Complaining is what complainers do... I'm ****ing happy that a company finally released an up to date card for the niche MacPro market. Actually two companies just did. Nvidia with their K5000 for Mac, and now Sapphire. This is really good news. Who cares if it cost a hundred bucks more than the PC version? If your cheap, you don't use a MacPro anyways. Take a look at the prices for the K5000 while your at it.
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Sapphire Launches Radeon HD 7950 Mac Edition Graphics Card for Mac Pro
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Complaining is what complainers do... I'm ****ing happy that a company finally released an up to date card for the niche MacPro market. Actually two companies just did. Nvidia with their K5000 for Mac, and now Sapphire. This is really good news. Who cares if it cost a hundred bucks more than the PC version? If your cheap, you don't use a MacPro anyways. Take a look at the prices for the K5000 while your at it.
I just noticed. It never crossed my mind that OpenGL could be lagging on the Mac, as it's the primary API for 3d graphics on the Mac, unlike Windows and Direct3D.
What happened, why is Apple not at the cutting edge of OpenGL development?
I've just learned that the primary reason for Mari, the texture paint solution used on Gollum and the blue trolls and machinery in Avatar, not being supported on the Mac is the poor OpenGL support in OSX.
I take it you didn't take a look at the specs on the card. It has Dual BIOS capability, meaning that there are two specific and distinct BIOS EEPROMs on the card. One is for Windows 7 UEFI booting, and the other is for "Legacy" mode BIOS/EFI booting, otherwise known as an "EBC", or EFI/BIOS Combination ROM, used for mixed Boot Camp/OS X booting. This is controlled by a switch on the card to select which BIOS is used at bootup.
Getting a "boot screen" and/or bootable capable ROM on a card of any type isn't the easiest thing in the world to do for Mac Pros, otherwise the cheapo RAID controllers would all be bootable. Much of the price difference is going to be going toward R&D (software/firmware) and the extra BIOS components on the card.
And even with its premium, relatively speaking, it's still a better bargain for its time than even the 5870 was, considering that card was $550 at launch (and still is unless you find a sale on it).
At least now we have another option. My main question at this point, aside from usability in a 1,1/2,1 Mac Pro, is why Sapphire went with the 7950 instead of the 7970 GHz Edition. That would have been truly worth the premium.
I'm not sure if this is enough of an upgrade to be worth replacing a Radeon HD 5870. It has a fair bit more graphics RAM, but why didn't they release a 7970 Mac Edition that has easily double the performance over the 5870?
Also why did it take them so long to release a Mac version of a card that's been out for over a year for PCs?
My first question was partly rhetorical because the 7970 requires 6 and 8-pin connectors whereas the Mac Pro only has two 6-pin power connectors available to the PCI slots. This is despite the Mac Pro's PSU being easily capable of supplying more, especially for single processor systems. People have done it successfully but their methods are far from elegant.
Sometimes Apple's design decisions baffle me. A cynic might even suggest deliberate crippling. Maybe they thought a 7970-class card would be too loud and hot and degrade the lifespan of other components in the system, but if you consider that the Mac Pro is one of the best, most spacious and well ventilated systems I know of then it makes that point a little less likely.
In Mac Pros the graphics card does sit under the hard drives so that could be their reasoning. I don't want my hard drives baking from a very hot card. Still, I would have definitely upgraded if they gave us a 7970 option.
I'm very disappointed in the state of graphics on the Mac. We get a year old card that costs a lot more than the PC version and it's something to be excited about..that's how sad the state of Mac Pro graphics is right now...
PS, my guess is that this will be the new base card for the next Mac Pro, which is actually pretty reasonable. If they can make a 7950 the base and 7970 the upgrade, then that is a big step up from the current systems as the 7950 outperforms the previous upgrade option.
Also why did it take them so long to release a Mac version of a card that's been out for over a year for PCs?
My first question was partly rhetorical because the 7970 requires 6 and 8-pin connectors whereas the Mac Pro only has two 6-pin power connectors available to the PCI slots. This is despite the Mac Pro's PSU being easily capable of supplying more, especially for single processor systems. People have done it successfully but their methods are far from elegant.
Sometimes Apple's design decisions baffle me. A cynic might even suggest deliberate crippling. Maybe they thought a 7970-class card would be too loud and hot and degrade the lifespan of other components in the system, but if you consider that the Mac Pro is one of the best, most spacious and well ventilated systems I know of then it makes that point a little less likely.
In Mac Pros the graphics card does sit under the hard drives so that could be their reasoning. I don't want my hard drives baking from a very hot card. Still, I would have definitely upgraded if they gave us a 7970 option.
I'm very disappointed in the state of graphics on the Mac. We get a year old card that costs a lot more than the PC version and it's something to be excited about..that's how sad the state of Mac Pro graphics is right now...
PS, my guess is that this will be the new base card for the next Mac Pro, which is actually pretty reasonable. If they can make a 7950 the base and 7970 the upgrade, then that is a big step up from the current systems as the 7950 outperforms the previous upgrade option.
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Sadly another reason to ignore the Mac Pro. I can get so much more performance off a custom built PC than the Mac Pro. I love using my rMBP and the Mac Pro's when available but the cost has come to the point that the price justification just makes zero sense. I'm sure there are a handful of programs that only run on Mac but those days are quickly coming to an end at least in the Industrial and Graphic Design field.
