Umm.... that's the point of this thread, as well as "The Race to Dump the 4870 ROM" thread I quoted in my initial post.
I am NOT going to buy it. Perhaps you should read the thread a little more carefully before you post.
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ATI Announces 4890 Availability - $250.00
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Umm.... that's the point of this thread, as well as "The Race to Dump the 4870 ROM" thread I quoted in my initial post.
I am NOT going to buy it. Perhaps you should read the thread a little more carefully before you post.
I'd read the thread but I'm too busy drooling over the 4890 with the slightly better performance and the much lower power draw... Oh and the non-suport from Apple. 
This is the company that still charges $300 for the 8800GT and $400 for the X1900 XT. And people still wonder why it's a bad idea to buy a Mac Pro for gaming...
And people still wonder why it's a bad idea to buy a Mac Pro for gaming...This is the company that still charges $300 for the 8800GT and $400 for the X1900 XT.
Who says the Mac Pro's for gaming....?
But nowadays after the launch of Nehalem, I tend to agree with your statement... This is how Apple responded to those many requests of a mini-gaming tower in between the iMac and the Mac Pro, and Apple came up with the new Quad Nehalem claiming it's cheaper, then jacking up the price of the base-level 8-core variant (to increase the gap in between it and the iMacs) enough to fool the hopeful game freaks into thinking Apple had granted them their wishes...
The 4890 is a lot faster than the 4870 than that Tom's review, which btw is a joke. Look at [H]ardocp or HardwareCanucks or Guru3d for examples of more professional reviews.
Plus, it's an overclocking beast... people are hitting 1GHz on stock cooling
Plus, it's an overclocking beast... people are hitting 1GHz on stock cooling
This is how Apple responded to those many requests of a mini-gaming tower in between the iMac and the Mac Pro, and Apple came up with the new Quad Nehalem claiming it's cheaper, then jacking up the price of the base-level 8-core variant (to increase the gap in between it and the iMacs) enough to fool the hopeful game freaks into thinking Apple had granted them their wishes...
You mean people fell for that?
I understand why the DP are more because the cheapest MB is what $450-$500 alone? But from what I've read the board on the Quad is the bargin $200, $350 cpu, $50 graphics, $70 Hard Drive and $40 worth of Ram.. but that beautiful case, osx and magic sauce somehow push it up to being worth $2,499
I do state again, I will eventually cave and buy one.. does that make me a hypocrite? Yes. yes it does.
Dude....not gonna be easy.
Dump the ROM on it and post it here.
And be ready for some frustration.
You may need to edit kexts to include the device id.
And BTW...no guarantee this will work.
Sometimes a minor chip warmover doesn't change things and it works with old ROMs and Drivers. (R300/R350/R360)
Sometimes, it becomes a DIFFERENT card and needs new EVERYTHING. (G70/G71)
In any case, these DO have a new device id, 9460, which I do not see in ATI kexts.
Dump the ROM on it and post it here.
And be ready for some frustration.
You may need to edit kexts to include the device id.
And BTW...no guarantee this will work.
Sometimes a minor chip warmover doesn't change things and it works with old ROMs and Drivers. (R300/R350/R360)
Sometimes, it becomes a DIFFERENT card and needs new EVERYTHING. (G70/G71)
In any case, these DO have a new device id, 9460, which I do not see in ATI kexts.
Any guide how to dumb the rom?
Why frustration?
If i flash it, can i return to the original if any problem?
Dump ROM:
EIther GPU-Z in Windows or...
ATIFLash in DOS
either way, make sure you get 128K. (20000 in Hex)
You can find instructions in the 4870 thread, or elsewhere.
May be frustrating because it may work, it may partially work, and it may reuqire waiting for newer OS with kext/driver support.
Not a one step deal.
EIther GPU-Z in Windows or...
ATIFLash in DOS
either way, make sure you get 128K. (20000 in Hex)
You can find instructions in the 4870 thread, or elsewhere.
May be frustrating because it may work, it may partially work, and it may reuqire waiting for newer OS with kext/driver support.
Not a one step deal.
OK...I'll have a look at this...but again, with the Device id not being in the ATI kexts...don't see how to make it work.
