8800gt RANT

[Modisius]

Ok, so like a dummy, I bought a Mac Pro in December thinking I would be able to purchase an upgraded video card (8800gt or some flavor) when the refresh happened. I was glad to see that said video card was available to order on the Mac Store website.

I ordered the card, waited may 6 or some odd weeks only to find out that when its installed it is a no go.

UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!

I am so unhappy with Apple right now I could scream.


Mod.

Owner of:

G5 Mac
Macbook Pro
Macbook
G5 imac
Mac Pro
iphone
too many other ipods to list.

[jrnewhouse]

Originally Posted by Modisius

Ok, so like a dummy, I bought a Mac Pro in December thinking I would be able to purchase an upgraded video card (8800gt or some flavor) when the refresh happened. I was glad to see that said video card was available to order on the Mac Store website.

I ordered the card, waited may 6 or some odd weeks only to find out that when its installed it is a no go.

UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!

I am so unhappy with Apple right now I could scream.


Mod.

Owner of:

G5 Mac
Macbook Pro
Macbook
G5 imac
Mac Pro
iphone
too many other ipods to list.

I guess you missed this thread:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=410804

[GotPro]

Dude... not trying to be a jerk... but it's not Apple's fault.

The card ONLY works on the NEW MAC PROs...

They will be releasing a version for your machine shortly.

Hang tight.

Different architectures sometimes require different technologies.

[yeroen]

What proved shocking to me is that the 8800 compared very poorly to the X1900 when running Pro Apps.

Since reading that, I guess I, for one, have lost quite a bit of interest in the 8800-gate (nvidiagate?) fiasco.

[ungraphic]

Originally Posted by RichardHunter

Different architectures sometimes require different technologies.

Absolute bull.

Its not a different architecture, the 'PCIe 2.0' requirement is a total copout; in the PC world, every 8800 GT (and any other card) that supports pcie 2.0 runs FINE on pcie 1.0

This is completely apples/steve jobs' fault for not living up to their claims on future expansion when they announced the mac pros initialy. This is either a massive failure or massive fraud, in either case, owners of original mac pros have been fooled and shouldnt take such crap from a company of such self proclaimed high standards.

[Ploki]

isn't the card being updated for older mac pro?...
or why are you ranting. i mean, if they release a different hardware version of it, you guys ordering MP e2008 versions screwed up. though luck for being impatient.
or maybe its just a software fix, i have no idea, but i doubt.
Yeah PC versions support everything and blabla, but you can stick just about everything with PCIe bus into the PC and get drivers somewhere for it.

[DLary]

isn't the card being updated for older mac pro?...


Yeah it has been "being updated" for two months now. As Apple takes more and more business from the PC world, they need to learn how to operate in a new environment. The power users in the PC world are gamers, not the ever so special "pro users" on the Mac side. New purchasers of Apple products are going to expect some level of upgradeability, or they are going to run right back to Dell.

[ungraphic]

Originally Posted by DLary

New purchasers of Apple products are going to expect some level of upgradeability, or they are going to run right back to Dell.

Not necessarily dell, if this isnt fixed or if it takes much longer, my next purchase just might be a custom built computer using hacked os x. Sad that if I do that, ill have actually MORE support for software.

[MIDI_EVIL]

Originally Posted by ungraphic

Not necessarily dell, if this isnt fixed or if it takes much longer, my next purchase just might be a custom built computer using hacked os x. Sad that if I do that, ill have actually MORE support for software.

Do it now, don't wait, just go for it!

Good luck!

[Firefly2002]

Originally Posted by ungraphic

Absolute bull.

Its not a different architecture, the 'PCIe 2.0' requirement is a total copout; in the PC world, every 8800 GT (and any other card) that supports pcie 2.0 runs FINE on pcie 1.0

Could be they're talking about EFI, not PCI-E. They require new ROMs. Those don't pop up overnight. And no, Apple wouldn't be responsible for writing them... that would be nVidia.

This is completely apples/steve jobs' fault for not living up to their claims on future expansion when they announced the mac pros initialy. This is either a massive failure or massive fraud, in either case, owners of original mac pros have been fooled and shouldnt take such crap from a company of such self proclaimed high standards.

Might be you haven't been following Apple for the last twenty-odd years. I don't know, maybe you're new to it.

Jobs does lie. He does it all the time. Apple bullsh*ts its customers all the time. What of it? Did you expect 100% honesty and integrity?

Back when the G3 was announced, Jobs went on about how Mac OS X, when it came out, would be geared specifically towards the G3, and would provide long-lasting support for the processor. Well... they dropped support for Beige G3s after 10.2, and Leopard won't even run on any kind of G3 processor at all.

Soon enough G5s will lose support.. the PowerPC architecture will be completely dropped within a couple years, and there really will be no workarounds, since everything will be pretty much coded for the x86 architecture... this completely contrary to what Jobs of course was chirping about when the G5 was introduced as the world's first 64-bit desktop computer (arguable; the Opteron could be seen as such).

