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eVGA 8800GT 512mb for 1920x1080?

Ryan Rhee
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Ryan Rhee
Ryan Rhee
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Hi all,

 

Currently, I'm using the 8800GT 512mb with a 32" 1080p HDTV.

The video card can handle most things, but gpu-intensive things lag a bit.

Even the animation for switching between spaces lags when I have lots of windows open.

Is my video card having problems, or do I need a better card?

 

If I need a better card, what do you recommend?

 

-Ryan

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https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/209663-evga-8800gt-512mb-for-1920x1080/
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LogicalUser
LogicalUser
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Posted

hmmm

 

an 8800GT was a very beefy card for its day, should be more than enough in terms of power, up until the latest 27" iMacs the only Apple offering with a faster video card was the build-to-order Mac Pro with the 4870.

 

the 9800GT matches the 8800GT's performance, Nvidia's 'new' GTS250 is just an overclocked 55nm 8800GT core with a few more shader pathways unlocked, and Nvidia's next fastest card is $180+

 

I'm unsure as to what your issue is to be honest... my first guess was some sort of config issue and not having QE/CI support, but figured you would have noticed that sooner :)

 

 

It could be an issue with the card itself I guess, it is a few years old after all.

Do you have a windows install available to test? Some GPU testers in a different driver environment seems like a good plan to help pinpoint if the problem is hardware or software. Grab GPU-Z (for sensor feedback) and something like OCCT, and see how the card responds to various loads?

EricM
EricM
Posted
Posted

I would assume that its probably time to get another card if you feel like your lagging. But for your resolution, I would go for a 1GB card for the extra resolutions, anything over 720p on 512mb will begin to fall on its face. I would suggest a GTX 260, a 3 tier upgrade is always a must to feel the added bonus. :ninja:

Heres a card I would personally recommend for you:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814133270

 

Its a 2xDVI card with an hdmi adapter, this way you shouldn't have compatibility issues with like a 1xDVi and an HDMI port in osx. Plus PNY makes great products that I can personally vouch for, used many of their cards. EVGA is also an excellent company but costs more for the same thing and is usually sold out on newegg. Plus with a dual slot cooler, the inside of your case will be cooler overall, 8800gt's produce massive amounts of heat with the single slot designs.

 

P.S. The 896MB of memory will be more than enough, especially with the power of that card.

an1r0n
an1r0n
Posted
Posted

Can you please tell are u using hackinotsh or real mac hardware? If hackintosh, how did you get you graphic card recognize? Are you using efi strings, nveanbler, nvinject or different kext?

 

And please, do not buy new graphics card just because someone tells you so on this forum. 8800GT is really great graphics card..

 

Cheers

EricM
EricM
Posted
Posted

Once again, I will add... 512MB of vid memory isn't quite sufficient for 1080p if you read his first post carefully... so he should probably get a 1gb card or the gtx 260. I recommended it because if he just went out and bought a 9800gt 1gb, he wouldn't feel the difference. Its a general rule for video cards to upgrade at least 3 tiers. Once again, yes the 8800gt is an excellent card, but not at super high resolutions. The 8800gt came out when 1080p tv's were a premium and had a hefty price tag... the card design is 3 years old, its time for something new with lower heat, and more memory to handle his nice 1080p resolution with no lag.

 

P.S. hes running osx86... look at his sig...

LogicalUser
LogicalUser
Posted
Posted
Once again, I will add... 512MB of vid memory isn't quite sufficient for 1080p if you read his first post carefully... so he should probably get a 1gb card or the gtx 260. I recommended it because if he just went out and bought a 9800gt 1gb, he wouldn't feel the difference. Its a general rule for video cards to upgrade at least 3 tiers. Once again, yes the 8800gt is an excellent card, but not at super high resolutions. The 8800gt came out when 1080p tv's were a premium and had a hefty price tag... the card design is 3 years old, its time for something new with lower heat, and more memory to handle his nice 1080p resolution with no lag.

 

P.S. hes running osx86... look at his sig...

