Mac Pro :: Will A Second Video Card Help Performance On Only One Monitor
Mar 22, 2008
this is kind of a dumb question. I have a Radeon 8500 in a Power Mac G4 that I'm repairing. I have a PCI Radeon 7000, and I was wondering, if I put it in too, would having two GPUs affect performance even though the monitor was only attached to the 8500?
Is that setting effecting the processor as well? or anything else?it'd be great if when put on the "better battery life" it would down clock a bit to squeeze more battery life.
Just wondering what else, if anything else, I can upgrade on my system.I have an original 2006 launch model (2 x 2.66 Ghz Dual Core Xeon, 8GB 667 DDR2 RAM from Crucial, 4 x 1TB Western Digital RE3 7200RPM drives w/ 32MB Cache in a Software RAID)However, I still have the original NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT card in here and I've never been super-impressed nor disappointed.Should I replace it? I do mostly graphics work in Photoshop and writing code as a web-developer but I do occasional gaming so I'd see a benefit there.. I'm just wondering if it'd boost performance in the OS. Honestly, the computer runs fine... I would never replace it unless it had an issue. I'm just thinking about the future.
I'm thinking of adding a second monitor and instead of using the second DVI port on my 8800GT I'd like to just add an ATI 2600XT and plug the second monitor into that, saving extra strain on the 8800GT.
My questions are: 1) Do the 8800GT and 2600XT play nice together in one box? 2) Can an application grab just one monitor without using windowed mode? (simple e.g. WoW running full screen on the 8800GT and the desktop showing on the 2600XT).
My PowerMac plays most small videos (640p) on YouTube just fine, as well it does an OK job at playing slightly larger videos in Quicktime. I would like to not have to worry about Flash any more. With the new 10.1 beta 2 I notice a nice boost in performance, almost tolerable. If I install a graphics card that supports Core Video will it free up the CPU? How can I tell if a card supports Core Video? As well, what cards do you recommend? Is it difficult to flash a graphics card to work with OS X Tiger in a PowerMac G4?
Ok so I have a old Mac Performa 640CD/Dos that I am trying to to get up and running again. I had a monitor for it but it fell off the couch and broke. So I thought maybe I can use an adapter with it in order to use PC VGA monitor. Well after getting the first adapter and trying it, no luck, then I tried one that had dip switches on it. Tried 640 x 480, 800 x 600, almost all the dip switch combination with no luck on getting anything on the screen. Could it be that I might have a bad video card and it needs replaced? Or is this particular model not compatible with PC VGA monitors?
If there's no refresh this coming week, we're pretty much going to be forced into settling for one of the 27" iMacs (we're on our third) and hooking up a second (probably 24") monitor to do color sensitive work.
Does anyone out there have a dual-monitor setup running with the 27"? I was wondering if you notice any sort of graphics performance hit with the second monitor attached.
Just want to hear some User Experiences with it so far Kinda more interested in the new graphics card performance...like what around what year of games can it play on the highest settings with great framerate? (speaking about the 13inch specifically)
What I have: MBP Penryn 2.4 Ghz, 2 GB, 200 HD, Matte. What I'm looking at: Unibody 15" MBP 2.53 Ghz, 4 GB, 250 HD, Glossy. Love the new trackpads on the MBP, not sure how I'll like the glossy screen. Would be doing some video work down the road (Canon HV40). Please tell me the difference between the performance of these graphics cards and lastly which one you would opt for.
I ordered NFL game rewind so I can watch all of last years games. I was wondering if anyone knows how to save the videos I watch. The videos are in flash, but when I view activity monitor there is nothing being downloaded.
I have a 2 x 2GHz Dual Core Intel Mac Pro, with 9GB of DDR2 RAM and 2 Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT graphic cards each running a Samsung 24 inch screen. I recently bought Call of Duty 4 and found that the game runs terribly on anything higher then around medium sort of settings. I know the 7300 Graphic cards aren't the best for gaming, but they have done the job for me perfectly until now. I'm a photographer so I calibrate my screens with a Spyder and run a separate colour profile through each video card per screen, and its always calibrated perfectly.
I'm just curious if there is any actual performance advantage of having 2 video cards other then running a separate colour profile through each card? So for example, If I'm playing call of duty and only 1 screen is displaying information, does the other card just sit there, or does it jump on board and process information for the game being played? Because I would have thought having 2 7300's would somewhat give better performance during gaming then just the one?
I was running some networking performance tests the other day for some research project. Essentially I have 7 computers on a LAN that is not connected to the Internet - all computers are connecting wirelessly. I have one computer function as a server and it multicasts pings to the other 6 computers at a constant rate (e.g. sends a packet every 2 seconds).I noticed some odd behavior - 4 computers received the packets in about the right time intervals (every 2 seconds), but 2 would get packets at intervals of roughly .92 seconds and 1.12 seconds consistently. I realized that these 2 computers were running on battery and not plugged in. Plugging in all computers got all the computers receiving packets at the same time.
I'm buying a 27" iMac. I plan on installing windows 7 and running some Windows games on it. I was wondering if anyone could tell me how the performance is on the ATI Radeon 256 MB card. All of the online reviews are for the 512 MB one. I'm not looking for super high performance or what not, but playability and graphics to look decent. Like for example, will Crysis be playable?
I run Rhino (64 bit) with windows 7 through bootcamp. The software mfg's recommended graphics card is the AMD FirePro v7900 or v5900, and user group recos the nvidea quadro 4000. I am currently using an Nvidea gtx285 and driving two displays from it. Looking to upgrade both memory and video card for optimal performance.
