This becomes most apparent in the real world app tests for Mudbox 2009 on the Mac.įor Cinema 4D users, the Radeon 4870 also bested the Nvidia GTX 285 card. One test, the OpenGL Extension Viewer test indicate that while the GTX 285 is faster at earlier OpenGL extensions, it poops out compared to the Radeon 4870 card when it reaches OpenGL 2.0 and OpenGL 2.1 - especially with an OpenGL test using GLSL 1.0. Interestingly, the results of these Ars review tests indicate that the GTX 285 may be the card to get if you are very interested in running Windows games on a Mac Pro in a dual-boot situation but if you want the best performance today for professional OpenGL-based 3D Mac programs, the ATI Radeon 4870 is the card to beat. The review compares the GTX 285 against the AMD/ATI Radeon 4870 card which is a very fast GPU option for the Mac. This review specifically is aimed at looking at the card from the point of view of professional graphics and 3D rendering.
Ars technica has written a very good review (they call it a short review) of the Nvidia GTX 285 Mac graphics cards for Mac Pros.