I'm afraid I'm not following what you mean

How could a G92 based 8800GT w 512MB GDDR3 possibly not be powerful enough to simply drive monitors at 1920x1080 resolution? (1080p)

 

Simply displaying at 1920x1080 is not difficult at all:

I'm typing this on a G5 tower from 2004, with its stock AGP Radeon 9600XT

It has 128MB of DDR RAM running at 300mhz, a whopping 4 shader cores (8800GT = 112 of em), 4 ROPs (vs 16 on 8800GT), etc...

 

My 1st monitor is 1920x1200 running via an ADC-DVI adapter (yes, ADC) and my 2nd is a 46" Sony LCD TV running at 1920x1080 with a DVI-HDMI adapter. I've been running both for years now without issue, both mirroring and extended desktop work flawlessly without issues. Back when I played WoW It ran fine at 1920x1200 @ minimum settings. I certainly cannot decode/playback high-definition encoded video, but that's because of the 1.8 ghz G5 CPUs, not the graphics card's RAM.

 

Furthermore, memory bus width is far more crucial than the amount of memory for a modern graphics card.

The recent generation of low & midrange GPUs with 1GB of range are basically just for show (especially the DDR2 ones). Without a +192bit memory bus the extra 512MB is almost useless. There are plenty of examples of Nvidia cards with 384MB of RAM and a fat bus demolishing cards with 512MB or 1GB of RAM & a slower bus. (simply doubling total capacity can be meaningless if the card can't fill the memory fast enough to utilize it) Even the 1GB 9800GT has more memory than it can utilize with its 256-bit bus.

 

If he was attempting to run modern games at high detail & heavy anti-aliasing at 1920x1080 resolution with the 8800GT then I would agree its 512MB of memory could be somewhat of a FPS bottleneck, but he hasn't mentioned gaming.

 

Plus, the 8800GT is the 3rd fastest card Apple has offered to date, and should be more than enough assuming its properly configured and is not physically failing due to age. Unless he's doing something like gaming or GPU assisted video/3d rendering at high resolutions even a 256MB 8800GT would be more than enough card.

 

 

Also, going from 8800GT to GTX 260 is not a 3 tier upgrade, more like a 1.5 tier upgrade.

The 9800GT is not really an upgrade over the 8800GT, identical performance at same clockspeeds

The 9800GTX+/GTS250 is barely an update over the 9800GT (under 10%) and the GTX 260 is the next step up.

EricM
EricM
Posted
Posted

Re-read his first post. "Gpu-intensive things lag a bit,"

 

Yes, I backup my post. Try running new games at 1080p on the 8800gt. It wont be PERFECT.

 

How is going from an 8800gt to a gtx 260 not a good upgrade? Explain?

 

8800gt<8800gts<9800gx2<gts 250(9800gtx+)<gtx 260

 

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/132

 

Plus pci-e 2.0

 

216 steam v. 112?

LogicalUser
LogicalUser
Posted
Posted

I never said it wasn't a good upgrade, just not "at least 3 tiers"

the difference between the 8800GT & GTS250/9800GTX+ is hardly a +2 tier upgrade, (only 16 more SPs, efficiency and an overclock? pfft) Also, the 8800GT is a PCI-E 2.0 card.

 

plus, both that link and your ordering are not sorted by performance. A 9800GX2 will demolish a GTS 250 and at anything other than gaming at extreme resolution & quality settings can outperform the GTX 260, and even the GTX 285 at some GPGPU style tasks.

 

 

besides, we keep getting back to gaming performance, not overall or OSX performance.

without knowing exactly what he's doing, "GPU-intensive" tasks on OSX simply isn't the same as playing brand new games at 1920x1200 or 2560x1600 w 8x AA & fully cranked settings.