May be possible to add it in....but no guarantees at all.
Do you know how to fix permissions of modified kexts?
They need to be wholly owned by System.
Plus, I'm not sure which ones need to have this in them.
You should start with looking through the "Info plist" inside the ATI.2000 kexts.....you need to add "9460" as a matched device id.
I will process the ROM for you and post it...but it ISN'T GOING TO WORK UNTIL YOU HAVE IT IN KEXTS and even then, it might not work anyway since it may have mildly different architecture.
May be possible to add it in....but no guarantees at all.
Do you know how to fix permissions of modified kexts?
They need to be wholly owned by System.
Plus, I'm not sure which ones need to have this in them.
You should start with looking through the "Info plist" inside the ATI.2000 kexts.....you need to add "9460" as a matched device id.
I will process the ROM for you and post it...but it ISN'T GOING TO WORK UNTIL YOU HAVE IT IN KEXTS and even then, it might not work anyway since it may have mildly different architecture.
Where can i find ATI.2000 kexts ? Can you guide me step by step ? I think the architecture of 4890 is the same with 4870.
Funny how ATI's brand new card, the successor to the 4870, can be had for only $250.00. Meanwhile, Apple demands $350.00 for a card now made obsolete by its successor.
What do you expect? ATI has to specially design drivers for Apple. Apple's marketshare is much smaller than the PC marketshare; they're designing drivers for a smaller market, that takes time and money for less of a return in terms of total sold. They have to raise the price.
And the 4870 isn't "obsolete," the 4890 is just an overclocked 4870, they're the same card. The 4870x2 is still a lot faster.
They're going to use the same ROM... just clocked higher. I doubt one will appear.
And I'm also looking forward to picking up one of these cards and making it work in my Mac Pro, while simultaneously giving the finger to Apple for expecting us to pay $350.00 for a card that retails for $179.00.
Again use your brain. R&D takes time and money. They have to charge more (ATI charges Apple more). Apple's ATi cards (and hey, nVidia, and even 3dfx when it was out) have ALWAYS been higher-priced than their PC counterparts. Always. This is nothing new.. it's been going on for 12 years. Just because you've jumped on the Apple bandwagon in the last couple years doesn't give you license to start evaluating established practices (that exist for a reason) and trying to incite a call to arms [so to speak].
Feedback has been submitted to Apple via the Mac Pro feedback link on their site. I made it clear that the 4870 pricing is ridiculous and an insult to the informed consumer.
Gee I guess you sure showed them.
Rofl, maybe you should remember what you say a bit better.. you JUST said you were going to buy it in your first post.
Erm... that's because 99% of all games don't need more than a 512 MB frame buffer? Why would 1 GB of memory help any when it's not needed?
Get a clue. You should really do some research before spending all that money on something you don't really even understand.
You are correct.
I looked at 8 benchtests with the 4890 and the 4870.
At the best, the 4890 beat the 4870 by 14.8 percent.
At the worst, the 4890 beat the 4870 by 10.7 percent.
The HD 4890 beat the HD 4870 by an average of 13.5 percent!
I also looked at 9 benchtests involving the HD 4870 1GB and the HD 4780 512MB.
The HD 4870 1GB beat the HD 4870 512MB by an average of 3.7 percent.
The benchtests were all OpenGL which should match up a little better with Macs than DirectX benchtests.
Is it just me getting old or have other people stopped chasing these negligible increases of 10-15% ?
I would say I'm a 'die hard gamer' as I have been gaming since Pong. I'm just not a 'die hard PC hardware enthusiast' any more. Anything over 60fps is a moot issue since we stopped using CRTs. A 10% increase is a boost from 50fps to 55fps. Anyone who claims they can see this in a real world gaming test is just blinded by the placebo effect of justifying scrabbling around on all fours and fannying around all day with water cooling. I used to do all that but unless you are really enjoying it, it's just a waste of time that could be better spent doing more interesting things... like playing the games instead of benchmarking them.
Now going from an 8800GT to an HD 4870 and getting a 50% increase is something worth caring about. I'm really not that bothered that Apple aren't immediately supporting the latest and greatest excuse to relieve 'die hard PC hardware enthusiasts' of their cash. They are quite sensibly supporting the price/performance sweetspot of each new generation of GPU.
