Review: Nvidia GeForce 8800GT is great for gamers
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
May 9, 2008 at 5:47am
Mac Pro owners can now upgrade the beefy Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT graphic processing unit in their Mac Pro. And it’s an upgrade worth the US$279—at least if you’re a gamer. Others, maybe not so much.
There are upgrade kits available for Mac Pros released prior to the January 2008 update of the pro desktops, as well as an upgrade kit for the latest rev of Mac Pros—in case you didn’t order your desktop with the Nvidia card installed.
Whichever your model of the high end desktop, installation of the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT is relatively easy; all you need is a Phillips #1 screwdriver. There are instructions in the manual that comes with the Mac Pro. Or you can find them online here. After installation, my eval Mac Pro (one of the newer models) recognized the Nvidia card instantly.
The Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT features 512MB of dedicated GDDR3 memory (twice the graphics memory as the standard Radeon HD 2600 XT of the latest Mac Pros), uses the PCI Express interface, and includes two dual-link DVI ports. It includes a DVI to VGA connector for connection to VGA-based displays. The GeForce 8800 GT also touts a 256-bit memory interface versus the Radeon HD 2600 XT’s 128-bit interface and nearly three times the memory bandwidth. Apple’s specs claim that the Nvidia card can process 16.8 billion textured triangles per second as compared to the ATI card’s 700 million.
If you’re a 3D gamer, you’ll notice the difference immediately, especially with games such as Doom 3 and Quake. However, I noticed no difference in running other software in my day to day work.
I simply go by my “gut feeling” when it comes to computing performance. You can read in-depth specs on the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT at Macworld, Tom’s Hardware and Bare Feats, all of which note the GPU’s impressive performance at 3D gaming, even at higher resolutions.
However, while Bare Feats notes that the Nvidia card is a fantastic 3D/Open GL gaming card, it’s “deficient when rendering Core Image effects.” “This performance deficiency will extend to other Apple pro apps like Final Cut Pro video effects and Aperture functions that invoke Core Image,” notes Bare Feats, which adds “the Radeon HD 2600 XT’s advantage over the GeForce 8800 GT (and Quadro FX 5600) was no less than 22 percent and as much as 42 percent.”
I’m not sure why this is the case. From a technical standpoint, it makes no sense to me. In using Final Cut Express and Aperture, as well as Adobe’s Lightroom, I didn’t notice any hit in performance over the ATI card. But neither did I experience any speed boosts, as I would have anticipated.
Of course, there are other reasons to love the Nvidia card. It supports dual 30-inch Apple Cinema HD display. It includes Nvidia’s video processing technology, which offloads H.264 decode enabling very smooth playback of high-definition video.
So am I happy with the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT? Yes, mainly for the significant boost to gaming it gives me and my son (well, mainly my son) and the fact that I haven’t noticed performance problems with any other software. I’d also upgrade to it if I had a Mac Pro bought before the January update.
However, based on the tests of the sites listed above, if I were a user of Final Cut Pro or other high end software on the latest rev of the Mac Pro, I’d stick with the standard Radeon HD 2600 XT, at least for now.

Macsimum rating:
For gamers: 10 out of 10
For non-gamers: 5 out of 10
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
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