Which graphics card for a MacPro

I am thinking about upgrading to a quad core MacPro. They have two graphics cards to choose from:
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT
ATI Radeon X1900 XT

The Nvidea also comes in 2x 3x or 4x -- I'm not even sure what this actually means performance-wise, just that it costs more every time you add an "x" -- so it must be better, right?

Would it be worth it to spend for the extra NVidea? Is the Radeon a better choice?

Just curious to hear from other SL users what your experience has been in this regard.

I'm not sure if the 2x Nvida is worth an extra $149. In fact, I think that I would go with the Radeon.

The ATI Radeon X1900 XT seems to add about 10% ($249) to the cost of the MacPro but it allows for higher frame rates (roughly 2x or 3x? in various 3D games). This video card costs about $400 at SmallDog and other online stores. So, maybe the Radeon is a good choice especially if you want to run SL or any other 3D games.

Check out the following tests done by Barefeats. They always have some nice speed tests on various Mac configs. You can see in the following link a comparison including the Radeon X1900 XT and the GeForce 7300 GT:

<http://www.barefeats.com/quad15.html>

and

<http://www.barefeats.com/quad10.html>

However, I think that the Nvidia 7300 would be ok playing SL for now. Perhaps, someone would know if the Radeon gives you more than just frame rates (advanced graphics options). The MacPro gives you option of upgrading later if you wish unlike my MacBook Pro!

I'll check out your link.

Yes, it is very upgradable -- we were in the store looking at it, and the salesperson was very keen on showing us the inside and how almost everything was removable!

Right.
The Radeon is the better card on a Mac.
(Nvidia is better on the PC).
The Radeon's Nx2,3,4 are for driving multiple monitors or HUGE screen setups. SL doesn't support having your viewer extend over two screens. Get the Radeon with maximum RAM you can afford. You'll be Very Pleased.

The Radeon 1600 on a Mac is great, so the 1900 should be most excellent. Either of these is in a class above the 7300. If you get an nvidia, I think you want at least a 7600, and a 79xx or 88xx are the state of the art.

it means two or three or four cards. but the x1900xt is a better card, get it if you can.

Seems the Radeon is the one to get. That is very helpful to know, Thanks!

the radeon performs the best of those, the geforce is a very low end card. the geforce optoin is good if you dont do anything that needs good rendering, or if you want multiple cards to drive 4, 6 or 8 monitors

Get a GeForce 8800 video card?

While that would be nice when running Windows... for OSX best to get a card that is supported with drivers

Missy, while this interchange is very helpful in the event I despair of my MacBook Pro and buy a stonking great future-proofed under-the table monster of a Mac desktop machine, do you have any thoughts on the current difficulties being experienced by us MacBook Pro users ever since Linden moved us all on from client 1.13? (See the relevant Forums, there's several, with lots of different threads.)

What I mean is that the sparse Linden advice about stability is to get the latest graphics card (impossible to upgrade on a MacBook Pro) and/or graphics drivers. Now, its an ATI Radeon X1600 we're talking about, and this simply doesn't appear on the ATI upgrade web pages; my local Apple centre confirms that so far as they know there aren't any new drivers/firmware whatever, but admit they know little about SL.

So: is this the end of the line for us MacBook Pro owners? How are _you_ coping with the constant (5 every hour at its worst; 3 every 5 hours at its best-- its the randomness that's puzzling) crashes?

I'm not really sure what the problem is thats affecting Macbook Pro owners.

Ive been to one place where SL kept crashing over and over... but most everywhere i go with my Macbook Pro (CD 2ghz, 2gb ram, x1600 256mb, 10.4.9) works just fine... in the last couple updates its gotten more unstable, and i see a crash or lock up once about every 15+ hours of logged on time... its annoying but isn't a show stopper. The only thing thats more annoying than that is the video memory leak that happens by some things, in certain places... that most people think is just lag, but is really the video ram filling up. toggling the video memory down from 256 to 128 then back, will clear it up for 5 to 10 minutes... i just usually avoid places it happens a lot. I have had 2 crashes in places like that before... Seriously doubt the Lindens will ever find whats causing it, as most people dont even realize its not just lag.

Macs currently do not fully support SLI (which allows multiple NVidia cards to be joined together to behave as one high-power card) so the X1900 is your best bet. Fingers are still crossed for some movement in this area with the next OS X version (10.5 - a.k.a Leopard), as graphics card support is holding Macs back a little for games. Though, if you wanted you I believe you could put in multiple NVidia cards and link them together, but you'd need to boot into Windows to get the full advantage of it.
Multiple monitors are definitely well worth it for most kinds of work, but I'd recommend a good card for your main (where your games will go) and cheapy ones for the extra monitors if you do get more than two.

X1900 is the best card available for Mac beyond the big high-end NVidia Quadro card, but it's only slightly faster for like $600-$800 more so not very cost effective

The ATI Radeon X1900 XT is worth the money & preforms well, While the Nvidia is heheish Atm anyways