I would say I'm a 'die hard gamer' as I have been gaming since Pong. I'm just not a 'die hard PC hardware enthusiast' any more. Anything over 60fps is a moot issue since we stopped using CRTs. A 10% increase is a boost from 50fps to 55fps. Anyone who claims they can see this in a real world gaming test is just blinded by the placebo effect of justifying scrabbling around on all fours and fannying around all day with water cooling. I used to do all that but unless you are really enjoying it, it's just a waste of time that could be better spent doing more interesting things... like playing the games instead of benchmarking them.
Now going from an 8800GT to an HD 4870 and getting a 50% increase is something worth caring about. I'm really not that bothered that Apple aren't immediately supporting the latest and greatest excuse to relieve 'die hard PC hardware enthusiasts' of their cash. They are quite sensibly supporting the price/performance sweetspot of each new generation of GPU.
Just want to comment on a couple points.
It's not a moot issue to want to increase your average fps past 60 or 100fps. Most games slow down quite a lot during intense scenes, so if you're averaging 60fps in a game, you likely have spots where it'd down into the 10s and 20s. So trying to increase your average fps to 100 or 150 is not a bad idea, if it means that your lowest fps won't dip below 50. On Crysis, for example, at 1920 x 1200:
Yes 44 fps looks fine. But it's rather annoying when it drops down to 19fps. This is with an overclocked 8800GT. A 4870 would do better, but still struggle to get past 30fps on the difficult scenes.
They are going for the best bang for the buck, which is good. But realize also that Apple is always playing up their ability to support large displays. Even the laptops come with dual-link ports to support a 30" monitor. At these high resolutions (2560 x 1600), even an ATI 4870 is going to struggle with the latest games. It would be nice to have some high-end GPU options from a company that seems to otherwise optimize their machines for large display sizes.
It's not a moot issue to want to increase your average fps past 60 or 100fps. Most games slow down quite a lot during intense scenes, so if you're averaging 60fps in a game, you likely have spots where it'd down into the 10s and 20s. So trying to increase your average fps to 100 or 150 is not a bad idea, if it means that your lowest fps won't dip below 50. On Crysis, for example, at 1920 x 1200:
Code:
Play Time: 44.81s, Average FPS: 44.63
Min FPS: 19.86 at frame 149, Max FPS: 51.97 at frame 1784Yes 44 fps looks fine. But it's rather annoying when it drops down to 19fps. This is with an overclocked 8800GT. A 4870 would do better, but still struggle to get past 30fps on the difficult scenes.
They are going for the best bang for the buck, which is good. But realize also that Apple is always playing up their ability to support large displays. Even the laptops come with dual-link ports to support a 30" monitor. At these high resolutions (2560 x 1600), even an ATI 4870 is going to struggle with the latest games. It would be nice to have some high-end GPU options from a company that seems to otherwise optimize their machines for large display sizes.
Shut up and stay out of my thread. I'm glad you took the time to quote everything I posted one by one and reply to each line with misguided garbage.
You're the one who needs to get a clue. Go play with your G3 or something and leave the Mac Pro owners alone.
Absolutely, good point. I'll generally drop my resolution into my boots so that games run at 60fps or as close to it as possible, in intense scenes.
Its Funny because you are SO wrong. The 4890 is a completely different Card, Redesigned Main Chip. Removes the problem ATI were having with the Freq's (The 4870 hit the max) But the 4890 Chip can go much past the limits of a 4870.
The 2 Cards are barely alike at all, good luck to the person trying to get a Mac Pro to see it, the Driver is completely different.
Not sure whether to get this, or a GTX275 for my Gaming Rig, think im gonna go Green Team....
Tough call. It will depend upon what games you play and at what resolution.
Just as a generalization, I think the GTX 275 will beat the HD 4890.
But an OC'd HD 4890 will beat the GTX 275.
As a matter of fact, the OC'd HD 4890 comes close to the GTX 285 for power.
But like I said, it all depends on the game.
The bad news about the OC'd HD 4890? People complain about it's noise.
