In Search of the Best Hackintosh Graphics Card

[brightico]

BFG GTX 260 OC Maxcore Got it for $100 at tiger direct. seems to be beating some of the $200 Dollar video cards. I think i got a pretty Great score for only spending $400 and reusing my case, power supply, and Harddrive. G5 Case will be here soon. One weird thing though is that when nova bench's graphic test starts it stays at like 150fps for 2 seconds then takes off to between 1500 and 2200. Any one know why?

Awesome! I just bought the exact same one as well and had a $10 off coupon too. I also picked up a bigger power supply to go along with it.

 

[nivag]

BFG GTX 260 OC Maxcore Got it for $100 at tiger direct. seems to be beating some of the $200 Dollar video cards. I think i got a pretty Great score for only spending $400 and reusing my case, power supply, and Harddrive. G5 Case will be here soon. One weird thing though is that when nova bench's graphic test starts it stays at like 150fps for 2 seconds then takes off to between 1500 and 2200. Any one know why?

Awesome! I just bought the exact same one as well and had a $10 off coupon too. I also picked up a bigger power supply to go along with it.

Its been great so far im running an Corsair 850W, it seems overkill but im hoping it will last through my next few builds. Also a tip I had my second monitor hooked up using a dvi to vga adapter and it cut my nova bench graphic score by more than half but unplugging it seems to bring out the cards full potential. Havent tested with 2 dvi devices yet but will soon have a nice 27" coming after the weekend.

 

[Sombra]

Mac Pro (MacPro5,1)
Intel Core i7 @ 3370 MHz
8 GB - DDR3 @ 1602 MHz
ATI Radeon HD 5770

NovaBench Score: 1516
2011-02-21 00:04:08 -0800
Mac OS X 10.6.6
Intel Core i7 @ 3370 MHz
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 5770

8192 MB System RAM (Score: 161)
- RAM Speed: 5160 MB/s

CPU Tests (Score: 685)
- Floating Point Operations/Second: 282884448
- Integer Operations/Second: 549779200
- MD5 Hashes Calculated/Second: 997799

Graphics Tests (Score: 644)
- 3D Frames Per Second: 1194

Hardware Tests (Score: 26)
- Primary Partition Capacity: 232 GB
- Drive Write Speed: 98 MB/s

 

[lukarak]

Something's not right here. I have the same setup, and with 4.1 and AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext edit i get 2700 FPS. The upside is that it reverts to lower power mode when not under load.

try smbios 3.1, i get 2710 running 3.1 smbios and 3.6ghz.. its stable.

That's what i'm trying to say, i get 2700 with 4.1
With 3.1 the card doesn't go to low power mode when in 2D. But you only get 1800 with 4.1, which means you probably didn't edit the GPU power kext properly.

 

[thadrumr]

Here is my score. I am running an old 7800gt that a friend gave me for the mean time til I can get the money for a HD 5770 Radeon. I was running a Quadro NVS 290 but the 7800gt does better in games. The NVS 290 is the same GPU core as an 8400gs. The processor is an i5 750 Overclocked as is my ram to ddr3 1600mhz.


NovaBench Score: 838
2011-02-23 09:00:29 -0500
Mac OS X 10.6.6
Intel Core i5 @ 3200 MHz
Graphics Card: GeForce 7800 GT

4096 MB System RAM (Score: 121)
- RAM Speed: 5386 MB/s

CPU Tests (Score: 482)
- Floating Point Operations/Second: 155056672
- Integer Operations/Second: 309985408
- MD5 Hashes Calculated/Second: 1125172

Graphics Tests (Score: 201)
- 3D Frames Per Second: 411

Hardware Tests (Score: 34)
- Primary Partition Capacity: 595 GB
- Drive Write Speed: 66 MB/s

 

[NDBoost]

Something's not right here. I have the same setup, and with 4.1 and AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext edit i get 2700 FPS. The upside is that it reverts to lower power mode when not under load.

try smbios 3.1, i get 2710 running 3.1 smbios and 3.6ghz.. its stable.

That's what i'm trying to say, i get 2700 with 4.1
With 3.1 the card doesn't go to low power mode when in 2D. But you only get 1800 with 4.1, which means you probably didn't edit the GPU power kext properly.

i didnt edit anything. I installed multibeast, and nvidia drivers.

 

[vjkevlar]

Hello Gentlemen.

Im somewhat confused. I thought we no longer needed to use a Graphic Kext when using the newest Chamelion, and still get Full acceleration?

Also, is true that the 4xx series (and earlier) is the only series working in OSx with full acceleration?

Thanks! I'll post my Geekbench next post.

Kevlar

 

[lukarak]

i didnt edit anything. I installed multibeast, and nvidia drivers.

Try editing your AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext (the info.plist in package contents)
You scroll to <key>MacPro4,1</key>
and change the second line after that to <key>Vendor10deDevice06c0</key>

Then install the 4.1 smbios and see if the card runs cooler and quieter in 2d mode. It should still do 2700 in NovaBench

 

[rushko]

GTX 260 is great solution for OS X as far as I am concerned, it' twice faster than my old GTS 250 and it runs with no problems. The outputs are working, no freezing when I attach LCD TV via HDMI out and no other probleems I've expirienced with GTS 250.

 

[vjkevlar]

NovaBench Score: 2179
2011-02-24 23:56:49 -0500
Mac OS X 10.6.5
Intel Core i7 (930) @ 2800 MHz
Graphics Card: Unknown nVidia card (BFG 285 oc)

6144 MB System RAM (Score: 139)
- RAM Speed: 4164 MB/s

CPU Tests (Score: 551)
- Floating Point Operations/Second: 230143488
- Integer Operations/Second: 431685056
- MD5 Hashes Calculated/Second: 812254

Graphics Tests (Score: 1468)
- 3D Frames Per Second: 2544

Hardware Tests (Score: 21)
- Primary Partition Capacity: 111 GB
- Drive Write Speed: 134 MB/s

In installed via iBoot and Retail snow updated to 10.6.5

Pretty good numbers right?

K