2600xt?

[wazgilbert]

To me it looks like it is a ATI Radeon Mobile HD 2600XT.

Why would they under-clock it you might ask? ATI has been known to under-clock Apple products, the main reason for this is because of less demand for these cards. If you buy a X1900 for your Mac Pro the stock PC version is higher clocked. The X1600 that was in the older iMac was also under-clocked.

You all really can't think heat is a issue, a iMac has much more room for airflow then a laptop. The reason it is under-clocked is just ATIs choice. Now I have ordered a 24" iMac and I am a little frustrated that ATI is half-assing it's video cards for Apple.

Apple lists it as a ATI Radeon HD 2600Pro because that is what it is closet to, it dose seem like it performs a fair bit better then a 2600Pro but not as good as the Mobile 2600XT, so if Apple listed it as what it really is a ATI Radeon Mobile HD 2600XT people would still be upset because it would not perform like a full Mobile 2600XT. Apple probably would rather list it as something lower and have people get it only to find it perform better then to list it as something higher and everyone gets it and finds it to be a disappointment.

In windows you should be able to clock the ATI Radeon Mobile HD 2600XT up to it's standard clock speed without any problems.

I'm still waiting for my 24" 2.8GHz iMac to ship but when I get it I will do some nice tests on it.

I cry CONSPIRACY!

M$ has such a hold on the industry, that it can influence the major PC brand component manufaturers in order that the apple product will *appear* to perform better under their lame products than when running OSX as nature intended.

Well it's a theory.

 

[Trout74]

To me it looks like it is a ATI Radeon Mobile HD 2600XT.

Why would they under-clock it you might ask? ATI has been known to under-clock Apple products, the main reason for this is because of less demand for these cards. If you buy a X1900 for your Mac Pro the stock PC version is higher clocked. The X1600 that was in the older iMac was also under-clocked.

You all really can't think heat is a issue, a iMac has much more room for airflow then a laptop. The reason it is under-clocked is just ATIs choice. Now I have ordered a 24" iMac and I am a little frustrated that ATI is half-assing it's video cards for Apple.

Apple lists it as a ATI Radeon HD 2600Pro because that is what it is closet to, it dose seem like it performs a fair bit better then a 2600Pro but not as good as the Mobile 2600XT, so if Apple listed it as what it really is a ATI Radeon Mobile HD 2600XT people would still be upset because it would not perform like a full Mobile 2600XT. Apple probably would rather list it as something lower and have people get it only to find it perform better then to list it as something higher and everyone gets it and finds it to be a disappointment.

In windows you should be able to clock the ATI Radeon Mobile HD 2600XT up to it's standard clock speed without any problems.

I'm still waiting for my 24" 2.8GHz iMac to ship but when I get it I will do some nice tests on it.[/QUO

Your post makes perfect sense.

trout

 

[cloudstrife13]

Your post makes perfect sense.

trout

It dose doesn't it

 

[flopticalcube]

It dose doesn't it

"dose" is what you get of the clap, "does" is the word you are looking for... and it does, make sense that is.

 

[WarWraith]

And yet again, we appear to have gotten away from the actual real life performance of the 2600 that's in the 20" & 24" iMacs.

Anyone? Bueller?

 

[diamond.g]

And yet again, we appear to have gotten away from the actual real life performance of the 2600 that's in the 20" & 24" iMacs.

Anyone? Bueller?

Well it is safe to say, faster than the previous gen.
*sigh*
I mean what kind of performance are you guys looking for? The games that most Mac users play (without booting into Windows) aren't going to stress the 2600 any more than the stressed the 1600.

 

[DoFoT9]

To me it looks like it is a ATI Radeon Mobile HD 2600XT.

Why would they under-clock it you might ask? ATI has been known to under-clock Apple products, the main reason for this is because of less demand for these cards. If you buy a X1900 for your Mac Pro the stock PC version is higher clocked. The X1600 that was in the older iMac was also under-clocked.

You all really can't think heat is a issue, a iMac has much more room for airflow then a laptop. The reason it is under-clocked is just ATIs choice. Now I have ordered a 24" iMac and I am a little frustrated that ATI is half-assing it's video cards for Apple.

Apple lists it as a ATI Radeon HD 2600Pro because that is what it is closet to, it dose seem like it performs a fair bit better then a 2600Pro but not as good as the Mobile 2600XT, so if Apple listed it as what it really is a ATI Radeon Mobile HD 2600XT people would still be upset because it would not perform like a full Mobile 2600XT. Apple probably would rather list it as something lower and have people get it only to find it perform better then to list it as something higher and everyone gets it and finds it to be a disappointment.

In windows you should be able to clock the ATI Radeon Mobile HD 2600XT up to it's standard clock speed without any problems.

