Sketchup and iMac
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Hi Guys,
Going to buy a new iMac soon, and wondering if I should get the 21.5 inch with the nvidia or the 27 inch with the ATI Radeon. I've heard there are some problems with skethcup and ATI graphics cards. But the advantage with the 27 inch is they have stronger processors. What do you guys think? Which one should I buy?
ultimatez
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I favour nVidia.I've experienced too many glitches with ATI and OpenGL.
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It's a really tricky one.
I would suggest Nvidia every time where SU is concerned, but I can see the predicament you are facing because I also want the 27" iMac. It is a beautiful machine and I would buy one straight away if only I could get one with a Nvidia card and unfortunately it is not an option on the upgrades.
I don't want to risk spending all that money with it not running SU to it's best potential.
A real shame you have to downgrade from 27 to 21" just to get the better GPU for SU. -
I think I'll agree with Dylan. If there was a 27" with an Nvidia I'll be definitely getting that one. hmmm looks like I'll be getting the 21.5" now just for the nvidia. Thanks guys.
ultimatez
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@ultimatez 32 said:
I think I'll agree with Dylan. If there was a 27" with an Nvidia I'll be definitely getting that one. hmmm looks like I'll be getting the 21.5" now just for the nvidia. Thanks guys.
ultimatez
No way to get it with nVidia? Have you contacted Apple?
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Hi TT,
I have went to an apple reseller, I have asked them if there is a 27" with an nVidia they said there aren't any
ultimatez
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I have the 27" iMac and for me it works great with Sketchup. but as I don't do much modeling but more programming I cannot say much.
I can test some .skp if you want with Test.time_display
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nVidia cards have always worked well for me over the years. They are very responsive to updating drivers and keeping their cards reliable.
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Mind you, my recommendation is in terms of Windows systems. Now sure how the drivers behave under OSX.
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We use the last generation iMac 27" i5 with the ATI 4850 video card. We experienced zero problems and we literally run SU 10 hours a day with 20-30 different plugins and 100mb site models. In fact I'll be heading to grad school in a month and I plan to buy the same computer for my extensive SU use.
Caveat: I have a Thinkpad t60 with ATI Firegl card and it has all sorts of weird display issues. Its my understanding that ATI and SU problems where mostly limited to the past.
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@moeamaya said:
Caveat: I have a Thinkpad t60 with ATI Firegl card and it has all sorts of weird display issues. Its my understanding that ATI and SU problems where mostly limited to the past.
I think they where worse. But I've had some very recent good ATI cards, high end of the HD series. And I had a few glitches in OpenGL apps.
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I have never had any problems with ATI cards on a Mac. The ATi versus Nvidia issue was pretty much only a MSW issue.
I would however order the best card offered with the most ram available, the machine should last a long time and graphics demands rise faster than most other systems requirements. The next iteration of MacOS will offload more to the graphics card as well.
I run SU on a 2.0 ghtz Mini with 4gb of ram and it does well most of the time given the limited graphics card. My 3 year MacBook Pro with an Ati card and 3gb of ram does much better with larger models an ostensibly less VRAM ( 128 vs 256 on the Mini). A dedicated card is much better than any on board solution so far.
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True.
There used to be some issues with some ATI cards in the past but they were probably fixed (either by driver updates or new generation of cards) so this nVidia vs. ATI seems to be an obsolete comparison with modern cards.
Keep in mind that the OpenGL requirement of SU is way behind what some really powerful cards can perform nowadays but as SU is not development to the highest-end technology (hardware), they cannot afford releasing newer versions to the top-hardware on the market. A fairly good, medium range card should be compliant enough.
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@gaieus said:
There used to be some issues with some ATI cards in the past but they were probably fixed (either by driver updates or new generation of cards) so this nVidia vs. ATI seems to be an obsolete comparison with modern cards.
As I mentioned - not quite. The card I had was high-end and I had the latest drivers.
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Hi Guys,
Looks like I'll be getting the 27" iMac then with the ATI Radeon, that is, if the ATI problem is just a MSW problem. Thanks for all the help guys.
ultimatez
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I have one of the early-09 24" iMacs with the Radeon 4850 graphics and there haven't been any problems at all that I have noticed. SU runs very nicely indeed.
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@ultimatez 32 said:
Hi Guys,
Looks like I'll be getting the 27" iMac then with the ATI Radeon, that is, if the ATI problem is just a MSW problem. Thanks for all the help guys.
ultimatez
Would be useful if you post your findings here once you have the machine.
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Sure, of course Dylan!
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