NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 vs ATI Radeon HD 4870

Question

i finally get to buy my mac pro and replace my aging g5 ... yay me!
anyone care to comment on the two graphics card choices ???

Answer 1

I would like to point out that nVidia does in fact have information on their main page about the GeForce GT 120. And yes... It is essentially a low power 9500GT. It is almost an identical card except that the Memory Clock has been locked at 500mhz and the Core GPU has been down powered to 500mhz vs 550mhz. Which goes in line with the way apple's GPUs are always slightly slower and optimized. So yes... If you want increased performance I would suggest the 4870. And yes I just looked at the site and it is indeed a 4870 listed as the 200 dollar upgrade. the 4870 is one of the better graphics cards on the market right now for the 250-300 dollar price point. As well as ATI cards seem to have a much nicer color range than nVidia cards.
Having had both recently in my PC system (A 4850 and a 9800GTX+) The ATI was certainly a nicer looking card, just not quite as good performing. Except on Crysis which actually did run better due to ATI cards tending to roll better with games that really push the texture palate as well as Filtering.
Only thing that is unfortunate is that I do not see an option for dual 4870's for Crossfire. At 2500 dollars you would think that would be a nice feature to include!!