I'm still waiting for my 24" 2.8GHz iMac to ship but when I get it I will do some nice tests on it.

this is most likely the case of what has happened, i agree with you.

the reason they call it the 2600 "pro" is probably because the ONLY difference between the Pro and XT models are the clock speeds, so they buy the better XT, put them in the imacs, and underclock them to Pro speeds and simply call it a "pro" thinking that no-one will notice the difference. i dont have a clue why they would do this, maybe it somehow runs cooler or something..

 

[cloudstrife13]

And yet again, we appear to have gotten away from the actual real life performance of the 2600 that's in the 20" & 24" iMacs.

Anyone? Bueller?

Well even if you had a 24" you could render the game at 1680x1050 and the game would run the same as the 20". 1920x1200 is pretty big resolution and some games might have trouble with that but even rendering at lower resolutions things look pretty good on the screen.

 

[WarWraith]

Well, for example...

WoW at full settings on the 24" vs the 20" ... how many FPS?

What I'm interested in, as a part-time gamer who's tossing up between the 20" & 24" is does the card take a massive performance hit running at the 24" native resolution.

So far the 24" seems to be in the lead in terms of panel quality (trying to find out more information about this), but if it's sluggish over the 20" at native res, full screen.

Difficult choice.

 

[flopticalcube]

Well it is safe to say, faster than the previous gen.
*sigh*
I mean what kind of performance are you guys looking for? The games that most Mac users play (without booting into Windows) aren't going to stress the 2600 any more than the stressed the 1600.

Its quite a leap from the "2600Pro" to the "2600XT" according to external benchmarks. Nearly 50%. Most gamers will be booting into Windows.

 

[cloudstrife13]

this is most likely the case of what has happened, i agree with you.

the reason they call it the 2600 "pro" is probably because the ONLY difference between the Pro and XT models are the clock speeds, so they buy the better XT, put them in the imacs, and underclock them to Pro speeds and simply call it a "pro" thinking that no-one will notice the difference. i dont have a clue why they would do this, maybe it somehow runs cooler or something..

You quote me but you did not even read my whole post... They did this because it is ATIs choice not because of heat, a iMac has a lot more space then a laptop heat should be less of an issue then in a laptop.

ATI dose this because there is less demand for Mac card then PC cards. ATI has done this many times in the past with other cards they make for Apple.

It really bugs me that ATI dose this.

 

[flopticalcube]

You quote me but you did not even read my whole post... They did this because it is ATIs choice not because of heat, a iMac has a lot more space then a laptop heat should be less of an issue then in a laptop.

ATI dose this because there is less demand for Mac card then PC cards. ATI has done this many times in the past with other cards they make for Apple.

It really bugs me that ATI dose this.

What advantage does this give ATI? Are they deliberately chosing lower specing parts that can't be overclocked? This was not the case with the X1600s.

 

[diamond.g]

Its quite a leap from the "2600Pro" to the "2600XT" according to external benchmarks. Nearly 50%. Most gamers will be booting into Windows.

Oh, I understand the performance difference, but when most here run those games with no AA or AF it just makes Baby Jesus cry.
[IMHO]
I mean Mac users are all about IQ, and then they go and ignore the whole point behind these newer cards. No one should be running anything less than 4xAA/16xAF. Only then should anyone be worried about how many FPS you are getting.
[/IMHO]

 

[diamond.g]

You quote me but you did not even read my whole post... They did this because it is ATIs choice not because of heat, a iMac has a lot more space then a laptop heat should be less of an issue then in a laptop.

ATI dose this because there is less demand for Mac card then PC cards. ATI has done this many times in the past with other cards they make for Apple.

It really bugs me that ATI dose this.

Apple is doing it. ATI is just providing what they are asked to provide.

 

[psingh01]

Someone go into bootcamp, load up Company of Heros and report results. Repeat process with MS Flight Simulator X.

I think a lot of us that want the good gaming performance are interested in the bootcamp/PC replacement use of the iMac. The lack of a decent DX10 card on the MacPro is what has kept me from buying it. If I only wanted to use OSX then the low end stock card would be fine for me because lets face it, OS X games suck.

Now if I had a card that could perform well (i.e. midrange windows gaming...~8600gts) then I could rid myself of the extra pc and go all mac. Only to boot into windows when I need to play a game or do some DX10 development.

 

[cloudstrife13]

Apple is doing it. ATI is just providing what they are asked to provide.

Sorry you are wrong.

The Radeon X1900 XT used in the Mac Pro appears to have a 1.3GHz memory clock, which is slower than the 1.45GHz clock of the PC version. The core clock is also slower than the PC version at 600MHz, instead of 625MHz. Historically, ATI Mac Edition cards have always been clocked lower than their PC counterparts; ATI explained the reasoning behind this disparity as having to do with basic supply and demand. The demand for Mac video cards is lower than their PC counterparts, so ATI runs them at lower clock speeds to maintain their desired profit per card regardless of whether they are selling to Mac or PC markets.