Lol, when the G5 failed to reach 3 GHz at its projected time, Jobs talked about how the whole computing community had "hit a brick wall" with the 90nm process, which was of course complete garbage; Intel had recently moved to a new architecture geared towards lower clocks but much greater efficiency (heyyyyy.. you don't have a 30-stage pipeline, you might have to drop clocks from 3.8 GHz to 1.8...).

Nothing Apple promises when it comes to true support really ever holds. Now granted, there are usually workarounds. And in this case, the problem is being worked, as Jobs put it.

XPostFacto can get a 12 year old Power Mac 9600 (or older, if you choose) to run Mac OS X Tiger v10.4.11. I've got 10.4.9 running on my Beige G3 myself.. will upgrade to 10.4.11 when PowerLogix comes out with the new version of CPUDirector, which is now possible now that Apple's released the Darwin source code for 10.4.10. Once I'm home from school, anyway.

I understand why you're pissed off, but expecting Apple to live up to its promises when it never has is a bit silly. I personally lost all respect for Apple a long while ago.. which is why I have absolutely no issues with downloading its software, operating systems, etc, and using them in ways Apple never intended on machines they never supported. -shrugs- It's what you make of it.

[Executor]

Firefly2002,
You bring very interesting points, I am a fairly recent switcher to the Apple side. (Bought my first Mac Pro on November 2006) but I cannot in good conscience let Apple lie to me as a customer (not a consumer) and not get angry. As their market reach expands they have live up to their statements or Apple will squander the good will of their early adopters and power users. A Mac Pro is a big investment and I don't think it is unreasonable for a user to expect regular upgrades less than a year after buying a top of the line system. Hopefully Apple and Nvidia will fix the issue in due time, if they do not I personally would be very wary of buying a $6000+ computer from Apple again. And don't get me started on the whole Time Capsule supporting time Machine while The Apple Airport Base Station using a usb drive does not mess.

[Spikeanator6982]

Originally Posted by Modisius

Ok, so like a dummy, I bought a Mac Pro in December thinking I would be able to purchase an upgraded video card (8800gt or some flavor) when the refresh happened. I was glad to see that said video card was available to order on the Mac Store website.

I ordered the card, waited may 6 or some odd weeks only to find out that when its installed it is a no go.

UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!

I am so unhappy with Apple right now I could scream.


Mod.

Owner of:

G5 Mac
Macbook Pro
Macbook
G5 imac
Mac Pro
iphone
too many other ipods to list.

guess you didnt read apples site, "Requires Mac Pro with PCI-Express 2.0" of course maybe it was not there at the time of you ordering. If so, that sucks.

[Firefly2002]

Originally Posted by Executor

Firefly2002,
You bring very interesting points, I am a fairly recent switcher to the Apple side. (Bought my first Mac Pro on November 2006) but I cannot in good conscience let Apple lie to me as a customer (not a consumer) and not get angry.

Nor would I suggest you should sit by and accept it... it's not fair for them to do it. I just meant history has a way of telling us a great deal about the future. . . and Apple is fairly consistent in the way they do things (though, don't ask me about them working on becoming a Superpower, 'cause that's new to me too).

As their market reach expands they have live up to their statements or Apple will squander the good will of their early adopters and power users. A Mac Pro is a big investment and I don't think it is unreasonable for a user to expect regular upgrades less than a year after buying a top of the line system. Hopefully Apple and Nvidia will fix the issue in due time, if they do not I personally would be very wary of buying a $6000+ computer from Apple again. And don't get me started on the whole Time Capsule supporting time Machine while The Apple Airport Base Station using a usb drive does not mess.

It's absolutely not unreasonable to expect compatibility. Though I feel that in this case it's not really entirely Apple's fault and that they're not being negligent or downright dishonest.... they really are working on the problem of the 8800 and didn't do it to get people to buy new machines.

I don't understand what you're talking about with the Time Capsule/Time Machine and the ABS/USB Drive... explain?

[barefeats]

Just to clarify, though Apple's official position is that the card only works with PCIe 2.0 slots, the actual issue is the EFI drivers in the ROM. For some reason, nVidia chose to use a ROM that only had room for the 64-bit EFI driver required by the 2008 Mac Pro.

If they had done like ATI with the Radeon HD 2600 XT and used a ROM big enough for both the 32-bit and 64-bit EFI driver, the GeForce 8800 GT would have booted in all versions of Mac Pro. I not only can use the Radeon HD 2600 XT in our 2006/2007 Mac Pros but I can use the Radeon X1900 XT in our 2008 Mac Pro.

For some reason, instead of retrofitting the existing cards with a bigger ROM containing both EFI drivers, nVidia is creating a "legacy" version of the GeForce 8800 GT with the 32-bit EFI driver. Once this ships, it will only work in the 2006/2007 Mac Pro. In other words, if you later buy a 2008 Mac Pro, you can't "take it with you."

I'm sure they have their reasons, but it seems like an inefficient approach.

Meanwhile, this weekend we rendered a RAM preview on 16 Motion 3 templates ranging from 450 to 900 frames. The Radeon HD 2600 XT was faster than the GeForce 8800 GT in 15 out of 16 cases by as much as 42%. The one case where the GeForce was faster it beat the Radeon by a mere 13%.

