Graphics Card for architecture/design student

Hi Chuy;

May I be the first to welcome you to the Apple Discussion Forum.

Since the Intel replacement for the PowerMac has not been annouced yet, any discussion of graphic cards for that platform would be pure speculation. You might want to come back to this forum after it has been announced. At that time there will be a lot of discussion about graphic cards and a bunch of other stuff. Right now those that know can say and that say don't know.

I notice that you said that one of your areas of interest is Adobe CS. As far as having a universal verion of Adobe CS, Adobe has alreafy said that would be some time in 2007 before they have CS3 available. I have read about a number of users who are having troubles with Adobe CS under Rosetta.

Allan

Hi Chuy;

Well, if you are asking about the current PowerMac, then I can answer that I think my decision to order the 7800 instead of the 6600 that came standard was a good thing. So far I have not had any problems with anything that uses the graphics card at all.

On to some of your new questions. Rosetta is the code that does on the fly translation of PowerPC code so that they can be executed on the Intel processor. The universal binary is one that contains both PowerPC and Intel binary code in a single file. This allows it to be executed natively on either processor. One thing that is stated is that in order for a system to perform using Rosetta it must have an abundancy of RAM because Rosetta can use the addition RAM as cache for the code it has already translated.

On the Adobe forum there have been a number of threads that say executing Adobe CS with Rosetta on the Intel platform give less then stellar performance. Adobe's answer so far has been that they should wait for the release of CS3 next year to solve these problems.

Allan

Im actually a design student and if your looking at buying a new computer for the fall semester I would do one of two things. First dont get the laptop. Working with heavy graphics files is definitly something you should use with a desktop laptops despite the specs still feel slower not to mention the screen.

check out this thread
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=2321023#2321023

needless to say I bought it and I am totally satisfied. I would either go with the current powermac especially if you need to be running CS because of the whole rosetta issue. CS3 is due out spring of '07 or if you dont need it right away...I did...wait out for the intel powermacs...rumered to come out the end of august (dont know for sure). Id just stay away from a laptop. My girlfriend has one and shes gets frustrated with it and ends up using my computer. Autocad, Aperture, CS, Shake, and 3ds are all robust programs worthy of a robust desktop. As for the pricing I got my complete setup for around $4000. $3000 of which is student loans...but then again whats another $3000 on top of $40000 when you really could make use of the computing power.

dual core 2 Ghz G5, 4.5Gb DDR2 RAM, Nvidia 7800GT, 300Gb seagate SATA, 160Gb WD Mac OS X (10.4.7)

if you decided to go with the current powermac get the 7800GT its $300 bucks more but if you needed to upgrade in the future they dont allow you to upgrade your locked in...they only way to get by this is to ask for a replacement in which case they will charge $800 this has been a major problem with the graphics cards in the new powermacs...if you check some later threads youd see many people are ****** off about this. But as of now the only cards that are offered for the powermac is the 6600 the 7800 and the quadro...

dual core 2 Ghz G5, 4.5Gb DDR2 RAM, Nvidia 7800GT, 300Gb seagate SATA, 160Gb WD Mac OS X (10.4.7) 23" HD Cinema display