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Nvidia's thoughts on Geforce FX and nForce 2 on Macs

topicolo

topicolo

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jun 4, 2002
1,672
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Ottawa, ON
Penstarsys.com has an interview with Nvidia's Investor Relations guy about the future of Nvidia products on macs .

It's a really interesting read. Interesting tidbits include Nvidia's eagerness to port the GeforceFX to the mac and it's willingness to help apple improve pixel shader support with RAVE (this is one aspect of 3d that PCs are far superior). Another interesting bit of info is that "...NVIDIA would be very interested in addressing the chipset space in the Apple market" if the mac and pc architectures converged a bit more...
 
Re: Nvidia's thoughts on Geforce FX and nForce 2 on Macs

Originally posted by topicolo
Penstarsys.com has an interview with Nvidia's Investor Relations guy about the future of Nvidia products on macs .

It's a really interesting read. Interesting tidbits include Nvidia's eagerness to port the GeforceFX to the mac and it's willingness to help apple improve pixel shader support with RAVE (this is one aspect of 3d that PCs are far superior). Another interesting bit of info is that "...NVIDIA would be very interested in addressing the chipset space in the Apple market" if the mac and pc architectures converged a bit more...
Click to expand...

Hehe, now maybe they can produce a couple more to SHIP TO MAC USERS!!
GAH!
 
Arg,
i m not convinced of the nvidia cards anymore, hardware T&L, as well as pixel shader an of course AA, is much better , and faster on an ati card.

But as Nvidia got the biggest budget, i think they will nevertheless be able to implant their chips in our beloved macs, for the whole future...

If possible tend to buy ati cards, as, they are really worth it. Espeacally because in Os X anti aliased fonts are switched on. -> on mx cards, there is no hardware support for AA, so everything is done by the software, resulting in a significant loss of calculating power! ( i m not sure but i think the mx cards are called go in america. integrated chip.... so go cards are all the cars like 420, 440 etc. )
 
correct - ATi chips are better for OS X right now[/]. If nVidia gives apple massive discounts on chips of can supply alot more of them then ATi then i think i know where we will be heading.
But besides that, GeForce4 MX is a cut down verion of the GeForce4 or a reved up GeForce2.

In notebooks the nVidia cards are called Go. To know the difference between full cards (based on GF4-4600 etc) and MX cards (based on GF4MX) you look at the numbers. A card with four numbers is a full card. A card with thre numbers (like the PB12"/17") is a MX series card.

There you go. This is standard worldwide.
 
The Geforce FX is slightly faster than the 4Ti but it's still quite a bit slower than the Radeon 9700 or 9800, which is faster still.

I would think that Apple would switch over to the FX series as soon as possible, if it wants to keep nVidia in the boxes.

The nForce2 bridges would be great if they would integrate with the Motorola chips. The nForce2 has throughput and stability to be respected.
 
The GF FX is actually faster than both the 9700 and 9800 at most tasks when anisotropic filtering and antialiasing is turned off. Under conditions when they are turned on, the FX is significantly slower. Still, Nvidia's nForce 2 boards are currently considered to be the best motherboards you can possibly get for an AMD pc, basically smoking ATi's IGP.
 
man, i pick up a magazine a year ago and read that nividia has the best chip out there...pick one up 6 months ago and ATI as got the best one, now nividia now ATI ....its so back and forth. They both seem like pretty good chips and take turns being the best of whats out there.
 
Thanks for the post topicolo, it should be very interesting to note that Ibm will be producing the gpu for nvidea at the same plant that the 970 is being made. So the 2 most important chips for the mac will come out of fishkill. I would bet a 970 and fx powered mac this summer. Also its worth mentioning that as far as speed goes the fx 5800 has the highest framerates when compared to the 9700/9800.So what if it sounds like a vacume cleaner. either way some very powerful video cards are heading are way. ( that is if apple ever gets them made)
 
No prob. The mac does look like it's set to become a powerhouse computing platform again in the near future. I just hope all the new fans and heatsinks they put in the new macs aren't so loud that hardcore users start losing going deaf...
 
I can't imagine having the GeForceFX in a Dual 1 GHz+ Mac.
In a PC the FX makes alot of noise, and it even takes the PCI slot below it's own slot for cooling purposes.
Only gaming freeks who don't care about a noisy computer buy that grfx card in their P4's.
What bothers me is that there is still no indication when (read: IF) the Radeon 9700 let alone the 9800 will ever be a retail card for Macintosh. That "gap" is widening aswell.
 
One funky part about that article is the mention of changes needed in Rave. Rave is DEAD. It has been for a long time. OSX doesn't even support it.
 
I was wondering guys. Is it really worth getting an almost 400 dollar graphics card for you Mac? I mean, in a year it'll be doubtlessly obsolete or near obsolete? With the Playstation 3 coming in about a year or year an a half, doesn't it make sense to just invest in a console? Or do you all just like your Mac to do EVERYTHING? Is that what you're paying for?
 
Originally posted by Catfish_Man
One funky part about that article is the mention of changes needed in Rave. Rave is DEAD. It has been for a long time. OSX doesn't even support it.
Click to expand...

That's true. Coming to think of it, OS X ONLY supports OpenGL. Makes this article a little less believable.
 
JesseJames:

Is it really worth getting an almost 400 dollar graphics card for you Mac? I mean, in a year it'll be doubtlessly obsolete or near obsolete?
Click to expand...
Video cards don't get out of date quite as fast as that. My first high-end PC video card was a $330 GF2 GTS w/64mb in 10-2000, and it still plays games like Battlefield 1942 great (in a friend's computer). Almost 2.5 years since I bought it.
 
Originally posted by Catfish_Man
One funky part about that article is the mention of changes needed in Rave. Rave is DEAD. It has been for a long time. OSX doesn't even support it.
Click to expand...

There's still RAVE compatibility for Classic which ties in with OpenGL, but that's it.
 
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