Mac Pro HD5770 Upgrade to HD5870 - Applecare?

[Johnf1285]

I plan to upgrade to the HD5870 for gaming purposes once funds are available, probably in a few months. I also intend to purchase Applecare at somepoint between now and the end of this year.

My question is:

Will Applecare only cover the original HD5770? Or will it also include coverage for the HD5870 official upgrade kit?

Thanks!

 

[goMac]

Technically, I don't believe so, but I don't think Apple would care.

 

[Johnf1285]

Another thought would be that *maybe* the 2011 Mac Pro will see a HD6xxx series card. I mostly play World of Warcraft... will there be a huge difference between an HD5770 and HD5870 or would the biggest difference be Apple getting their drivers straightened out ?

 

[goMac]

Another thought would be that *maybe* the 2011 Mac Pro will see a HD6xxx series card. I mostly play World of Warcraft... will there be a huge difference between an HD5770 and HD5870 or would the biggest difference be Apple getting their drivers straightened out ?

ATI is pretty consistently working on improving their Mac drivers. I saw they had new ones in the new 10.6.7 release.

I don't have a 5770 to compare to, but when I tried WoW the other day my 5870 ran it on full settings at 1900x1200 with no lag at all.

 

[Johnf1285]

ATI is pretty consistently working on improving their Mac drivers. I saw they had new ones in the new 10.6.7 release.

I don't have a 5770 to compare to, but when I tried WoW the other day my 5870 ran it on full settings at 1900x1200 with no lag at all.

I have settings at about good, 2x mutlisampling, fair on water effects (to maintain the 2x multisampling), sunshafts off, with vysnc enabled. I get 60fps but at times it drops to 30fps. I lock it to 30fps to avoid this annoying drop. I notice the camera stutter issue as well - it has a sticky on Wow Mac Tech Support Forums....

I just wonder if its worth the upgrade... hrmmmm

 

[jjahshik32]

I have settings at about good, 2x mutlisampling, fair on water effects (to maintain the 2x multisampling), sunshafts off, with vysnc enabled. I get 60fps but at times it drops to 30fps. I lock it to 30fps to avoid this annoying drop. I notice the camera stutter issue as well - it has a sticky on Wow Mac Tech Support Forums....

I just wonder if its worth the upgrade... hrmmmm

I'm thinking about upgrading myself, I'd really love something powerful as the 5870! Definitely will see a huge boost in overall performance.

 

[Johnf1285]

I'm thinking about upgrading myself, I'd really love something powerful as the 5870! Definitely will see a huge boost in overall performance.

Yeah I will probably upgrade eventually. I will wait and see what the rumor mill churns up in regard to potential 6 series cards in the future mac pro... although I also wonder about a $250 HD5870 off newegg and flashing it... save a lot right there...

 

[goMac]

The 5870 has double the cores, which is hard to translate to OpenGL performance, but in theoretical performance is double the speed.

Again, for OpenGL this can be tricky because of the drivers and other optimization, but at least on paper, that's the speed boost.