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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 Mac Version Due in June
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Hey Tallest. It's looking more and more like waiting for that new Mac Pro was the right decision, eh? 3.2 GHz Gainestown, Snow Leopard, Grand Central, OpenCL, and high-end video. Woot!
And will soon be dropped even lower once the GT300 series and HD 5800 series arrive. They're even releasing a single PCB version of the 295 in the meantime.
But at least this card may allow OS X users to play their poorly coded PC ports at semi reasonable settings. What use is gaming on a Mac? I always boot up my XP partition for that. Try comparing Command & Conquer Tiberium Wars on the same computer under OS X and XP. Night and day. And that was one of the titles proudly held high by EA and Apple as the "bringing gaming back to Mac" crap. It's a stupid gimmick.
If you want to play recent games at high resolutions and settings, boot up XP/Vista or buy an Xbox. It's a hell of a lot cheaper than paying a laughable premium on the "mac" version of a graphics card.
There are a ton of non-gaming (i.e. professional) uses for high-end graphics cards such as this one. For these users, $1,700 is nothing.
What they said.
Because having a video card in your machine that OSX can't even use makes a lot of sense.
Good to hear. I am surprised that the graphics card makers have not been quicker about this.
Especially since I think it is likely that a vastly higher percentage of people spending $2000 to $4000+ on a workstation are much more likely to buy a high end graphics card than say people buying $500 computers. It's not like they have to specifically design a card for the Mac. They just need to make drivers and custom firmware for pre-existing cards.
It is really strange to me that the third party vendors have not practiced this long ago. As someone like Sapphire or eVGA would have greatly expanded their market as the sole seller on the Mac side. As opposed to the myriad of companies competing for the gaming market on the Windows side.
This will make the Hackintosh community happy as these drivers are futzed with to get the high end PC counterparts working in OS X.
With high end nVidia and ATI cards available I suppose it will be a matter of weeks until nVidia unleashes the GTX300 series and ATI the HD5000 series. To be available for Mac the following year.
Well you are off a bit. The video card market is driven by gamers. Mac makes up such a small fraction of computers on the market it is really not worth it for companies to make these cards for mac. Really how many people own Mac Pros? Only one computer in their entire lineup benefits from a high end video card.
It isn't a gaming card, though. Maybe 1% of the people who buy this (1 person...) will do so solely for games, as those people are very few who purchased a Mac Pro simply for that use. (If I won the lottery, I wouldn't buy a fancy car, I would pay $10k for a pimped out Pro, and never ever use it to its fullest potential by playing NES/SNES emulation on it all day.....)
Being able to play badly coded ports is just a footnote to what actual professionals will do with this card. Cards like this aren't marketed towards gamers, unless you're the millionaire playboy-gamer who can afford to waste money. Again, it will be a valuable purchase towards the professional who will save time by doing his job faster by using this.
Well said! Gamers have no idea of computing requirements outside of WoW and CSS. Workstation cards, such as the Quadro, excel at CAD, CAM and CAE where gaming cards epic fail by a mile. Unfortunately workstation cards are still relatively expensive compared to gaming because of lower volumes; sad but true.
BTW, is the 285 the fastest (Mac) card? I thought the 295 was the overall fastest, mac or pc, period.
And...let's completely gloss over some of the more promising features coming soon in Snow Leopard...
I've always heard that workstation cards are fail for gaming, and gaming cards are fail for CAD and other workstation-type uses. What exactly makes them different, or better optimized?
Wrong. The 295 is a dual GPU, single card solution. Macs aren't SLI ready.
Dont bash the general public either for not realizing that graphic cards do more than make their games look pretty. Yes it may sound stupid but for the average joe they cant tell you the difference between a quadro and a standard graphics card. Just like how you dont know the difference between the 285 an 295
I highly doubt even if Apple did do a mini-tower, these cards would be available as options for them.
I don't understand this place: who is the idiot that flagged this story as negative?
This.
I've been here for a year and a half (only registered in September though)...I don't even know HOW to mark posts as positive or negative but I always try to imagine a drawback.
For this I imagined someone that purchased one of those 24" screens with DP only and is pissed the card wont have mini DP...don't forget how petty people get with the power of anonymity.
EDIT: Before you all shoot me down, it has just become completely obvious to me...you need to be logged in. I see the options now.
I think there are people that spend their days going around YouTube and blogs just giving things bad ratings..and it's all they do. The human mind is a complex thing
This is an excellent card for dual-booting gamers, however people should remember that in the past ATIs cards have performed significantly better with Apple's Core Image/Core Animation and OpenGL-based applications on OSX.
If you are planning to use the card as a poor mans Quadro for 3D apps, or for other DCC stuff and not specifically planning on gaming with this card I would definitely wait to see the reviews versus the 4870.
Despite its power, I would be very surprised if the GTX285 came anywhere close to the 4870 in terms of CoreImage/OpenGL apps on OSX.
If you are planning to use the card as a poor mans Quadro for 3D apps, or for other DCC stuff and not specifically planning on gaming with this card I would definitely wait to see the reviews versus the 4870.
Despite its power, I would be very surprised if the GTX285 came anywhere close to the 4870 in terms of CoreImage/OpenGL apps on OSX.
I don't understand this place: who is the idiot that flagged this story as negative?
That will be me as well....
I must said this.... Having the latest cards to run only on the latest Mac Pro... and with the 2008 variant I should add... What happened to the 2006/7 models... Are they all left out....? Extinct...?
This is pretty fantastic. A bit expensive, but well, that's to be expected now. I would very much like it to be compatible will all Mac Pros, though I'm content with the 8800GT for now. It would be fantastic to have an upgrade option like this further down the line (although it's unlikely the price will ever go down even when it's obsolete ).
).