Nice to see Apple investing a bit to get a updated Quadro card to OSX but will there be any dedicated drivers for CAD/MCAE ? this was the issue with the 4000 and therefore may features in pro tools did not work.
Not really VRAM is not the problem with X-Plane, it needs processor power. With max setting, x-plane never uses more than 1.5GB of Vram.
Yeah but can it play Chess?
What makes you say that Apple invested in this? This is a 3rd party card, it's unlikely Apple has anything to do with it outside their normal generic OpenGL and OpenCL framework support.
Regarding dedicated drivers, given the fact that Apple implements the OpenGL API in their framework and the vendors just implement the back end, there is only so much that can be done to support the CAD/MCAE and other pro app markets.
Two thousand dollars, for a graphics card?
Is this a joke?
Between phones, computers, razors, and car transmissions, the term "quad" has been beaten to death.
Sweet graphics card, though.
http://www.magma.com/thunderbolt
You don't make a card with a TB port. You make a case that the card can plug into.
Though this has 3 slots...wish they had a 2 or 1 slot option. (and PCI3)
Jeez, at that price it makes more sense to just spend the extra $970 and get a nice Mac Pro.
It also doesn't use more than a few percent of CPU usage.
http://www.magma.com/thunderbolt
You don't make a card with a TB port. You make a case that the card can plug into.
Though this has 3 slots...wish they had a 2 or 1 slot option. (and PCI3)
Two thousand dollars, for a graphics card?
Is this a joke?
Still waiting for my Quadro 4000 to show it's usefulness, might as well get three iMacs for the money I wasted on this Mac Pro. Motion, AE, Final cut and Premiere run smoother and more reliable on my 17MBP. And its a lot nicer to my electrical bill.
New cards are great but the whole architecture of the Mac Pro needs to be updated from 2004 to 2012 tech before it is actually useful. Besides with Apple still deciding how I should work and what is important, jumping back to windows for video and visuals might be a better option then wasting more money on poorly supported hardware.
Not sure I can face the horror of popups I left behind a few years ago.
Jeez, at that price it makes more sense to just spend the extra $970 and get a nice Mac Pro.
How do I install this on my retina macbook?
Those things aren't a replacement for something like a mac pro. Even at that price, you're granted roughly 150W peak power draw, meaning you can't even support the absolute top workstation cards. It's really not a good match for the card referenced in the OP. I don't see external gpus gaining any ground unless they're released as turnkey solutions. If you bought a gpu in a thunderbolt breakout box as a whole, that would be a much better solution. It would be tested as a full implementation and not necessarily an extra $900.
It is great that nvidia released a new card but they really should release there gtx cards for the mac pro. Most mac gamers can't and do not want to get a
graphics card that costs as much as the computer.
And how many Mac Pro gamers do you think there are exactly?
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=mac
I think the majority of gamers will have Steam these days, and as you can see from their hardware survey numbers, the Mac Pros make up less than 3% of the total market. At best, you're probably looking at dozens or maybe hundreds of people who would buy such a card, which means the vendors would lose money on it.
I would sure buy a few 680s
...might as well get three iMacs for the money I wasted on this Mac Pro. Motion, AE, Final cut and Premiere run smoother and more reliable on my 17MBP. And its a lot nicer to my electrical bill.
Only a fool goes to the effort of tracking down & bagging a Super Model for a wife then complains about the operating cost. Maybe a Meth-head Mary is more in line with your budget.
True, but Apple's OpenGL drivers only support OpenGL 3.2, a spec released more than 3 years ago. If Apple updated their driver, you could get much more performance out of this GPU.