefeats.com/quad12.html

Photoshop doesn't use the GPU currently, that's more dependent on your system RAM: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory

It's more of an issue on windows when deciding between ati and nvida than on a mac. ATi's drivers are a bit shakey under windows and some programs can display improperly, but ATi has put a lot of time into their mac drivers and the cards are solid.
lots
01-25-2007, 01:50 PM
ATI on the Mac has always been pretty solid. Windows thinking doesn't apply here (Nvidia > ATI). Your experience with Quadro on older Macs is going to be roughly the same (IMO) as before, since all the drivers and stuff are largely handled by Apple and OSX. Unless the drivers on Nvidia's side have improved in recent times, I would go for the ATI if your primary role for these machines is to stay in OSX.

The Nvidia/ATI thing will really only come into play if you plan to dual boot.
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