Info: Mac Pro, Windows 7, osx 10.7 , 16g ram nvidea 285gtx
Well I got rid of the quicksilvers since they died. Power supplys gave out and took the motherboards, So I sold what was left on EBAY.
My G4 Ethernet was sold to a co-worked and he is quite happy.
And I got this off ebay today:
Dual 1.8GHz PowerPC G5Procs 2GB RAM (2 x 1GB PC3200U DDR SDRAM) Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-117D Samsung HD160JJ/P 160GB SATA HDD (not apple labeled, not original to this system) (1) Power Cord pci106b,9 PCI Ethernet Controller
Well I didnt' read the fine print and BAZINGA! I noticed that it comes without a video card.
So For video editing, watching hulu and youtube and netflix What do you guys recommend.
I do have a PCI GEforce at home with 512 megs for PC and I was wondering if I could flash it and if so, does anyone know of a good walkthrough?
If I was to hook my MacBook Pro 13inch 4GB RAM, 250 HD to a monitor and use the Magic Mouse and Apple wireless keyboard would it slow the performance of my laptop?
After some difficulty upgrading my 4HD RAID0 2.66 MP to SL I've discovered my full screen Hulu and WB browser video is choppy if I use a full screen pop out window. If i go full screen it works fine. I've checked my Internet speed and it is as good as ever. I have not changed my config. of three LCD screens or any other hardware. This problem happens in both Safari and Firefox. I did have to reset the PRAM in order for the SL installer to see my RAID0 HD per Applecare. The bottom line is I used to be able to watch Hulu via a pop up expanded to the edges of my 24# LCD, and surf using one of my 22 inch screens. Now I can't unless I want the video and audio dialog to sych. I did confirm the the main Radeon 3870 card is still running at 16X. Could this be driver problems?
1) I am in the possession of a June 2004 PowerMac G5 DP 1.8. 2) It's the AGP+PCI variety (not PCI-X, not PCIe). 3) It's running Leopard 10.5.8 4) I've got an Ultra 6800 DDL installed.
Main Question:
What is the best way to add another (3rd) monitor?
I have a MacBook, with OSX 10.4.11. It uses an AirPort Extreme (0x168C, 0x86) and it connects to a Linksys router which is attached to my cable modem in the basement. Approx. 4 days ago I started noticing that the signal strength would vary, and then drop off all together. I have reconfigured my router, downloaded the new firmware for it, and been online chatting with Linksys techs all day. We have had no problems for months with this router, or with signal strength. My wife brought her MacBookPro home this evening to see if her machine would connect to our wireless network. Fired it up and no problem. Her machine, using the same airport card in it, had no problem with signal strength.
I currently got the 5870 driving a 30" ACD and 23" ACD. Would there be any noticeable performance increase if I were get the gt120 to run the 23" and have 5870 run the 30" ACD (my work display)?
I just got my air today and everything is fine, but some standard def quicktime files (.mov) that played fine on my mac pro and windows netbook, for some reason play like a slideshow on the 11" air. They play perfectly in VLC however, anyone know why? I would not care but there for a school project... They are rather large for their quality (600mb for 3 min) they were exported from avid...
i am using Mainly Photoshop, RealFlow and Maya on my latest MAC:
Model Identifier:MacPro3,1 Processor Name:Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor Speed:3 GHz Number Of Processors:2 Total Number Of Cores:8 L2 Cache (per processor):12 MB Memory:4 GB Bus Speed:1.6 GHz Video1: ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT: Video2: VIDIA GeForce 8800 GT:
If i order 2 More Video Cards, will that improve performance, even i have only 2 Displays connected?
Today I just bought and installed an (Apple) ATI 4870 for my '06 Mac Pro. It's all gone pretty smoothly, however I have noticed that flash video playback from sites such as Youtube and Vimeo are jerky. Have I missed something about installing a 4870 into an older MP? I thought it was basically plug and play - even though it's not officially supported by Apple. Quicktime movies are nice and smooth. This is under Snow Leopard, so I'm not sure if the problem exists under Leopard but I could probably move my last bootable backup drive into an enclosure with firewire and check things out.
I see here that my Mac Pro (Early 2008) is compatable with:
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 ATI Radeon HD 4870
It looks like in many cases there's two versions, and the mac version costs about 10x as much on ebay and in stores. Is that accurate, or is one of these models mac and pc compatable, and therefore the laws of supply and demand work in my favour?
(fyi: I just want the cheapest one, I don't do heavy GPU work)
Is there any way to improve the video performance on my iBook G3 (600mhz, 640MB RAM, 16MB VRAM)? I find that besides not being able to play any of the HD trailers at Apple's website (even 480p), it can't even seem to play a standard trailer without stutterring. Is there anything I can do to improve the video performance?
After reading some of the threads here with people being very happy with their minis, I decided to head down to the Apple store and give it a go. I used each of the computers (a Mac mini, Mac Pro, and iMac) for about 10 minutes (which seems like forever when you are in a crowded retail store) doing things I would normally be doing at home. The iMac was fine, as expected. It handled just about everything with satisfactory speed, even thought it was the base 24" model with no fancy processors or graphics.
Video
The Mac Mini though was quite disappointing. To render a 1 minute video in iMovie it took around 4 minutes. The Mac Pro did the job on the same exact movie (sample file found on every display computer) in about 45 seconds. Another big difference was apparent, while the movies were rendering, the Mac Pro was completely responsive and I was able to load iPhoto, Pages, Numbers, Safari, and iTunes. Each opened up within seconds, and each interface was running smoothly as if nothing was happening in the background (granted for a short period as the movie finished rendering quickly).............