Question

I saw this question, but it seems to be directed toward Windows. What are some Mac demo programs that will really push a video card to it's limits?

Answer 1

Benchmarking applications.

1. XBench, and a reference list for comparison.

2. Maxon Cinebanch and reference list.

MAXON CINEBENCH runs several tests on your computer to measure the performance of the main processor and the graphics card under real-world circumstances.

3. Football Manager 2009 Game Demo.
You will find a lot of interesting demo downloads at the Apple site.

4. If you have iTunes, the visualization modes would be good too.

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An interesting story: An Incredible Mac Pro Demo: Takes Breath Away

One measure of the Mac is how many trailers it can play at once without any one of them stuttering. When I was using a dual processor 800 MHz Mac Pro G4, the best I could do was about seven or maybe eight simultaneous trailers. It's been awhile since I did that demo, so I decided to revisit with a Mac Pro, Nehalem (March 2009), quad core, with 3GB of RAM, standard video card (NVIDIA GT120) and two displays attached.

Has a youtube link to a demo with 21 standard definition videos running at the same time.

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The Spore site has Mac Trial demos for download.

Answer 2

Nowadays, to "push a video card to it's [sic] limits" has two different meanings.

1. 3D-capabilities showcase
2. GPU processing showcase

For 3D-capabilities showcase, just grab the latest, bestest game demo. For now, I believe Call of Duty 4 will stress most machines. Even better, hook up a large external monitor and run it at max resolution.

For GPU processing showcase, I do not know of any program that taps on the new OpenCL APIs as of now, though you might want to give Quicktime X a shot at movie conversion. Rendering a movie with additional GPU processing on a Mac should speed up tremendously.

This said, these two will truly push the video card to its limits.

Answer 3

ATI has some Mac demos.