 

Somehow I cannot see Spaces & Expose demanding a Mac Pro/brand new iMac with custom build-to-order cards to run without lag on a real Mac. Who knows, maybe he really is pushing his 8800GT to the max, but without knowing what kinds of loads its hard to tell. All I know is I've used/have a bunch of G92-based cards, including a 8800GT, some 9800GTs & GTX+s and a comparatively crippled 9600GSO (96SP/128bit/DDR3) at 1920x1200 or 1080p and haven't found anything under OSX that'll push them anywhere near as hard as PC gaming or Furmark/OCCT GPU load tests.

 

It seems more likely that he's got a driver or installation related issue (improper EFIstring info can cause brutal graphics lag under some situations), or the card itself is wearing out/failing.

 

 

Besides, with all that said, unfortunately the GTX 200 series is kind of a bad buy right now. Nothing to do with its performance per se, but Nvidia is.... not doing well ATM.

The GT240 was a flop and the GT200 GPUs are simply too expensive for them to produce & sell at a profit, and depending on who you believe Nvidia has either completely stopped or significantly decreased production, and stopped delivering GT200 GPUs to vendors. The GTX 260 is still somewhat available, but most of the higher ones are nearly impossible to obtain at the moment, or your stuck with the one or two vendors who still have parts.

an1r0n
an1r0n
Posted
Posted

@logical use

 

Do not bother, EricM is obviously some lame user who got a new rig and now things he's the smartest on the world... I admire your patience and agree with everything you wrote. If you have 8800GT it's RETARDED to buy new GPU just because you've red it on some forum ;

 

Cheers,

 

an1r0n

 

P.S: to one who starded topic: see what did you do now! : ) Ha ha, but seriously try Efi strings, NVenabler or NVkexts and than let us now. Or you listened EricM and now regreting you have ever logged on this forum xD

Ryan Rhee
Ryan Rhee
Posted
  • Author
Posted
@logical use

 

Do not bother, EricM is obviously some lame user who got a new rig and now things he's the smartest on the world... I admire your patience and agree with everything you wrote. If you have 8800GT it's RETARDED to buy new GPU just because you've red it on some forum ;

 

Cheers,

 

an1r0n

 

P.S: to one who starded topic: see what did you do now! : ) Ha ha, but seriously try Efi strings, NVenabler or NVkexts and than let us now. Or you listened EricM and now regreting you have ever logged on this forum xD

 

Hey guys,

 

Firstly, I'm kinda flattered that people are arguing over my post. ;D

 

I am using EFI strings to get my card working.

Sys profiler shows QE/CI both working.

 

It's a hard problem to diagnose since it's a matter of performance, rather than failure.

 

Some additional info:

WoW used to run at 150~200fps at 1280x1024 on my 19" monitor.

Now, it runs at 40~60fps at 1920x1080, on my 32" HDTV.

 

When I have ~10 windows open on each screen (I have two expose screens running), switching between screens is jumpy / laggy. It still works though.

 

I suppose I could run some benchmarks and you guys could help me see if my card is dead, if a newer card would help, if my current card is configured incorrectly, etc, etc.

I could also try swapping my video card and see if that helps at all.

 

What benchmark should I run?

 

-Ryan

kmare
kmare
Posted
Posted

I'm on exactly the same card with no problems using EFI strings (going back to 10.5.4) all the way up to 2560x1600

 

I have found that injectors, chameleon graphics enabler etc do cause some animation lag ( I can detect the issue as soon as I boot up)

 

There was also some issue on non-mac 8800GT sometime back (http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/%22http:/t148843-200.html) -- I have since flashed my ROM to mac 8800GT so I can't tell you if the problem still exisits

Ryan Rhee
Ryan Rhee
Posted
  • Author
Posted
I'm on exactly the same card with no problems using EFI strings (going back to 10.5.4) all the way up to 2560x1600

 

I have found that injectors, chameleon graphics enabler etc do cause some animation lag ( I can detect the issue as soon as I boot up)

 

There was also some issue on non-mac 8800GT sometime back (http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/%22http:/t148843-200.html) -- I have since flashed my ROM to mac 8800GT so I can't tell you if the problem still exisits

 

Did flashing your ROM help the lag?

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