19 replies to this topic

[devilhunter]

i'm not quite up to with the hackintoshing scene anymore, it's been two or three years now since i build a hack.

For a graphics card, i used the nvidia 9800GTX+, a card that has awesome driver support via a kext file in Snow Leopard and lion.
While being an awesome card more than 4 years ago, it's just plain slow nowadays, and even runs skyrim in Win 7 like a dog with medium settings.

Does somebody recommend a good graphics card that's basically on the high end side today that works in mac hack OS X?
As i see Apple is preferring the AMD cards since a good now and giving nvidia the cold shoulder.

I had a failed experiment before with the nvidia GTX470 before, i bought the card (with dafootballers recommendation that it works in OSX), the drivers for this card sucked badly.
see here, a few years back
http://www.insanelym...dpost&p=1528303
this card now sits in my HTPC for gaming under the TV, so i'd need to get another one.

Any recommendation for a (really working in OSX) card?
there are some cards posted in the osx86wiki, but most are older and it does not mention performance
(also i'm willing to leave my trusty snow cat behind and upgrade to the Lion mess OS if the new card requires it)

[cluthz]

As far as I now the 400 series fermi issues are solved.

SInce 10.7.3 all GF 116 and GF 114 (mid/high end GF500) based cards should work out of the box.

If you are still on Snow Leopard I guess you are stuck with GTX285 as the best 100% working card (no drivers needed at all, just plainly works), both SL and Lion.
GTX285 is quite a bit faster than 9800GTX+ and a bit slower than GTX560. You could perhaps find one cheap second hand?
For a hack a GTX285 is actually very good, where as in windows you lack DX11 support that is no issue on OSX (as it has SM 4.1 and OpenGL 3.3),
on DX9/10 the 285 is really fast and have a 512 bit bus and almost same bandwidth as the new GTX680. I just looked at ebay and they are quite pricey (around 200-250, but i picked mine up for about $120 little over a year ago, so if you look around you should manage to get one  for less than 100.

9800GTX+ should still be faster than the 6770M offerings in the MBP with a good margin, so it can't be that bad?

With GF5XX series dropping in price you could get one quite cheap.

As for AMD, the 6870 works OOTB, but there have been many issues with people claiming steam games won't launch because it's unrecognized and the 69xx series does work badly.

If would try getting the 470 to work, since the support is apparently better now, get a cheap second hand 285 or get a new 560/570.

As for Lion, I have it running well on my system, but I haven't managed to make sleep work (not that biggie), gfx worked as said ootb.

There are no news for GF600 and AMD7000, so far only non QE/Ci support and very bad performance.

Edit: oh ye, here is the Graphic Card Hierachy from Toms hardware:
http://www.tomshardw...iew,3107-7.html
(comparing performance on just about all known graphics cards)

[devilhunter]

was reading up on the 570 just a few minutes ago:
http://www.insanelym...howtopic=271109
it's about 300€
http://www.amazon.de...vga 570&x=0&y=0

how's the 285 compared to the 570?

edit: hmm, found something:
http://www.anandtech...duct/317?vs=306

edit2: 460 Watts power consumption on load, holy bullocks...

[hmtinc]

If you are looking for a card that will provide good gaming and one that requires minimal effort. Then i suggest you get a card apple already supports.
There are 2 cards that apple natively supports that are capable of running games at high end graphics ( high not ultra )for at least 2-3 years


ATI Radeon HD 5770   $124  1GB   http://www.newegg.ca...N82E16814127490
ATI Radeon HD 5870   aprox $200 1GB

[cluthz]

Btw there is a GTX560-448Core which is basically a 570 with a few binned steam procs.
It's like 95% of the 570 performance, but priced as a 560.

As you see from that chart the GTX570 is from 20-60% faster, where apps with dx10 support is better on 570, but DX9 performance isn't that big difference.

