ATi HD2600XT Severely Underclocked

[diamond.g]

It's written into the card, it runs at stock speeds for everything.

How do we know this for OS X, has someone came up with a program that can alter/read EFI in OS X?

 

[Pressure]

yea. thats not surprising considering the video card on the macbook pros only come with half the ram... and thats for the higher end ones! its apple, but i guess they say that it will make the battery last longer, when really it just saves them money

Half the ram? OEMs can specify the amount of ram they want to put on any given card if it fits within the limitations of the chip design.

 

[a2daj]

ATI gives Apple what they ask for. In most cases Apple asks for a slower part, one cause it is cheaper and they can have a higher profit margin from it. Oh, AFAIK Apple write it's own graphics drivers. Period. If ATI did write Apple graphics drivers you would be able to find them on ATI's website. The most recent card they have OS X drivers for is the G5 version of the X1900.

The Anandtech quote is most likely in regards to ATI's retail cards. The strike text above is closer to Apple's OEM deal with ATI. This was covered in the old Accelerate Your Mac forums from an ATI employee.

ATI/AMD writes the Radeon Mac drivers. They're not available from AMD's site because they're included in the OS updates. There have been updates released in the past but they have been for the retail cards and only released under very specific conditions. The way Apple updates their OS and the various components make it very complicated to roll out new driver updates separately.

 

[subaqua]

In opengl drivers, it called 2600 Pro, in System profiler it called just 2600.

Yeah, I also noticed that in 10.5.1, system profiler showed:

Graphics/Displays: (10.5.1)

ATI Radeon HD 2600:

Chipset Model: ATI Radeon HD 2600
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-1
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x9588
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-B1480A-236
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.236


But in 10.5.2, they added the XT qualifier:


Graphics/Displays: (10.5.2 + graphics update)

ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT:

Chipset Model: ATI Radeon HD 2600
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-1
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x9588
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-B1480A-236
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.236

 

[m1stake]

I'm willing to bet that these cards are pass-overs for PC versions of the 2600 XT that failed the clock and RAM speed tests and were thus destined for 2400s or the mac version of the 2600.

ATI: "LOL @ YOU FOR BUYING OUR TRASH!"

 

[Mercuric Oxide]

But in 10.5.2, they added the XT qualifier:


Graphics/Displays: (10.5.2 + graphics update)

ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT:

Chipset Model: ATI Radeon HD 2600
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-1
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x9588
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-B1480A-236
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.236

Ahh, so that was the graphics update!