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I DEMAND BETTER GRAPHICS CARDS
- Thread starter jacobj
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Mark a hella lot more that do care, as demonstrated well by the amount of those that have posted their opinions in the various threads in this forum.Horrortaxi said:
Don't forget, PC gaming is more niché than the entire community of Mac owners. They're probably the loudest in the industry, however, because gamers are the main ones that push computing to the next level. And if you look at sales, the best selling games are always games that appeal to non-gamers (IE The Sims).
I'm not saying Apple shouldn't put a better card in the next iMac, but there's no need protesting if they don't deliver. Apple wouldn't gain too much from doing so. There's no way a hard-core PC gamer would switch to the Mac even if the $1299 iMac had a 6800 Ultra in it.
I'm not saying Apple shouldn't put a better card in the next iMac, but there's no need protesting if they don't deliver. Apple wouldn't gain too much from doing so. There's no way a hard-core PC gamer would switch to the Mac even if the $1299 iMac had a 6800 Ultra in it.
I am all for better cards, don't get me wrong, but I think people put a lot of emphasis on the video card for the wrong reasons.. for example, the GPU has almost nothing to do with Photoshop (which was mentioned somewhere in this thread). Photoshop is CPU and RAM (especially RAM) based as far as performance goes. Same goes with video editing in apps such as Final Cut. Again, rendering times, etc in Final Cut are all about the CPU and RAM, not about the video card. This would go for Flash too. I would bet if you found benchmarks for apps like these, all on the same machine but with different cards, the difference would be negligable.
If you want to make Final Cut and Photoshop faster, get a kick ass CPU, tons of RAM, and very important, the fastest hard drive you can find. These things will have much more of an impact on PS and FCP than a better GPU will.
Now, having said that, for 3D modelling, for games, and for the fact that we have an OS that is making more and more use of the GPU I would love to see better cards, though I love the 9700 in my PB!
Cheers!
If you want to make Final Cut and Photoshop faster, get a kick ass CPU, tons of RAM, and very important, the fastest hard drive you can find. These things will have much more of an impact on PS and FCP than a better GPU will.
Now, having said that, for 3D modelling, for games, and for the fact that we have an OS that is making more and more use of the GPU I would love to see better cards, though I love the 9700 in my PB!
Cheers!
7on said:
I don't think the hardcore PC gamers would ever switch, but if an iMac G5 should sell as a family computer, games should be able to on it run very decently. If dad goes out and buy an iMac, dear teenage son could go out and buy Doom 3 for Mac, and find out that dad's iMac isn't fast enough for it running at high settings what you would expect from a new G5 iMac.
IMHO if a Tower G5 can CTO an Radeon 9600 for an extra $ 50, then an iMac G5 whose grfx card probably won't be upgradeable (as usual), should at least have one model with a better grfx card than the ultimate low-end.
It's like Apple is telling you that if you buy an iMac, you shouldn't run games on it. But it is the cosumer computer, and consumers like to play games.
Ofcourse, it would be a gr8 option if the grfx card would be replaceable, and then this whole discussion will be obselete.
CalfCanuck said:
That's half of it. The other half, for high end cards at least, is adoption of PCI Express instead of AGP. Apparently all the next cards coming out from ATI and nVidia are native to PCI-E, which means they would have to do extra engineering to port it to a AGP bus. In the case of nVidia, this isn't a big deal since they don't make the boards... unless their chips are somehow optimized for PCI-E?
Horrortaxi said:
so you don't care that a crucial componenet that is in half apples "power" line is total under proforming crap that drags down the entire system?
i'm annoyed at apple cheaping out and saving $25 per mac and giving us a 5200 in top end system, and you should to, to say i dont care is childish and makes you look like a zealot that would support apple if they went back to useing 68k cpu's
James L said:
as has been mentioned earlier, i don't think a better video card will offer that much of a benefit to the average user. it's basically for games. the effects that osx uses doesn't really require a very powerful graphics card (although personally i like to turn off all eye-candy). and for 3d-modelling, yes a better graphics card may help. but the final render is completely cpu dependent anyway.
James L said:
I didn't mean now. I meant in the future (if) photoshop starts using the GPU for calculations (mentioned by jobs in the last keynote), and since CoreImage and CoreVideo will probably be used in a lot of applications (I'm betting quite a few apple applications will) and those realtime filtering effects that were demonstrated require a fast GPU.
Since the 5200 is on the list of supported chips for CoreImage I wonder how well it will perform in all those realtime video filters and such that were demonstrated.
