Is NVIDIA GeForce 6600 card compatible with OpenGL 2.0?

Question

Hi there -
Is my GeForce 6600 card compatible with openGL 2.0?
I have some software that tells me it is not and I've just spent lots of money buying it - I did make a quick check on-line before making my software purchase and found out that the whole 6000 series was compatible.
Reading again it says it has been OK for 2.1 from June 2006 onwards. I bought my Mac in May 2006
Can I install a new driver or something (almost sounds like I know what I'm talking about)?
If so is this something I can do or do I have to take my whole machine to the hospital?
I'm not that confident messing with too much technical stuff so treat me like an idiot ... please!
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Regards - Deano

Answer 1

Hi-
Back from work......
BD has you going the right direction on RAM.
CS4 needs as much RAM as you can throw at it.
Buy only guaranteed Mac compatible RAM.
As for hard drive, getting a TB or so for storage is great, but you also need a fast scratch drive, separate from the system drive.
Improvements to hard drive technology have been made since the G5 was released, so replacing the system drive with a new one is a good idea.
For the fastest system drive, which helps overall performance, the Western Digital Velociraptor 300GB is an ideal candidate.
For more of a budget drive, but still fast, a WD6400AAKS 640GB drive is an overall winner, with fast read and write times, and all that capacity confined to two platters in the drive.
This is one of the keys to the drives performance prowess.
For scratch, you will have large files that are written, changed, erased, as filters, etc. are applied.
PS gobbles drive space even more than it eats RAM.
Again, the WD6400AAKS, or a WD1001FALS 1TB drive is what you should look at.
And when we talk scratch drives, I mean that it does nothing else.
Not for file storage, etc.
File storage needs to be relegated to a third drive for system optimization.
To recap, a fast boot drive (OS and applications only), a scratch drive, and as many file storage drives as you need for multiple copies (min 2) of all work.
As for graphics card, yes there is improvement to be had, especially with regard to OpenGL support in CS4.
PS also leverages the GPU of the graphics card, so power is desired.
A Mac 7800GT, Radeon X1900 G5 Edition, or a flashed Geforce 7800GTX are the three top performing cards.
A Geforce FX4500 is also a possible candidate if your pockets are very deep.
http://www.jcsenterprises.com/Japamacs_Page/Blog/71BBF3EF-9713-4C53-8B80-26771F8 A4087.html
Of the three cards, the 7800GTX is the top card, and is relatively easy to find. The 512MB version is the most desirable.
You will be looking on eBay for Mac compatible PCIe graphics cards in one of the flavors that I have named.
A bit from Adobe:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404898.html
http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/opengl.html