I'm finding it hard to wrap my head around video card priorities, despite a lot of searching.

I'm building a hackintosh for work. I'm getting the GA-EP45-DS3R motherboard (PCIe 2.0).

I don't really do a lot of gaming. Spore is maybe the first new game I've played in a while, and only occasionally. I probably won't do a lot of gaming at work.

I will do a lot of photoshop, illustrator, sketchup, some 3D modelling more advanced than sketchup (lightwave etc), video, and such. Lots of stuff simultaneously spread across two 24" (1920x1200) monitors.

So - What's my priority here? Where's my value? I know ram is good for caching textures and stuff for games, but will it also give me better performance running a myriad of graphics apps? Or am I better off going for speed? And what am I going to see between a 128-bit and 256-bit card?

Am I going to get more performance out of a
EVGA 9600 GT, 256-bit, 512mb DDR2 ( http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?...N82E16814130393 ) $115CAD after rebate, or
EVGA 9500 GT, 128-bit, 1GB DDR3 ( http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?...N82E16814130395 ) $100CAD after rebate

Or am I being completely insane, and these will both be good/overkill? If it's the 9600, is it worth the extra $15 for the "superclocked" version - which only ups the GP from 650 to 675mhz?

Any help/guidance would be greatly appriciated.

I'm about to build my osx86 sys and I'm not sure what gpu to get either. I want to keep it pretty cheap, about $100 or so but will need to be able to dual 24'' as well. Also would like a card that would take easily and not require hardcore hacking.

Best choice is a nvidia 8800 gt w/t 512mb ram. Though the 9800 gt are dropping in price. You do not want anything less than a 8600. Generally speaking more than 512mb on a card is a waste, unless you are trying to run 3D games at max rez on a 30" monitor. Or are doing CAD work, but that also generally requires one of the "Pro" cards that cost 10x as much (not really kidding) to deliver the same level of performance (google Quadro or FireGL if you don't believe me).

With 24" monitors, you don't need anything special to drive them, unless they are of unusually high resolution. 30" monitors do require a dvi port with "dual link" capability. IIRC, most graphics cards that have it, only have it on one connector, but I'm not 100% sure about that.

Adobe's Creative suites in the most recent version were updated to be able to tap the power of the graphics cards and will benefit from a fast card. Core Image (OSX graphics API) can as well, but I'm not really clear on where or how much it benefits. Pretty much nothing other than games or 3d modeling will, but I think most of the "pro" 3d apps want the hideously expensive variety as well.

if you wanted to spend a lil bit more, at the moment $120-$130 Canadian after rebate can get you a new 9800GT, based on the 8800GT, which would be a much more capable card

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?...N82E16814261024
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?...N82E16814143154
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?...N82E16814162017
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?...N82E16814130384

lots of vendors, all depends on if you want single or double slot cooling

The 9800gt is the 8800gt, just rebranded and cheaper.

First of all, thanks for responding to my thread. I figured it had fallen off the cliff. That said, I ended up getting the EVGA 9600GT. It was decently priced, and available (I was in a bit of a rush), and I figured it'd hard to go wrong with a chipset supported natively by Apple. Hope it was a reasonable choice.

of the two, yes, the 9600GT was the better choice
higher clock speed, 64 instead of 32 stream paths, GDDR3 instead of GDDR2, nearly 2x as high memory clockspeed more than makes up for the 512mb less RAM.
anything over 512 is overkill really, at least until you hit the +$200 pricerangerange

What about HCL? I am so worried over 9800gt that i am just going to go for the used 8800gt 512 just to make sure it works.

Only 9800gtx is listed on the 10.5.2 hcl list. I couldnt really find any testimonials with people using 9800gt.

Can someone bring me up to speed here?

the 8800gt and 9800gt are amazingly similar, the 9800gt is pretty much a rebadging of the 8800gt chip, with slight changes to the reference board the vendors base their designs off of, and a few minor features added accordingly. off hand, the option of Hybrid Power support, (if your mobo also does) and SPDIF audio in (for passthrough of 5.1 audio to HDMI via DVI-HDMI adapter)

as for the HCL, it does not appear to get updated all that often, and the 9800gt is somewhat new

i have seen several people here report success with a 9800gt, including a guy in this thread http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=134818

i'd do a google search, 9800gt site:insanelymac.com

Now that they new MacBooks are out there is great support for the 9800GT.