EVGA 01G-P3-1080-TR GeForce GTX285 for Mac 1024 MB DDR3 PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card

I do a lot of gaming and now dabbling with 3D modeling/animation stuff, and I wanted to get a card that can perform well for those duties. I have a Mac Pro (2009, quad 2.66) and i got it with the standard GT120 card pre-installed. That card was ok for low-intensity applications but I could never get really high frame rates for some of my games when trying to max out the graphics settings.

With the GTX285, I can run COD4 at high settings @1920x1200 with very high fps - smooth and detailed! So far, the card has not been very loud at all and haven't noticed much of an increase in heat build up.

Installation is a snap. I love the modular design of the Mac Pros, it makes it very easy to upgrade components. I'm not good at all with tech stuff and I always hate having to fiddle with the guts of a computer, but this was a piece of cake.

Some things to really keep in mind though:

1. Follow the instructions for the installation carefully...Read more

I imagine the card works fine, but the description does not disclose that it does not work with the earlier versions of MacPro. It should say
"Requires Mac Pro (Early 2009 with 1066MHz DDR3 memory) or Mac Pro (Early 2008 with 800MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM memory) with PCI Express 2.0 slot. Card is not compatible with version ____ and 1,1..."

Also, the instructions that are included do not say anything about installing the driver at all. So before removing your old card, be sure to run the included installer and it will check to see if your system will support the card (I regretfully installed the card first which waisted a lot of time, as the power cables are very small for full size hands to install) Since most video cards don't need drivers on a Mac, it is easy to overlook.

This is the fastest 3D graphics card you can get for the Mac, as of this writing. Installation was trouble-free in both OS X 10.6.1 and Windows 7 64-bit in Boot Camp. My system is a dual quad 2.8GHz Mac Pro (early 2008 model). I took out the stock ATI 2600 card before putting this one into the x16 PCI Express 2.0 slot.

In OS X, I didn't have to do anything, as drivers for the 285 GTX are included in 10.6.1. I did end up downloading newer drivers in Windows after installing the 285. Several days later Windows prompted me to upgrade the drivers again. Adding the card caused Windows 7 to require reactivation.

For Windows gaming users only:
Here are performance numbers from the Crysis Benchmark Tool running on the free Crysis Demo (not the release version of Crysis). These are using the 32-bit timedemo. Using the 64-bit timedemo with the release version of Crysis may give better results. Crysis' graphics will pretty much hammer any system, so don't...Read more