Source

ATI has explained this themselves. Why would Apple lower the clock speed of it's graphics cards and make there systems look bad.

 

[flopticalcube]

Sorry you are wrong.



Source

ATI has explained this themselves. Why would Apple lower the clock speed of it's graphics cards and make there systems look bad.

That would imply that ATI are using selected inferior parts for Mac products. However, the X1600s are still overclockable so that contradicts the above.

...or perhaps...
the PC parts are selected superior parts and the Mac parts are not selected at all. hmm

 

[cloudstrife13]

That would imply that ATI are using selected inferior parts for Mac products. However, the X1600s are still overclockable so that contradicts the above.

...or perhaps...
the PC parts are selected superior parts and the Mac parts are not selected at all. hmm

The iMac new card is still over-clock-able. It should even go upto Mobile HD2600XT speeds with no problems.

But yes they are short edging us Mac users.

 

[flopticalcube]

The iMac new card is still over-clock-able. It should even go upto Mobile HD2600XT speeds with no problems.

But yes they are short edging us Mac users.

Maybe its just more of a lottery with Macs than PCs.

 

[TBi]

The iMac new card is still over-clock-able. It should even go upto Mobile HD2600XT speeds with no problems.

But yes they are short edging us Mac users.

Maybe the core but the memory is only DDR2 for the pro chip (unless apple is using DDR3 for some strange reason) which won't overclock to the speed of the ram on an XT.

EDIT: It seems apple is using DDR3 for some strange reason!

 

[flopticalcube]

Maybe the core but the memory is only DDR2 for the pro chip (unless apple is using DDR3 for some strange reason) which won't overclock to the speed of the ram on an XT.

Apple is using DDR3. The official Pro model is desktop only and can use either DDR2 or DDR3. I suspect a lot of the dismal tests of the desktop Pro cards where done on cards with DDR2.

 

[TBi]

Do you know if the Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra would fit in the new iMac?

Maybe with an angle grinder

 

[Willie Sippel]

Well...

This tool doesn't seem to work with recent cards.

 

[DrD]

There is a lot of confusion getting tossed around, so here is my attempt to clarify things (from a post I made in another thread):

Looks like the card in the new imacs is not a desktop class HD 2600 pro after all - it's a mobility HD 2600 XT - just underclocked a bit. The part number that appears under both OSX and windows verifies this: 9583 (OSX and windows give differing card names, but both give the same part number identifying it as a mobility 2600 XT).

Standard specs for both cards: (thanks Eidorian)

Desktop HD2600 Pro
Core: 550 MHz
Memory: 1400 MHz (700 MHz x 2)

Mobility HD2600 XT
Core: 700 MHz
Memory: 1500 MHz (750 MHz x 2)

User Adom (thanks Adom) posted a test (post #165) with the ATI diagnostic tool on his 20" imac, and verified that the speeds of the new model are clocked as follows:

Core: 600 MHz
Memory: 1370 MHz (685 MHz x 2)

He also reported speeds of 115 fps in Half Life 2 at full res (no AA, but otherwise high settings). This is thought to be quite a bit better then the 2600 pro but not quite up to the mobility 2600 XT's standard levels, which would seem to line up with the clock speeds listed above.

Overall this is good news. The mobility 2600 XT is a better card then the desktop 2600 Pro which it would appear to be marketed as. It also makes sense that a mobility version of the card was included rather then the desktop, due to heat/power consumption issues. It would seem that Apple, for whatever reason, choose to include the mobility 2600 XT (a good choice) and then underclocked it a bit. Still better then what a lot of us initially thought was in there, and there's fair chance that the ATI tool can be used to bring the card back up to standard levels... we'll just have to wait and see what that does to the overall heat levels of the system (hopefully negligible).

More info on the mobility 2600 XT (ox9583) here:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mob...XT.3770.0.html



Note: Although this appears to be for real, it's still not a completely closed issue. Bare Feats should step in fairly soon and lay the matter to rest with a multitude of benchmarks.

 

[flopticalcube]

Standard specs for both cards: (thanks Eidorian)

Desktop HD2600 Pro
Core: 550 MHz
Memory: 1400 MHz (700 MHz x 2)

Mobility HD2600 XT
Core: 700 MHz
Memory: 1500 MHz (750 MHz x 2)

Good summary. I have seen, however, manufacturers selling desktop 2600Pro cards with DDR3 and engine clocks of 665MHz these may simply be underclocked XTs (desktops max out at 800MHz). So its not completely black and white. Also, Eldorian's specs for the desktop Pro is for the DDR3 version. There are also DDR2 versions with memory clocks of 800MHz (400X2).

FWIW, Mobility HD2600 (non-XT) is spec'd at 450MHz with 400MHz DDR2. That is a far cry from what is in the iMacs.