Mac OS X 10.5.3 Improves Performance Levels of GeForce 8800 GT

Barefeats has tested the performance level of the retailed GeForce 8800 GT (as well as the integrated GF 8800 GS in high-end iMac) before and after migrating to Mac OS X 10.5.3. Barefeats noticed a real improvement for the GF 8800 GT with Core Image and Motion 3-based rendering, and the high-end Mac Pro graphic card can no compete with the default Radeon 2600.
However, one should not get so much excited. If Apple definitely worked on the GF drivers to make them better in Mac OS X 10.5.3, users will not really be able to get the max out of their GF 8800 GT as in most case the performance only improved enough to become roughly equal to the one measured for the default Radeon HD 2600 XT.
This illustrates again how Apple is not taking much care of GPU drivers’ development, offering only the minimal amount of work required to get graphical rendering performance level of Apple Applications acceptable.