Mac Pro video card suggestions

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Level 1

1 points

Mac Pro video card suggestions

I recently bought a Mac Pro: 2 x 2.66 Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeon, 8 Gb RAM, w/ 4 HDDs = 3 x 1Tb + a 500Gb, it also came with a 23" Cinema Display and the new wireless keyboard and Magic Mouse: all for $500. (Guy needed money for child support)

Anyways, the work I do requires me to have many tabs open in FF and I've noticed a slight lagg when compared to my 15" Mid 2009 MBP (2.66Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo w/ 8Gb of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics processor; and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory (2 graphic processors).

The current card on the Mac Pro is NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT

I'm not sure if the difference is because of RAM, the cards or a combination of both, but I would ike to start out with changing the graphics card on the Mac Pro first. I would like some suggestions on a new card that will not break the bank. I am not doing any high end video editing nor any gaming. I will be using Photoshop and other similar packages in the near future, but not at a professional level.

Any suggestion is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance and please let me know if you need any additional information.

One more thing:

Mac Pro is running OS X 10.7.5

MBP is running OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Dec 1, 2012 8:55 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 1, 2012 12:33 PM in response to Taiko713

The Apple-firmware 5770 works in all models of Mac Pro, just a little slower than benchmarks in the oldest models due to PCIe 1 slots. Apple does not recommend it because it came out after the older models were discontinued, and therefore they never tested it in the older models. Drivers for it are in 10.6.5 and later.

8GB RAM should be okay for FireFox. But every browser tends to accumulate caches and History files as big as a House. Be sure to set the browser to save only ONE DAY of History, Anything older is easier to search again than to dig through that History mess.

Remember than NEW in 10.7 -- closing the last Window of an Application does NOT quit the Application, it continues to chew up resources running in the background wasting RAM and CPU time.

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Answer 2

Taiko713 Author

Level 1

1 points

Dec 4, 2012 7:45 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks for the input.

I have been reading on the ATI Radeon HD 5770 and so far I like what I have read. Do you have any experience with this card? Any suggestions as to where to find the best prices?

I believe one of the major issues that may be causing the lag in FF is that I am also using TabMIxPlus. I know it's not as noticiable on the MBP.

I have recently installed atMonitor and have been watching the CPU and RAM usage and have only spiked it once while converting several APE file to MP3 at the same time. The spike was on the CPU side and not the RAM. The RAM has yet to go above 45% while running mutliple applications like FF, iTunes, Transmission, Mail and Photoshop at the same time.

Thanks again for you help.

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Answer 3

Dec 4, 2012 8:56 AM in response to Taiko713

I do not understand why you would choose atMonitor when there is a perfectly good Made-for-Mac OS X Activity Monitor included in the box.

If you are using a Firefox add-on and suspect it is causing delays, by all means, get rid of it!

The least expensive Apple-firmware 5770 (if you do NOT live in NY) that I have seen is this one:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/726537-REG/Apple_MC742ZM_A_ATI_Radeon_HD_5 770.html

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