Do I need the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS w/512MB?

If the cost differential weren't so great (it may not be) the higher end
costs may enhance resale at a later time; as would an AppleCare Plan.
And the extended AppleCare plan is also available on an Apple reman.

Another way to look at this, may be to consider a special deals certified
reman model with the higher specs; if the cost and configuration is right.
The difference between the 24" 3.06 as reman vs. same, new... You'd
have no BTO options there, but, at $1899. vs $2199. what's different?

A faster video processor should be able to do more than gaming; over
multiple displays, and larger ones, it would be faster at all things graphic.
In any event, either way is a hard choice. I wonder how these are after
the warranty, to have a graphic card replaced; or if it's part of the board.

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂

Test so far have not shown the Nvidia 8800 to be a very good performer with the Final Cut apps and other graphic apps. So the ATI would probably be more than sufficient. Barefeats has had benchmarks if you want to investigate further.

Just my 2cents worth...

At the moment I'd be tempted to go for the more powerful of the 2 cards (assuming the increase in cost is affordable of course). Why? [Snow Leopard|http://www.apple.com/macosx/snowleopard> (OS X 10.6):

OpenCL

Another powerful Snow Leopard technology, OpenCL (Open Computing Language), makes it possible for developers to efficiently tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently locked up in the graphics processing unit (GPU). With GPUs approaching processing speeds of a trillion operations per second, they’re capable of considerably more than just drawing pictures. OpenCL takes that power and redirects it for general-purpose computing.

By getting the more powerful, you would hope to see great performance in Snow Leopard and help 'future proof' yourself a bit. (Note that no release date has been set for OS X 10.6 so it could be a long time before you get these additional benefits.)

And now for the disclaimer part... Apple have been known to scale back planned features in OS X so there's nothing to stop them from dropping OpenCL support in 10.6. They also haven't stated which graphics cards it will work with so this is very much a random punt in the dark! 🙂 Edit: Even the bottom of the Snow Leopard page states "All features on this page are subject to change."

IMO, the 8800 is a technically superior card to the ATI. NVidia's CUDA technology gives that card lots of potential. Multi-media applications, not just games, can certainly benefit from the "GPGPU". The NV8800 could accelerate things like sound processing, real-time video editing, trans-coding, scientific and engineering applications, and more.

But here's the catch: 1. there's relatively little main-stream software to take advantage of that today. 2. Programming these cards effectively presents a steep learning curve for developers. So the question becomes: will Apple ever support useful applications on the 8800? Or will they ultimatley support the next gen cards which, inevitably, will be easier to program and have more features?

I think even if you don't get support from Apple apps, you may see some gems come out of the Open Source community to take advantage of the hardware. For example, Handbrake (DVD->iPOD) may one day support GPGPU-accelerated transcoding...

I have such a machine.

My finding are that the extra drive space, better graphics and better processor speed for the money is worth it.
For me the Graphics and Hard drive did it. People are happily playing on a Radeon 2600, the 8800GS is so much better.

With Snow leopard next the CPU and multi processor of graphics and CPU will be better used.

If you can afford it do it.

Don't play the graphic game my son plays happily on a 6800 playing Crysis etc so this card will keep you for a few years.