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ATI 5000 Series and GeForce GTX 480 Drivers Hint at Desktop Mac Updates

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A couple of discoveries have revealed early Mac support for the high end ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards, raising hopes that Apple will soon be updating their desktop computers. Both the Mac Pro and iMacs are overdue for product refreshes with no solid timeframe for either update.

The newly released Mac mini has revealed a new set of ATI drivers buried within its default Mac OS X installation. New Macs always have a slightly newer version of the system software installed that provides support for the new hardware. In this case, the software also revealed early support for the ATI Radeon 5 series. Some tinkerers have been able to use the software to drive an ATI Radeon 5870 on an actual Mac Pro. Meanwhile, a recent NVIDIA Driver release have shown references to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 400 series support.

For the masses, neither release is particularly useful, but does remind us that Apple's desktop line is overdue for update. There has been talk of Mac Pro updates for months, but no clear timeframe when it might happen.

Article Link: ATI 5000 Series and GeForce GTX 480 Drivers Hint at Desktop Mac Updates
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/07/04/ati-5000-series-and-geforce-gtx-480-drivers-hint-at-desktop-mac-updates/
Starship77 said:
I just hope they put a good GPU in the iMac. The Mac Pro is too expensive...
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Not the ones mentioned here. The ATI 5000 series and the Nvidia 400 series are all full- or over-sized GPUs -- in the case of the really high end (ATI 5800s, Nvidia GTX 400s) they are full-width, take up two slots of vertical space and are nearly a foot long. Those sort of GPUs would never fit in an iMac.

Even the somewhat lower-end single-slot, standard-length cards (lower numbered ATI 5000s) would be hard pressed to fit. Maybe if Apple had a heavily customised build of them to fit into an iMac in a non-standard way, though.
 
I'm waiting for the next round of iMac or MacBook pro... Haven't decided yet, already have an iPad and iPhone4...don't really care for the current mbp and Imacs are imminent🙂 hopefully soon so I can get my free iPod
 
I have the sapphire 5870, it's a beast of a card.

Ati provides monthly driver updates for them, so hope they do the same to the apple ones.
 
I'm excited, bout time for the MP though, it was starting to choke under the weight of its own obsolescence.
 
Gtx 480 eh? That is one hot card! Hopefully the drivers will make it useful. Wish I had the money ton fork out for it, what CPU configurations will there be I wonder?
 
Smurfed said:
I have the sapphire 5870, it's a beast of a card.

Ati provides monthly driver updates for them, so hope they do the same to the apple ones.
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Short answer . No.

Unlike the pc side you will not get tweaked drivers on a regular basis. Apple goes for stabaility over speed so does not tweak the drivers.
 
On a positive this might mean that 5870 will finally work with the iMac is target mode . Also hope the 5970 will be available for the pro
 
MH01 said:
Short answer . No.

Unlike the pc side you will not get tweaked drivers on a regular basis. Apple goes for stabaility over speed so does not tweak the drivers.
Click to expand...

Hadn't looked at that side of things before. The do SEEM quite stable, fairly fast too I guess.

Nvidia have brought out their own drivers of late for the MP Gpus I wonder if ati will do the same?

Is the 5970 the x2 variant or does it come with a x1 variant as well?
 
DoFoT9 said:
Hadn't looked at that side of things before. The do SEEM quite stable, fairly fast too I guess.

Nvidia have brought out their own drivers of late for the MP Gpus I wonder if ati will do the same?

Is the 5970 the x2 variant or does it come with a x1 variant as well?
Click to expand...

The 5970 is the dual gpu version of the 5870. And also supports mini dp unlike the 400 nvidia series. Which is a bonus for people with the 24 led displays
 
Nice. But one would hope that the next iMac is going to have more than just an upgraded GPU.
 
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