In Search of the Best Hackintosh Graphics Card

[Xax]

how's this?

sandy i7 2600k at 4.2 and sapphire 6870, ssd

 

[noah232]

i7 950 Stock
XFX Black Edtion GTX260 Core216
X58A-UD3R
Intel X25m 120G

 

[aedon]

Calling any GTX 470 owners, would you be so kind as to post your Novabench scores so I can compare? I've been having quite a bit of lag with my system....

Your wish is my command.
CPU: Q6600 2,4 GHz
card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 470 Super Overclock, 1.25GB GDDR5, GV-N470SO-13I
This card is rock stable!

System:
os: 10.6.7 x86_64
smbios: MacPro4,1
kext in /E/E: fakesmc only
kext in /S/L/E: JMicron eSATA only & VoodooHDA & AttansicL1Ethernet & Nvidia drivers
dsdt: patch for 'halt', CPU speedstep and for IC9 AHCI
removed kext: AppleTyMCEDriver.kext (ECC for MacPro4,1) coz KP if you use unbuffered DIMMs.

 

[ecoarena]

You guys are giving me an inferiority complex. Great stuff and excellent work everyone. It's nice to see a community that actively contributes.

The concept of the 'best hackintosh graphics card' I find a little misdirected in that aren't we really posting 'the best hackintosh system'? For example, if someone posted up some great specs for a GEFORCE XYZ SUPERDOOPER KILLLALL ATX R-5694/WILDHOG (version 2!) this would indicate how this specific card performed in its host system. Therefore, I may not be able to simply drop it into my current build and expect everything to work.

Hackintosh I would have thought, was about compatibility. Thus a more accurate test, IF we are focusing solely on GPU performance would be to drop different cards into a stock hackintosh unit. Given the need for compatibility, I would think that this would not be that easy.

Does this make sense or am I simply raving from down here in very, very wet Perth?

Best wishes

Eco

 

[xxx-xxxxx]

Just got my gtx 260 running well, funny thing is the pcie lane width is only x8??
no idea why

Hi,

I was also wondering because I "suffered" from this situation, too (in 10.6.7 and Win7 64bit). But then I remembered that all those additional SATA 6GBIT/s and USB 3.0 controller chips are activated and handled like a 5th wheel on a car. They take bandwith from the PCIe Bus when active.

Therefor I deactivated the additional Marvell SATA and all of those Etron USB 3.0 Chips and et voila the GFX card is attached with 16 lanes .

This will end when Intel supports all SATA 6 USB 3.0 chips natively.

 

[sfroom]

It seems that with the discontinuation of the 5850 and 5870, that most people are buying 6850's and 6870's these days. I understand that they're a step down from the 5850 and 5870, but I was hoping some people might be able to post benchmarks.

Nvidia support seems terrible at the moment. GTX 260, 280 and 285 still seem to be great performers for the money, but can't be bought at retail. GTX 460 still suffers from "fermi freeze", and while they seem to perform well, the GTX 470 and 480 don't seem to be popular choices.

Let's keep the benchmarks rolling!

 

[cpukid]

This makes me wonder if NovaBench is useful in a real world context. I ran several tests with diff video cards and achieved scores of over 1000, maybe 1100, on a Q8300 (I forget which exact Q8000) with 8GB DDR2 and a 5750, 640GB WD Black.

My video scores were slightly higher than yours, usually a little over 500 but certainly always under 600. Still, you're only beating my overall scores by less than 200. Doesn't that seem wrong? Shouldn't your i7 blow away my old lower end C2Q?

For the video cards I tested a 4870x2, 5750 1GB, and 9800GT 512MB. My 5750 was always the winner, with the 4870x2 not far behind but the 9800GT was substantially lower. As far as I know the 4870x2 cannot be fully utilized, it runs as a single GPU, otherwise I imagine it would definitely beat the 5750.

I agree with you. Compared to other users, I seem to be about on par with them. Maybe Novbench isn't the most reliable, or maybe I'm not getting my systems full potential. I'm thinking of setting my overclock back, as long as my room doesn't get too hot lol. We'll have to see though.

 

[sk8er_square]

Heres my setup with dual screens, latest Tonymac Nvidia/CUDA, on MacPro3,1 with a MSI Hawk 460GTX -i7 but not sandy bridge.

 

[sk8er_square]

By the way I don't understand how the Hardware Tests are scored - only 15 and its a 64GB SSD maxing out.

 

[Gravewyrm]

Sad_Score.png

Pretty weak score, i think.

GE=Y, TonyMac nVidia Update via MB 3.7.2.

**Edit**

I just ran NovaBench on my Toshiba Satellite A665 laptop...

i7 740Q @ 1.73Ghz
4 GiB Ram
600GiB HDD
nVidia 310m GFX (512MiB) ....

805 Score ... thats sad. Its beating my iDell, and its got a weaker HDD, and its Non-Sandy

*Test was done on a bare install of Win8 build 7989*