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ATI X1600 Graphics Card in new Intel Macs, X1800 Soon?

Just because it didn't happen at MacWorld doesn't mean the products don't exist.

We heard about having an iSight integrated into the Powerbook for some time...
 
~Shard~ said:
This is great news for both Pro users...It would be nice to see something about H.264 encoding though, hopefuly... in the near future.
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I may be naive, but wont Apple's GPU acceleration tools allow encoding (via software apps) to leverage the ATI cards power?

Isn't this just saying that h.264/mpeg2/4 will be hardware accelerated at the OS level for all apps?

I can't see why you could have one without the other, as nearly all the processes are the same?

(still, drooooool). :)
 
arn said:
https://www.macrumors.com/pages/2005/03/20050327154504.shtml
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Quick on the draw! :) From March of last year:

"The Apple, ATI and NVIDIA OpenGL software teams are looking for a diverse set of talented engineers who would like to be a part of the fast paced world of 3D graphics. Apply your skills to help make Mac OS X the best OpenGL implementation in the industry."

Sounds like a promising collaboration between Apple and the GPU companies.
 
I'll just be interested to see some benchmarks with this graphics card for WoW, Halo, and Unreal Tournament. As long as the game is somewhat optimized for the Mac it should be a decent gaming machine.
 
jimN said:
Before macworld people said they would be releasing a mac powered plasma TV. Just goes to show unless that person is wearing a blackshirt and jeans and carrying his little blue clicker I wouldn't believe a word they say - and if he is you still need to take his claims about speed with a large pinch of salt!
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I think people need to be a little more realistic about these rumors. I think a plasma could be true, and the Mac mini DVR. The problem is for either of these rumors they would be using the intel VIIV architecture which intel will not release for a few more months. Of course Apple will not introduce a new computer using a chipset that is not available yet:cool: A few months and these rumors could be true but not at Macworld.
 
srobert said:
Too bad a single 1080p movie won't fit on the iMac 20" display ^_^ Or does it?
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It won't. However the new iMacs support monitor spanning so you can hook it up to your HDTV and watch it.
 
I'd guess that the graphics in the iMac are on a separate card - maybe ATI's mobile interface for PCIe, I forget the name - so they can be switched around.

Wait a month or two and there'll be a higher performance 3D iMac with the X1800 (or X1900 when it comes out), for some extra money...
 
badmofo9000 said:
Well with the inclusion of EFI instead of BIOS I think apple is in the same boat as before. They will need different cards than PCs.
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EFI is the future for Window's based systems as well so the use of EFI is only a temporary hindrance.
 
Evan_11 said:
It won't. However the new iMacs support monitor spanning so you can hook it up to your HDTV and watch it.
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That's a question I've been asking in 2 different threads already. ^_^

Q.: Will the iMac's X1600 be able to output to a HDTV (HDMI), and if yes, at which "resolution" 780P? 1080P?

3 happy point to the first person able to give a definitive answer to that question. ;)
 
nagromme said:
Quick on the draw! :) From March of last year:

"The Apple, ATI and NVIDIA OpenGL software teams are looking for a diverse set of talented engineers who would like to be a part of the fast paced world of 3D graphics. Apply your skills to help make Mac OS X the best OpenGL implementation in the industry."

Sounds like a promising collaboration between Apple and the GPU companies.
Click to expand...

It can be guessed that 10.4.3 and 10.4.4 contain aspects of that work in the form of broader support for newer OpenGL capabilities (GLSL, FBOs, etc.) with more to come.
 
srobert said:
Too bad a single 1080p movie won't fit on the iMac 20" display ^_^ Or does it?
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Im almost positive it wont, BUT with the new iMacs you can hook up a 23 inch display with them which should be big enough for it (is it?)
 
X1600 is drool worthy as it is and it's a viable gaming GPU. I can't wait for a good education deal and my savings to go up enough. :D

I love the ability to upgrade the Power Mac but it's still to high for me. It's cheaper just to get a new iMac every two years.
 
srobert said:
That's a question I've been asking in 2 different threads already. ^_^

Q.: Will the iMac's X1600 be able to output to a HDTV (HDMI), and if yes, at which "resolution" 780P? 1080P?

3 happy point to the first person able to give a definitive answer to that question. ;)
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The iMac has an adaptor that will allow you to connect to a DVI-D, VGA, S-Video, and RCA Video connetor. If you have an HDTV that has a DVI port you will be able to get 1080p.

I believe you can also get 3rd party DVI to HDMI or Component adaptors that may work. You would have two adaptors then your HDMI or Component cables!
 
andiwm2003 said:
as long as apple is using their own firmware on the gpu's you can forget about that.:( maybe you can get better ported versions of PC games. and if the market share of mac's goes up you might even get games optimized for mac's (maybe).
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The firmware is simply to support EFI instead of a standard BIOS. The complete lack of Direct-X and the rest of the Windows APIs used will be a much bigger stumbling block than this.
 
danielwsmithee said:
The iMac has an adaptor that will allow you to connect to a DVI-D, VGA, S-Video, and RCA Video connetor. If you have an HDTV that has a DVI port you will be able to get 1080p.