The GeForce 8800 GT's poor Pro App performance could be a bigger scandal than the fact that it is not compatible with the older Mac Pros.

[Verist]

Originally Posted by Spikeanator6982

guess you didnt read apples site, "Requires Mac Pro with PCI-Express 2.0" of course maybe it was not there at the time of you ordering. If so, that sucks.

It was not there.. I ordered when it was released and was called back by Apple
to verify what Mac Pro I had. I'm still waiting and won't be shocked if this mythical card never appears...

[ungraphic]

Originally Posted by Spikeanator6982

guess you didnt read apples site, "Requires Mac Pro with PCI-Express 2.0" of course maybe it was not there at the time of you ordering. If so, that sucks.

Apple's site also indicates that the ATI 2600 XT requires pci 2.0. But it works on older mac pros anyway. Care to explain?

[thagomizer]

Originally Posted by barefeats

For some reason, instead of retrofitting the existing cards with a bigger ROM containing both EFI drivers, nVidia is creating a "legacy" version of the GeForce 8800 GT with the 32-bit EFI driver. Once this ships, it will only work in the 2006/2007 Mac Pro. In other words, if you later buy a 2008 Mac Pro, you can't "take it with you."

For those users, hopefully Apple or NVidia will provide a simple utility to reflash the card with an EFI64 driver at any time of their choosing. And if they don't, you can always do it the hard way (using a DOS boot CD and the DOS nvflash utility), provided you obtain a copy of the existing firmware. Not ideal, but at least there's a way if for users that are not afraid of using such utilities.

[jb60606]

Originally Posted by ungraphic

Not necessarily dell, if this isnt fixed or if it takes much longer, my next purchase just might be a custom built computer using hacked os x. Sad that if I do that, ill have actually MORE support for software.

What do Mac users have against Linux? Everything is either OS X, Windows, or hacked OS X.

Nearly every app on Mac/Windows has a Linux equivalent. Many software companies even have a release for each. You can even skin the GUI to make it look like OS X. Linux is just a much more powerful OS than either if you know your *****.

Nothing personal, just a question.

[ungraphic]

Originally Posted by jb60606

What do Mac users have against Linux? Everything is either OS X, Windows, or hacked OS X.

Nearly every app on Mac/Windows has a Linux equivalent. Many software companies even have a release for each. You can even skin the GUI to make it look like OS X. Linux is just a much more powerful OS than either if you know your *****.

Nothing personal, just a question.

Adobe.

[Ploki]

Audio support. i like to work in cubase (gonna try logic now) and/or a DAW superior, not inferior to it. things that work on linux are crappy, unstable, poor to none soundcard support, poor to none plugin support
i've used linux sometime ago, with enlightenment.
dont tell me TUXguitar is equivalent to guitarpro5, it is not, it just reads its format

[ale500]

Adobe.

Their products suck in all platforms. Thanks.

[jasonvp]

Originally Posted by jb60606

Nearly every app on Mac/Windows has a Linux equivalent.

But, the "equivalents" aren't, really, equivalent. Been there, done that. I've been using Linux since '93 and I mostly know about what's available and what isn't.

Mac: NATIVE MS Office
Linux: MS Office in WINE, MS Office in a VM, or, God forbid, that disgusting abortion of an office product called OpenOffice.

Whether you like or or not, the professional world has long-since standardized on MS Office for documents, spreadsheets, preso's, etc. Opening some very complex presentations or spreadsheets in a VM'd MS Office, WINE'd MS Office, or OpenOffice just doesn't work 100% of the time. And, when your livelihood depends on it, it has to work 100% of the time.

Mac: NATIVE Adobe products (Photoshop, for instance)
Linux: GIMP.

GIMP is a very powerful application, no doubt. And the fact that it's free is just amazing. But, it's not Photoshop. And it never will be. They can try, and try (and I give them mad props for the effort). But it just can not do all of the things Photoshop can do, with the kind of ease and fluidity that Photoshop can. The end.

Mac: Final Cut (Studio/Express/etc)
Linux: ... ?

Does Linux actually have a usable movie editor that can handle H.264, AVCHD, etc? I'm honestly not sure about this one.

These are some examples I came up with off the top of my head. I'm sure there are more. I love Linux, and will continue to use it as I see fit: as a server. I spent a lot of years trying to make it work on a desktop and a laptop, and finally just gave up.

jas

[ungraphic]

Originally Posted by ale500

Their products suck in all platforms. Thanks.

Is this a serious response?

[Brianna]

Originally Posted by yeroen

What proved shocking to me is that the 8800 compared very poorly to the X1900 when running Pro Apps.

Since reading that, I guess I, for one, have lost quite a bit of interest in the 8800-gate (nvidiagate?) fiasco.

Apple has updated the graphics drivers after the 10.5.2 update. The 8800 Is seeing better performance.

[Jonny427]

Originally Posted by ungraphic

Apple's site also indicates that the ATI 2600 XT requires pci 2.0. But it works on older mac pros anyway. Care to explain?

*sigh* please search the forums. The problem is the EFI ROM, NOT the 2.0 vs. 1.0 bs that apple says on its website.