Great news, if true. A FireGL 7700 would be a nice $1K alternative to the $2.8K Quadro 5600 in the Mac Pro, too. Can't wait for this to happen. Let's go Apple. 
Great news, if true. A FireGL 7700 would be a nice $1K alternative to the $2.8K Quadro 5600 in the Mac Pro, too. Can't wait for this to happen. Let's go Apple.![]()
I'm sure it would be a welcome addition by some, but without the driver optimization it would be just an expensive 3870 under OSX. Useful for someone who wanted to do 3D work in windows and didn't really need more than a 3870 in OSX and didn't want to switch monitors or have more than one GPU, but not the sort of customer Apple probably gives a crap about. I also doubt they would want to sell a card that would be out performed by the 4800 series but cost three times as much.
Maybe AMD will get on top of it, but I could easily see it to not even be worth considering from a financial aspect.
People using 3D apps would certainly want the opportunity to purchase the FireGL 7770 and I'm sure they might be pleased at the prospect at saving $1.8K over the Quadro 5600. Users of professional video cards don't mind paying more for their video cards. What's galling is knowing that every PC workstation vendor gives you the choice of EVERY Professional video card from Nvidia and ATI and not just onelike Apple does. If Apple doesn't want to supply it's customer with the proper hardware equipment for the Mac Pro, they should have the integrity to stop calling it a Mac Pro I'm hopeful that Apple will step up to the plate and do the right thing for it professional computer users.
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ATI Radeon HD 4850 - standard on the next Mac Pro
ATI Radeon HD 4870 - option on the next Mac Pro
ATI FireGL card- Maybe on the next Mac Pro?
No more Nvidia cards hopefully.
It will be interesting to see what happens if Apple is indeed moving to the nVidia mobile chipset for the iMac, MacBook Pro, MacBook and Mac Mini as more and more rumors state.
Probably be something similar to the 3870 "Mac & PC Edition" maybe?
not if it's shellacked in and then gets a generous coating of my johnson's weather seal or tite seal!Well I wouldn't put them out on a deck, I am sure they wouldn't weather well....But yes they are for the Mac Pro towers.
Regarding CUDA and OpenCL, just to clarify that AMD(Ati) dropped their own GPGPU framework "CTM" in favor of OpenCL, meaning that they will support Apple's OpenCL from the start whenintroduces it with Snow Leopard.
Nvidia is pushing CUDA so strongly as of right now that you'll probably see OpenCL support later than sooner, giving AMD advantage with Apple's software.
Thats what happens when you start selling 30 million Macs a year.
Haven't they traditionally been a third-party option? i.e. you can't order an ATi card when you order your mac pro. Probably be something similar to the 3870 "Mac & PC Edition" maybe?
ATI Radeon HD 4850 - standard on the next Mac Pro
ATI Radeon HD 4870 - option on the next Mac Pro
ATI FireGL card- Maybe on the next Mac Pro?
No more Nvidia cards hopefully.
Regardless of the bad press on Nvidia lately, as Mac users are we better off with Nvidia due to Cuda which Apple has something cooking with this technology ? Also Adobe has a plug-in for photoshop supposably it would run faster with just a software update ....![]()
The 4870X2 is a single card.
That's not true at all. The 4870X2 does not require crossfire. You only need crossfire if you want to install TWO 4870X2's.
To people who think the 4870X2 would require OSX crossfire support: No it would not.
Great - even more cards giving sub-par performance. You'd think Apple would have the best cards as a BTO in the Mac Pro at least. ATi 4870 X2 would make a sweet video editing and gaming rig in that.
NVidia needs to get their s**t together.
The 9800GTX was a flop from the beginning. It's nothing but a holdover card until they can drop prices on the GTX200's
Crossfire generally delivers much better performance scaling WHEN it is optimized well for a given game, however, SLI support is more consistent across a broad range of titles, whereas Crossfire is more hit and miss.Crossfire is delivering a much better job then SLI
You did notice the "mac" in "macrumors.com" didn't you? Apple historically has not exactly been associated with the 3D gaming scene. Most people around here are Mac enthusiasts, artists, musicians, photographers, software/web developers, etc.On a forum dedicated to computers, in a thread dedicated to a graphcs card update, you'd at east expect some knowledge about the matter, but at the first page I see people talking about the Radeon X19800 as if it' still up-to-date.
I heard something a fair while ago that says, historically, nVidia cards work better with OpenGL and ATi work better with DirectX (hence their use in the xbox systems, which were named partly after their basis on DirectX).
So, in that respect, a GTX 280 running an OpenGL game would outperform a 4870 X2 running the same OpenGL game?