Does anyone know details on the strengths & weaknesses of these cards? It seems the NVIDEA cards are stronger, but I'd like to know if the Radeon has any advantages for certain types of processes.
Thanks,
Jeff
Too generic a question to really give a good answer. There are many models of Nvidea and Radeon cards, representing different generations of cards and various models within each major generation.
A good resource to compare the different cards is linked below. These are benchmarks on windows, but the overall capabilities of each card should be comparable on Mac :
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html
A good example here is probably the 20" and 24" iMac models. You can get a base X1600 in the 20", or in the 24" model a 7300GT or a 7600GT.
Many would assume the 7300GT is faster than the x1600, yet the charts say it isn't so. One example, the new game Prey, has nearly double the FPS on an Radeon x1600 than on an Nvidia 7300GT. Ditto for Oblivion.
Switch over to the Nvidia 7600 GT on the 24" iMac and the tables are turned. The 7600GT has roughly double the FPS as the x1600.
Within the various Mac linups, my impression is that the following would generally be true :
X1950XT > 7600GT > X1600 > 7300GT > integrated 950GMA
This is not considering SLI in the Mac Pro line.