NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 vs NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT

[snv]

I am looking to purchase a new Mac Pro with

2 x 2.8 Quad Core Intel Xeon
8 Gigs of ram

But I a stuck at deciding what video card option to choose.

GOAL
First off, I want to run 5 instances of WoW on one machine. 4 instances on one monitor and Main instance on a second monitor.

My options are:
1. ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB times 1, 2, 3, or 4 with SLI links. ( I have read that WoW does not support this and therefore bad! )

2. NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT

3. NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600



After reading about the effects of a SLI link on WoW I believe my choice is between 2 and 3.
I also read that choice 3 is a better card, but I seemed to me that for WoW it was only moderately better and not worth the price.
What I don't know is what the effects of 5-boxing will have on the system. What advice do any of you have about which video card to choose considering my goal?


Thanks in advance.

[triCalcifer]

i think you can be sure that you will be happy with both cards, hovewer:

the Quadro is a great card, even for the price, you will be able to do
all kinds of stuff! like modelling complex 3d-scenes and using
sofware like PS and Z-brush with super ease!
its prolly the best entry level industry card out there!

but, if you are just gonna play wow, then huh?
its def. not worth it for playing games, lotsa cards
out there handle games just as good for a third
of the price.

8800 = gaming card
Quadro = indusrty 3D software card

hope this helps

[Qlimax]

yeah, I ran into the same problem when I had a whole theory on having an 8 core computer with 16gb of ram, but it would always lack in the graphics department. If you can get 2 8800 GTs i think youll be set for wrath, it depends on the monitor sizes.

[snv]

Ok.

Tri, thx for the input.

Qlimax, I intended to have a 30" cinema display for the 4 alt instnaces and a 23" for the main instance. If I am understanding you correctly, you believe I would benefit from having 2 x 8800 GT, and I assume that means each 8800 GT driving its own monitor? Is this possible on the Mac Pro?

Is it the case that this would be an upgraded configuration? Would it be a HUGE upgrade? The 8800 seems relatively inexpensive if this is the case. The only question is if I an can get apple to provide the configuration or would I have to install the extra card myself?

Thanks again for the input guys, I definitely have a clear direction.

[MultiMacBox23]

i have the early 2008 Mac Pro 2.8 8-core, with 16gigs of ram, and twin 8800gt cards. i run 2x30" Cinema displays and 1 of the 20" Cinema displays (this one for IM buddy lists, Mail windows, Firefox looking up thottbot/wowwiki, etc)

i can tell you from first hand experience that;

- yes the machines power supply WILL support 2 8800gt's

- the Mac version of the 8800gt does have the SLI connectors, but *** NO WAY *** to ever get it to turn-on/activate it. No drivers for mac, and no Nvidia nForce chipset on the logic/Mobo, that the cards look for. So no SLI even with dual-booting into Windows

- with me running 2x30" cinema displays, moving from 1 card to 2 video cards..... the difference was almost **** UN-NOTICABLE ****, thats right, after buying the second card, FPS barely changed. the 2 card basically allowed me a 3rd monitor for other misc. uses.

- going past the stock 2 gigs of ram, makes a huge difference. diminishing returns start kicking in at around 8. I **** COULD NOT **** notice any difference after 10 gigs. even though, iStats reports that i dont use anymore than 4gigs to load the multiple instances of WoW, OSX uses the extra ram to cache the HDD

- i've tried different install setups, the symbolic links work the fastest for me loading wise (initial game load & flying into Shatt loading)

- YOU can get by fine with 8gigs, 1 8800gt, and symbolic links. with that particular setup i capped the main screen at 120fps, and the other 4 slaves on the second monitor at 30fps, it will dip in Shatt a little, but in town i could definitely manage 35-45fps, with the slaves pulling in 18-25fps. that is with most of your gfx options maxed on the main screen running in full screen mode, and the 4 slaves running at minimum gfx settings, and at the lowest available widescreen resolution for the Mac client.


Extra ideas for you to mull over, ATI released their HD3780 card for the mac;

- it is slightly cheaper than the 8800gt. (219 vs 279)
- it has what "looks" like a S-Video connected on it, but you can plug in a adapter cable that will have a Component break out so you can run it to a lcd HDTV
- BareFeats clocked the ATI at only a few FPS slower on most games than the 8800gt, *** EXCEPT *** for WoW, which it was a few FPS *** FASTER *** than the 8800gt
- ATI has better OpenGL support, and will run OSX's core image/graphics stuff better, the ATI destroyed the 8800gt in iMovie, Motion3, iMaginator.
- running 2 3780 cards in the machine, you can Crossfire the cards dual-booting under windows. (cant do it in OSX yet)

i would like to experiment with 2 of those cards, they're pretty cheap at 219-ish a piece. thinking about running WoW with the main character on a 46" 1080p LCD, and the other 4 slaves on one of the 30 Cinemas.


As for the Quadro? for the money that card costs, you can buy another mac pro. and start getting into hardware multiboxing.

[snv]

That was everything I needed to know. Thank you VERY much MultiMac!

So now that I know I can get away with 1 x 8800, lets ask some more questions. What is the effect of increasing the gfx settings on your 4 slaves with and without the second card? Can you get away with higher slave settings at higher FPS using a second card or is this also marginally different from 1 card?

What keyboard multiplexer software do you use? I downloaded clonekeys. Is there better?

Assuming you can SLI with the 2 x ATI HD3780 on a windows partition, does this imply that since the hardware can handle it, it is only a matter of time before OS X will support it?

You have already given me great info, I am just asking the rest out of curiosity.

[MultiMacBox23]

I really never tried to raise the graphics on the 4 slaves. i rarely look over there. usually when i train their spells, and accept unsharable quests.

As far as the software goes, i use clone keys. i found that it at times does lag, like when i have a major firefight going on.... i start mashing keys to dps, and then when i am low on health i hit the heal key, and the key clicks for DPS are still qued up, and i die cause they are still throwing lightning bolts out when i'm mashing the lesser heal key. It also is glitching with the Auto-Add option that automatically adds windows to broadcast, if they are in the predefined list. it will add 4 of my 5 WoW's when they open and then add some other random program. there is no better that i know of/tried. the author for clonekeys has dissappeared and its been awhile since i've heard from him. I'm tempted to goto his Google Code page for it and wade through his code and add stuff/fix compatibility issues, but i'm not playing WoW as much anymore so i havent built up the motivation.

with the ATI cards, they call it "CrossFire" instead of SLI. ATI doesnt require anything special on the motherboard, so the cards will/can support it. its just a matter of drivers to get it doing. although dont expect it anytime soon. we are way behind as far as gaming support, by the time the drivers ever come out, the card will be outdated.

on a side note, even though wow doesnt support more than 4 cores, there is a setting in the .WTF files that you can adjust to make wow use all available cores (up to 4), and OSX will distribute the processes to balance the rest out. the highest i've ever seen my CPU usage get to is around 45% on all 8 cores.

right now i think the limitation is the graphics card and possibly how OSX manages spanning the desktop across multiple monitors. i honestly was EXPECTING a good boost in FPS with putting the 4 slaves on the second monitor/gfx card. because running with 1 monitor, and 1 card, and 1 WoW i can get 250-300 fps easy.

i wish in WoW you could hire Henchmen/Heros like in Guildwars and other games to fill out your party. i've heard people talk about in Final Fantasy you can even do crude scripts for the AI with the other party members. that would be awesome. mix in wow's scripting and such, and multiboxing, with out multiboxing. LOL