I believe you can also get 3rd party DVI to HDMI or Component adaptors that may work. You would have two adaptors then your HDMI or Component cables!
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Glad to hear it. I wasn't sure because of HDCP (Content protection). Also, Apple could cripple it on their end of the software if they label this as a "pro" feature. (Thinking of the Quicktime Pro Full Screen Feature burn).
 
srobert said:
That's a question I've been asking in 2 different threads already. ^_^

Q.: Will the iMac's X1600 be able to output to a HDTV (HDMI), and if yes, at which "resolution" 780P? 1080P?

3 happy point to the first person able to give a definitive answer to that question. ;)
Click to expand...

I could be wrong but I believe that HDMI is compatible with DVI. You just need the right cable. As far as resolution I would think that even if the iMac is splitting it's video memory that it should be able to output a full 1080p signal. However the first true 1080p HDTVs are just now hitting the market. The majority of sets being sold now are 1080i and 720p.
 
runninmac said:
Im almost positive it wont, BUT with the new iMacs you can hook up a 23 inch display with them which should be big enough for it (is it?)
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What do you mean by "big enough"?

1080p is 1920x1080, and you can play that in full resolution on any monitor with minimum 1920x1080 res. I would believe. Even if it were a 2 inch LCD (in theory).

That the iMac "only" has 1050 pixels vertical res. is another story. Very small downsampling.
 
srobert said:
Glad to hear it. I wasn't sure because of HDCP (Content protection). Also, Apple could cripple it on their end of the software if they label this as a "pro" feature. (Thinking of the Quicktime Pro Full Screen Feature burn).
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That maybe a problem you may have in the future but not currently. None of the content available now has HDCP. The question will then be what happens when blueray drives are included on an iMac. A blueray disc with HDCP may not play back at 1080 p through a DVI connector from the iMac, but then again it may!
 
Evan_11 said:
However the first true 1080p HDTVs are just now hitting the market. The majority of sets being sold now are 1080i and 720p.
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Indeed. But by design, if the GPU can do 1080p it can also do 1080i, right? I hope so because I only have a 1080i/780p HDTV.
 
runninmac said:
Im almost positive it wont, BUT with the new iMacs you can hook up a 23 inch display with them which should be big enough for it (is it?)
Click to expand...

The iMac have a Mini-DVI output (single link DVI). That combined with the video adapter is able to ...

Support for external display in extended desktop and video mirroring modes: Digital resolutions up to 1920 x 1200, Analog resolutions up to 2045 x 1536
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So it is able to drive a DVI monitor at 1920 x 1200 @ 60Hz (in theory HDMI display via an converter).

1080p implies 1920 x 1080 @ 24/25/30Hz.
720p implies 1280 x 720 @ 24/25/30/50/60Hz.
 
srobert said:
Indeed. But by design, if the GPU can do 1080p it can also do 1080i, right? I hope so because I only have a 1080i/780p HDTV.
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Yes it can.

But as I read it only the X1800 does 1080p hardware decoding. The X1600 is limited to 720p. For the moment.

Anandtech article:

"Radeon X1300 owners will be able to get hardware acceleration at up to 480p, X1600 owners get it for 720p, and X1800 owners get full acceleration at up to 1080p. ATI did mention that they are working on bringing those limits down, but that is a time intensive driver and algorithm optimization process that may or may not happen. "
 
Sharewaredemon said:
Way back when the announcement to switch to Intel, people said that we would be able to use any GPU for macs.

The wording of this post makes it seem like Graphics card makers still have to mack a Mac version of their cards.
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Depending on how standard the motherboard is, it may or may not be nessisary to make two different actual versions of the card. At the very least, there are less differences now than there were.

That's the hardware side. Software, Macs are still just as far away. The new iMac is using a different BIOS from any Windows machines (though that is temporary: future versions of Windows will use the same BIOS), and there still needs to be a driver for the card in the OS (typically written by the card manufacter).

So, Graphics Card makers still have to make a Mac version of the drivers, and there may or may not be tweaks needed to work with the rest of the system. If the motherboard designs are close enough, I'd expect to see cards shipped with both drivers sometime in the near future. But they may not make the drivers for all models, if they don't feel the need...
 
I'm curious as to how this will affect Cedega. Will the cards not being standard Windows cards still be able to work with some hackwork?

Lacero said:
What we really need is H.264 encoding. My 2-year PB can decode H.264 640x360x24 with a Nvidia 5200 no problem. It's the encoding that hurts.

Here's to the Crazy Ones ​
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If your 2-year PB had one of these graphics cards, it could decode H.264 1080x1920x60 :D
 
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