Because the RV670 is simply faster in general computing (GPGPU) applications.
It has to do with the underlying architecture and both R600 and RV670 is based on Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW).
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BFG 8800GTX NOT working for me in my mac pro.
- Thread starter wsgroves
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Because the RV670 is simply faster in general computing (GPGPU) applications.
It has to do with the underlying architecture and both R600 and RV670 is based on Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW).
So why would Apple not offer only Radeon and FireGL cards. Seems like a no brainer to me. If the R600 arch is faster for Apple then why offer the competitions card at all?
Well, the Radeon HD 3870 was supposed to be an BTO option for the early 2008 Mac Pro.
But your guess would be as good as mine.
The one reason why Apple would give a rats arse about 3ds max performance would generally be because it still requires Windows.
Okay, it is still somewhat early for me, as I haven't had my caffeine yet, could you rephrase that? Are you saying the the Quadro is faster than the FireGL in 3ds Max? Does that really matter (as in "why-buy-a-Mac-Pro-if-you-are-going-to-be-running-3ds-Max" matter)?
The quadro is faster for 3D Studio Max. The FireGL is significantly faster for Maya. I'll see if I can dig up some recent test results of the latest Quadras and FireGLs that show this.
Personally I'd be more interested in the Nvidia cards as Nvidia have released the software development kit for CUDA which enables non graphics applications to take advantage of the GPU meaning they can offload some number crunching there for some serious speed increases.
The general gist, if I have to rephrase, is that Apple is not looking at how things perform in Windows when deciding on what graphic card they will use on their workstations
ATI (now AMD) has always had better drivers for Mac OS X in regards to the professional applications.
Although the dicrepancy between the Geforce 8800 GTs performance in regards to the Radeon HD 2600 XT has to be because of badly optimized drivers. No reason why the Geforce 8800 GT should not perform better down the line with updated drivers.
The general gist, if I have to rephrase, is that Apple is not looking at how things perform in Windows when deciding on what graphic card they will use on their workstations
ATI (now AMD) has always had better drivers for Mac OS X in regards to the professional applications.
Although the dicrepancy between the Geforce 8800 GTs performance in regards to the Radeon HD 2600 XT has to be because of badly optimized drivers. No reason why the Geforce 8800 GT should not perform better down the line with updated drivers.
I kinda figured that, my question is why offer nVidia at all? Why not make Macs exclusive to ATI?
According to this article the XT1900 AND the 2600 outperforms the new 8800GT on the mac side using Apple apps (core image stuff). So the nVidia drivers need some work.
http://www.barefeats.com/harper10.html
The 8800 rule on games though:
http://www.barefeats.com/harper8.html
http://www.barefeats.com/harper10.html
The 8800 rule on games though:
http://www.barefeats.com/harper8.html