Real graphics card competition on the Mac is not something that Apple users are accustomed to hearing about, but with the Radeon 4870 and now the NVIDIA GTX 285 available for the Mac Pro, it looks like we've got just that. While Mac gaming may not be any more viable than it was a few years ago, the ability to dual-boot Windows has been a huge win for those wanting high-end PC gaming without having to put another box next to their work Mac. With Core Image, CUDA, Snow Leopard and OpenCL just around the corner, a good GPU is becoming more and more of a mainstream need, and the Geforce GTX 285 looks like it has power to spare.
In this short review, we take a look at what the Geforce GTX 285 can do under both Windows and OS X. We even include some Windows gaming benchmarks, though our main focus here is on investigating the GTX 285's suitability for professional 3D rendering on the Mac.
System Requirements- Mac Pro 2008 or 2009 with OS X 10.5.7 or later
- Mac Pro (Early 2009) or Mac Pro (Early 2008 with 800Mhz DDR2 FB-DIMM memory)
- 2 PCI Express slots (only one is used but the card is double-wide)
Price: $449
Card Specs- Core Clock Speed: 648MHz
- CUDA Processing Cores: 240
- Memory Clock Speed: 2,484MHz
- Memory Bandwidth: 159GB/sec
- Shader Clock Speed: 1,476MHz
- Bus: PCIe 2.0
- Interface: Two dual-link DVI with HDCP support
- Warranty: 2-year warranty upon registration
Test machine: 8-core 2.66 GHz Mac Pro Nehalem
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2009/07/review-nvidia-gtx-285-on-the-mac.ars
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