Someone help me choose a new Video Card.

[captainamerican]

Hey guys, maybe I'm not the most competent when it comes to X-Plane and Hardware. 

 

I am running X-Plane on a Mac Pro computer which really limits my options when it comes to software and hardware. However, I have a good feeling about AMD Cards and would like to ask someone who is running AMD GPUs:

Is it worth it?

 

I am thinking of purchasing an AMD Radeon R9 280X 3GB Video card for my computer. Its one of the few that come with mini display ports for my thunderbolt display. However, there are other AMD cards out there, such as the AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB Video card.

 

Both the R9 280X and the HD 7950 are the same price and have similar specs, so which one should I purchase and would run well on X-Plane?

 

(I am happy with a 3GB card because I don't run many addons and already run X-Plane at 20 FPS with a 1GB card. I only want a new GPU to get even higher frame rates without really changing my settings)

 

Thank you!

Happy Holidays.

 

 

 

[Yidahoo]

The biggest issue with third party cards for Mac Pros is that most of them only run at half speed PCI Express. On the right type of 7950, you can pop off a resistor that will take it to full speed PCIe, I did this with my own 7950 in a 09 Mac Pro. There is lots of graphic cards info at the Mac Pro section on the Mac Rumours site. Take a look there for the latest state of play with Mac graphics cards

[jesusrodero]

Hi.

I have a Mac Pro 4,1 (early 2009) 2xQuad-Core and I changed my graphics card one year ago.

There were not many choices and after some research I purchased a Sapphire ATI Radeon 7950 with 3GB of VRAM, and I am quite satisfied.

If you can get a card with more VRAM, it will last more time in use.

[captainamerican]

Thanks for the Feedback Guys. I got a Gigabyte R9 with 3GB of VRAM. Should run fine on my Mac

[Jah]

I'm running a R9 290X 8GB Card, at 1440p. Works fine... around 30FPS even in higher densed areas. Never discovered any issues with it... 

[captainamerican]

I'm running a R9 290X 8GB Card, at 1440p. Works fine... around 30FPS even in higher densed areas. Never discovered any issues with it... 

 

What system are you running? 

[Jah]

My System Specs:

 

Windows 10

Haswell Core i7 3,5Ghz

R9 R290X 8GB

512GB SSD

1TB HDD

8GB Gskill Ripjaws

Motherboard Z87-G45

 

And all of this on an LG34U87-B ( 34" CurvedUltrawide Res.: 3440x1440p ) 

[captainamerican]

I find it peculiar how on my mac, my little brother seems to run games like Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 as well as GTA V up to 65fps, but on my mac partition, I have low performance on X-Plane. Im moving my X-Plane over to windows to see how much the performance differs. 

[Nano]

I think you are going to be pleasantly surprised.  Keep us posted on the result if you will.