03-04-2009, 05:26 PM

Hi,

I 'm about to buy a new Mac Pro and wondering if it worth upgrading the graphics card.

I'm a graphic designer who uses alot of image-editing, video-editing and 3D rendering software.

The Mac Pro comes with a NVIDIA GeForce GT 120, but that doesnt mean much to a non-techy such as myself. Any help would be appreciated.

03-04-2009, 05:30 PM

Lol your in the same boat as me, Except i study graphic design and im going for the 24'' imac with either the 9400m or the gt120.. Based upon what i have found out on the forums.. the gt120 is definetly suffice enough for any graphic design related projects you might be doing.. in terms of rendering and things though im not too sure.

03-04-2009, 07:23 PM

Originally Posted by quazzar

Hi,

I 'm about to buy a new Mac Pro and wondering if it worth upgrading the graphics card.

I'm a graphic designer who uses alot of image-editing, video-editing and 3D rendering software.

The Mac Pro comes with a NVIDIA GeForce GT 120, but that doesnt mean much to a non-techy such as myself. Any help would be appreciated.

To be 100% honest - your BEST bet is to look at the software you are using, and see what they suggest.

The reason being - for photo editing, just about anything that can display enough pixels on the screen for the monitor your working with at a high enough color depth will work. You're gonna be using a custom profile most likely anyway to color calibrate your screen. It's the video editing and 3D rendering that could be the tricky part.

For example - let's say you use a 3D rendering program that offloads some of the rendering to the video card, or recommends a video card that has a certain level of 3D capability for real time walk throughs and the like - then you're going to want to make sure whatever card you get meets or exceeds the softwares recommendation.

Video editing, well, there's a possibility some software might offload 3D transitions or effects to the the graphics card (I don't know off hand if any actually do), but usually its either not real time (hence rendered via the CPU) or you have a dedicated board that handles that (ie: Matrox RT.X board or something similar).

What I tell people for home buyers, people who love games, business or anything else - find what the various software packages recommend for hardware, make out a list, and then buy a bit above it if you can afford it to reduce the risk of having to replace in the near future because you're working with equipment that barely meets the minimum.

You can never be fully future proof - that's impossible, but you can at least try to buy yourself enough time until the next major upgrade.