IMAC's NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS w/512MB up-to-date?

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IMAC's NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS w/512MB up-to-date?

I am currently using a 20" IMAC and have been thinking about purchasing a new one.
I was curious to know "*NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS w/512MB GDDR3*" is a decent " UP-TO-DATE" card?

When looking at a list of NVidia's current cards available at http://www.nvidia.com/object/graphicscards_buynow.html - they list cards that have "*Maximum Memory Bandwidth*" of 103 up to 147 GB/s. with up to 1GB memory size!
This sounds allot better than the 57GB/s Max Memory that the IMAC card offers, which isn't even half of some the current cards.

Should I be waiting for the IMAC to get updated with better video cards? or is this the best card I am going to see for a while with IMACs?

Thank you in advance for any help given.

Message was edited by: Psychojkl

Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Posted on Dec 2, 2008 7:07 AM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Dec 2, 2008 9:04 AM in response to Psychojkl

True, and those cards also cost $4-500. Nvidia has other cards with a similar memory bandwidth that they rate for extreme gaming. The GPU in the iMac is an on-the-board GPU which can provide reasonable performance at a reasonable price. It ranks about mid-way in Nvidia's 8-series of video cards. If you want something faster, then you need to move up to a Mac Pro. For the vast majority of iMac buyers the video performance is more than adequate. But if your software needs demand higher performance, then the iMac is not for you.

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