Sketchup and iMac
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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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