New Imac 27 inch as spec'ed here http://store.apple.com/nz/configure/MB953X/A?mco=MTM3NjczMzI with 8Gb Ram & i7 processor. Running SU 7.1 on Snow Leopard.
Shadows on - (47-53*) frames per second
Shadows off - 22 frames per second**
compared to old G5 PPC Dual 2.3Ghz, with 2.5Gb RAM NVidia GeForce 6600 GPU
Shadows on - 30 frames per second
Shadows off - 14.6 frames per second
and 1st gen Macbook Pro - (ATI Radeon X1600 2Ghz Intel Core Duo, 2Gb Ram Leopard, SU 7.1)
Shadows on - 27.3 frames per second
Shadows off - 9.2 frames per second
Pretty impressive improvement I guess, but can't help wondering what the Mac Pro might be capable of... No software/OpenGL issues yet to report but will post back if I find any....
*Is SU caching something here? Upon repeated testing I'm getting different results (shadows on = same as shadows off & frame rate increases to 53), even after closing SU and reopening Test file... Am I missing something here?
**The results on the Imac back up Jopperman's results with similarly spec'ed Graphics card (512Mb difference on GPU) and RAM but on a different operating system and other hardware specifically CPU...