Probably due to power constraints? The MacPro can at maximum support a graphics card of 225 watts, 75 watts from the PCI-slot and 75 watts from each of the 6-pins. However, I run a GTX580 3GB just fine, although drawing more power from the 6-pins than they are designed for.
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Only if you build a workstation with the current Xeon generation. But it will be much pricier than a MacPro 12-core.
Who custom builds Xeon workstations anyways? Why bother, when a tested and thrusted HP Z820 will probably be cheaper than a self built one.
In my opinion and based on experience, you are only asking for trouble and unstable machinery when doing a self-build workstation in this performance class.
You make it sound as if Sapphire had to hire an army of hackers to reverse engineer Apple's EFI ROM deep within the bowls of Sapphire's state of the art Apple Mac Pro Research and Development Center. More likely it's 2 or 3 underpaid software dudes in some basement writing the ROM while in constant communication with Apple engineers. Most of the cost will be in the limited runs of Mac specific coolers, backplates, and ports.
Sapphire charges a premium for this card because they can. It's that simple.
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The ports are standard fare even on the PC side, so that part of your argument's shot. And Apple's EFI is their own version, based on EFI 2.0. It gets worse if you have a 1,1/2,1 Mac Pro which is the 1.0 spec before it became standard. There's a reason one BIOS is for Windows 7 UEFI and the other is an EBC, and it isn't for kicks and giggles.
The drivers are in-house from Apple. Vendors don't do driver updates for OS X on the graphics front. AMD certainly doesn't, at least not on their own - they work with Apple's software engineers, with the Apple folks doing the brunt of the heavy lifting.
Contrast this with the days of the HD3870 Mac Edition, where AMD made the drivers (and one last version of the ATI Displays software for OS X before it was all handed over to Apple). The 3870 Mac Edition was a Sapphire designed card BTW. Originally they were going to use an HiS board design, but it didn't pan out, so they went with Sapphire's design instead. I still have my 3870 here from before I got my 5770, and then a 5870 (giving the 5770 to a family member for their PC).
As for the cooler, the design is a stock design, and only the artwork/coloring is different. That's a minimal cost right there, and the backplates cost pennies as well. Given that the Mac Pro's PCIe Bay Fan blows directly onto the card, there wasn't a whole lot of engineering work that had to be done to maintain proper cooling. It's essentially the 5870's heatsink design.
My 2008 Mac Pro supports 10.8.x fine.
It's running 10.8.3 perfectly. I've put 16 GB of RAM in it and it's still going strong.
Because I love X-Plane 10 I'd love to put the best grfx card in there. Now, I'm stuck with the 5870, and getting the 7950 will help a lot!
Do you have thunderbolt? There are thunderbolt to PCI solutions popping up, look in that direction - start with OWC (macsales)
None of them works with graphics cards though, because of driver constraints.
A lot of posts trying to explain dual-rom without knowing a thing.
There will be two roms, one for mac, with bios part (atombios is used, bios part is never launched actually) and efi part with support for UGA protocol for graphics output, as part of efi 1.1 specification
Another rom is bios (again for atombios) and uefi part with support for GOP protocol for graphics output, as part of efi/uefi 2.0 specification.
and EBC is efi byte code, and it can be used in both part, or can be not used. If it is used, then it's good new for macpro 1,1/2,1 owners who managed to install osx 10.8
There will be two roms, one for mac, with bios part (atombios is used, bios part is never launched actually) and efi part with support for UGA protocol for graphics output, as part of efi 1.1 specification
Another rom is bios (again for atombios) and uefi part with support for GOP protocol for graphics output, as part of efi/uefi 2.0 specification.
and EBC is efi byte code, and it can be used in both part, or can be not used. If it is used, then it's good new for macpro 1,1/2,1 owners who managed to install osx 10.8
Very powerful card but iMac 680MX is INCREDIBLE considering it is mobile.
http://www.barefeats.com/gpu7950.html
http://www.barefeats.com/gpu7950.html
Use what tool fits you best. If a custom built PC meets your needs, then go that route.
With the horrible font rendering (according to me and most graphic designers I'd say) in Windows and the clumsier workflow of Windows 8 (forcing tou into a touch GUI on a workstation) I don't know if I agree.
Yes, I think you're right, I believe I read about this once in a text book or something. I think it was talking about North American apples specifically as well.
What is the other option to what was once called Metro? How do you switch to it?
The only options I've seen so far are 3rd party Start menu emulators.
You only need the emulators if you want the old windows start button, but everything else will default to mouse and keyboard if you don't have a touchscreen.
Maybe. But if you're willing to spend 4000 on a 4 year old machine then most people would assume you're wiling to also overpay for other items.
You can still click on the tiles in Metro using an antiquated thing we call a mouse.
That's funny because at every price point in the gaming segment except the $1000 one, nVidia is outgunned by AMD:
Titan = performance king
7970GE > 680
7970 > 670
7950 > 660Ti
7870 > 660
7850 >>> 650Ti
et cetera
But whatever
Indeed, though my overclocked 7950 matches and exceeds a stock 670 any day
The 7970 and the 680 are pretty much neck in neck in my experience. Except the 7970 is cheaper and has better drivers (at least on the Peezoid, the Catalyst drivers are way better than what NVidia offers)
I'm really happy to see the 7950 arrive on the Mac, it's damn fine card
You don't need to use the Tiles UI if you don't want and you can use alternative text rendering engines, such as MacType to get the same experience as on a Mac.