CoreImage Supported graphics cards:
ATI Radeon 9800 XT
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
ATI Radeon 9600 XT
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
ATI Mobility Radeon 9600
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra
NVIDIA GeForceFX Go 5200
NVIDIA GeForceFX 5200 Ultra
CoreImage Supported graphics cards:
ATI Radeon 9800 XT
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
ATI Radeon 9600 XT
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
ATI Mobility Radeon 9600
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra
NVIDIA GeForceFX Go 5200
NVIDIA GeForceFX 5200 Ultra
iceTrX said:
the problem with using the gpu for calculations is that the precision just isn't there. gpus, as i understand them, are just really massive simd processors. i think that current nvidia gpus use the equivalent of single-precision floating point (32-bit) and ati gpus use 24-bit fp. someone might want to check up on that though.
applekid said:
You are forgetting the fact that gamers don't usually PAY for their games. There is but a million sources on the internet where games are found. I only buy games from eBay, since you can have them for practically just the shipping price. All of the people i know who plays games a lot don't pay for their games, not that i'm saying this should be done, but it is a fact.
People generally uphold the attitude "incase i want to play games, my computer will be capable" an emergency type of response when buying computers. This is enough to sell powerful computers people won't or don't need. Just look at the red-hot lucrative SUV market in the automobile industry right now. People buy of need, as well as desire, and when the corporates design something for you (without your direct input), they will make sure to market and distort the reality to make you think you NEED the machine when you only need 10% of its features. And they argue in the disguise of "upgradability" or "futureproof" when we know the last thing they want is a true "futureproof" system, then no one will be buying any more computers....
Hector said:
even though the pc world has the better cards first, the back end of pre press is still mac centric and most designers still prefer macs even though pcs have been viable for design and graphics for some time now
also on the software side of things, os x has to get back end font management up to the level they had with os 9 in order to make efficient printing and pre press management...apple inc has lagged on this and os x developement in general has not lived up to expectations
on graphics cards for laptops, apple inc is even further behind...high end, but still affordable pc laptops can be had with 256 mb mobile graphics cards making their laptops fine for gaming on the run and intensive graphics instructions
jhu said:
You are correct on that ATI uses 24-bit precision all the time. nVidia does 16/32bit partial precision, they use 16bit when 32bit isn't needed for a speed increase.
jefhatfield said:
Not true. The 15" and 17" powerbooks come with the Radeon 9700 mobility which is the most powerful laptop GPU available on a Mac or PC (at least until the new 9800 mobility starts showing up, which I hope is included in the next powerbook revision). The amount of video memory means very little from 128mb to 256mb in almost everything except doom3.
slughead said:
Er, I was in CompUSA yesterday playing UT2k4 on a 1.8 G5 with the 5200 in it. It ran like a dream. What the hell are you talking about?
Are you serious? You expect your average family to splash out on two computers just because their kids wanna be able to play games here and there? They'll just buy the PC and be done with it.FuzzyBallz said:
jefhatfield said:
i'll buy macs even if there are pc's 3x the speed because of os x. this dose not mean i want a slow ass mac apple should be at the forfrount of technology and they are with the ppc 970 but this is not reflected with the gpu's, because they can get away with it is no excuse. they need to get back to the formlar of the original imac and b&w g3 give them both damn good preformence with the powermac in the lead with upgradeability now we have the g5 powermac with underpowered 5200 cards with slow ass imacs in the pipeline is the rumored specs are true, frankly i dont care how the competeion has intel extreme intergarted crap apple should take the lead at the low end the medium end and the high end and they can do this without makeing a $299 wallmart mac but with a competeively priced all in one g5 machine that apple can be proud to benchmark against pc's just like they did with the original imac.
(sorry to focus on the imac and the powermac but it seems the most relevent to the subject, the same go's for the ibook powerbook and emac)
neoelectronaut said:
I think UT 2k4 is more CPU centric. I avoided the Geforce 4 MX when I bought my Dual 867, because it was so horrible, so i got a 9000. recently I got my hands on a 9700 with ADC, and tried all my games again... some flew along beautifully (like WC 3, doesnt even stall with 200 guys on the screen) and others (UT 2k4) showed very little improvement. it was there, but nowhere near as noticible as the jump on WC 3. even Halo runs great now. I can run halo at maximum everything 5 FPS FASTER than my old 9000 at minimum everything.
I guess wht im trying to say, is games vary on their engine design.
Why cant apple just setup the g5 so that it can accept any pc agp card
as long as there is a driver. for it
the pc and mac versions arent that different
as long as there is a driver. for it
the pc and mac versions arent that different
I personally think the video cards in the macs are fine....
If I wanted to play leading edge games I would run the on my c ustom built PC
If I wanted to play leading edge games I would run the on my c ustom built PC