The 460w load is system load, the 285 uses like 250 on max load OC'ed

[cluthz]

Radeon 5770 is not much faster than a 9800GTX+, and the GTX285 is fully supported by apple and loads faster than 5770.
http://www.hwcompare...radeon-hd-5770/

5770 vs 9800GTX+
http://www.hwcompare...radeon-hd-5770/

9800GTX+ vs GTX285:
http://www.hwcompare...ce-gtx-285-1gb/

As stated earlier, for Mac OS results you should look at DX9 results, as there is no support for DX10 functions

[devilhunter]

thanks for the info
the 285 is not really buyable anymore either from amazon or anywhere else, only used.
i'll check out the 560 and 570 then.

seems like these don't work OOTB as the older ones, but that's ok.
just the performance should be alright

btw cluthz, can you run LuxMark on your card like here? (results)

[cluthz]

devilhunter, on 24 May 2012 - 08:49 PM, said:

thanks for the info
the 285 is not really buyable anymore either from amazon or anywhere else, only used.
i'll check out the 560 and 570 then.

seems like these don't work OOTB as the older ones, but that's ok.
just the performance should be alright

btw cluthz, can you run LuxMark on your card like here? (results)

Sure
LuxMark is compute tho, so I dunno how it compares to 3Dperformance.
I just ran NovaBench (free on app store) and got 496 in GPU score (2318 FPS)

edit: just forund results from my 2010 MBP with GT330M. 164 score/ 340 FPS..

[cluthz]

Luxmark won't even start?! Maybe it needs Lion, but I couldn't find out anything on their site.
I gave CIneBench 11.5 a run and got 32.33 FPS
THe guy in that thread got 38 FPS on 570HD SC, so pretty decent:
  

I have a pretty weak CPU, i guess a new i5/i7 would improve it a bit?

[devilhunter]

thanks.
the 9800gtx has 24 fps btw in cinebench
on my i7 i got 4.88pts (currently no OC here, 6.8 with OC)

[cluthz]

devilhunter, on 24 May 2012 - 09:21 PM, said:

thanks.
the 9800gtx has 24 fps btw in cinebench
on my i7 i got 4.88pts (currently no OC here, 6.8 with OC)

Unigine Heaven is released for mac btw, but needs 10.7, can take a spin if you like?
Unless you have 10.7 it's not much help tho to compare. (9800GTX+ should work ootb in Lion i guess, with graphicsenabler=yes)

[devilhunter]

nah, thanks

[cluthz]

I get like 2.4 its in CPU render ..
Dual Core ftl..

Still with so few games really using more than two cores I usually have a good time with my Dual Core, it is OC'ed to 4GHz tho.

[cluthz]

Btw 35.72 in CB in Lion, that's pretty close to the 570! (which also was tested on Lion)

[njnick3]

try the 6950, only 230$ right now
only takes a couple of steps to get working
6870 is easier to use with a hackintosh tho
I run skyrim cider on high with no problems on a 6750m 512mb so you should max everything out

[cluthz]

njnick3, on 25 May 2012 - 12:08 AM, said:

try the 6950, only 230$ right now
only takes a couple of steps to get working
6870 is easier to use with a hackintosh tho
I run skyrim cider on high with no problems on a 6750m 512mb so you should max everything out

No:

The 6750M is around same performance as the GT240.
http://www.tomshardw...iew,3107-7.html

For ultra you need much more than a 9800GTX+


Unless you feel 20 FPS is good.

[njnick3]

cluthz, on 25 May 2012 - 12:15 AM, said:

No:

The 6750M is around same performance as the GT240.
http://www.tomshardw...iew,3107-7.html

For ultra you need much more than a 9800GTX+


Unless you feel 20 FPS is good.

mine is fine idk why, ask ryno
EDIT: he has same card that is why and he made the port
Cider port also doesn't have AA and all that, so that could be why

[snoozepops]

Hello and excuse me for butting in. My question is directed toward njnick3. I am running Lion 10.7.4 on my hackintosh with a Sapphire Radeon HD 6750 graphics card. I know this is not the same as the card in your profile, but similar. Is QE and CI working properly for you? I have tried the plist editing route in both Lion and Mountain Lion DP4 with no success. I am dual booting with Windows 7. Any thoughts?

[cluthz]

 snoozepops, on 23 June 2012 - 02:11 PM, said:

Hello and excuse me for butting in. My question is directed toward njnick3. I am running Lion 10.7.4 on my hackintosh with a Sapphire Radeon HD 6750 graphics card. I know this is not the same as the card in your profile, but similar. Is QE and CI working properly for you? I have tried the plist editing route in both Lion and Mountain Lion DP4 with no success. I am dual booting with Windows 7. Any thoughts?

I'm pretty sure he has a MacBook Pro with 6750M, so that is not what you are looking for..

[snoozepops]

I had a feeling that might be the case. Thank you Moderator.