Still, not necessarily.
High-end consumer. ATI has their own workstation line: FirePro.
Which, by the looks of it, is crap.
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The 2009 (Gainestown) Mac Pro: Everything We Know
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Still, not necessarily.
High-end consumer. ATI has their own workstation line: FirePro.
Which, by the looks of it, is crap.
Not my standards, per se, but comparing their highest-end card to the nVidia Quadro FX 5800.
Oh, I have no idea.
I was just going spec for spec. Having benchmarks would be nice; I'd like to compare the FirePro and Quadro lines to see why Apple has gone with the Quadro line for the past...
How long has it been now? Since October 2005.
Oh, I have no idea.
Having benchmarks would be nice; I'd like to compare the FirePro and Quadro lines to see why Apple has gone with the Quadro line for the past...
How long has it been now? Since October 2005.
The 8800GT is a better card than the 3870 before you add OSX to the mix. Without performance numbers, you have no idea whatsoever. The 4870 and the GTX 260 are neck and neck despite the 260 having 384MB more memory.
Nice; thanks.
Looks like it edges out the 5600 in SPEC ViewPerf, GPGPU, and gaming, even.
I wonder what the discrepancy between the V8700 and the Quadro 5800 are...
Not sure what you mean by "discrepancy". Could you explain?
BTW, newegg:
V8700 (1GB)
Quadro FX 5800 (4GB)
The FirePro V8700 looks like a winner for ATI, especially given the street prices available.
Not sure what you mean by "discrepancy". Could you explain?
I mean in performance, as the 5800 wasn't in those tests.
Yow, price. Still, the 5800 seems to be the better candidate.
What, you didn't think that Apple would want more than seven people to be able to afford the highest-performance card, did you?
The new Mac Pro should have the ATI FirePRo V8700 instead of Nvidia Quadro FX 5600 as BTO in my opinion.
I noticed the lack of a comparison to the 5800 myself. Hmm...
Going on a tight budget, the V8700 shines. Though I expect the 5800 to edge it on benchmarks. But it won't be worth it for 3x+ the $$$ for some. Possibly becoming a greater concern, given the current economy.
I've noticed at my company, and others we work with, are suspending what they can, and reducing the rest (equipment purchases). Given this attitude, and I would think it will become common quickly, the V8700 is situated quite nicely I think in the cost/performance ratio.
When is the new Mac Pro stated to debut? Rough guesses? I heard Tuesday (tomorrow). Can anyone confirm this? Some are saying at WWDC in June. This seems quite a ways away. Also, should we expect to see the current 30" Displays removed from the online store prior to seeing a 30" or will they be seemingly sold side by side such as the 15" MBP (redesigned) and 17" MBP (older body-style) were a few months ago?
It won't be tomorrow.
The CPU's aren't available yet. Intel announced the release March 29, and available the next day. Publicly and to vendors.
Figure 6 - 8 weeks for system vendors to get a machine ready, including Apple, and begin shipping. So very late May or beginning of June. Hence the speculation of a WWDC announcement and release of the MP.
It won't be tomorrow.
The CPU's aren't available yet. Intel announced the release March 29, and available the next day. Publicly and to vendors.
Figure 6 - 8 weeks for system vendors to get a machine ready, including Apple, and begin shipping. So very late May or beginning of June. Hence the speculation of a WWDC announcement and release of the MP.
Take this with as much salt as you want, but the Mac Pro's just 30 mins ago went into the Apple Australia Referb Box, which has not happened before.
tylerk36... you posted to a link suggesting that hybrid SLI would be supported in 10.5.6. The author speculates that "One could now seriously think of a Mac Pro and NVidia SLI fully supported and managed by Snow Leopard." This is just speculation.
It's important to keep in mind that Hybrid SLI support for embedded GPU's does not automatically imply SLI support for multiple discrete GPU's. NVIDIA markets Hybrid SLI as a way of pushing it's chipset business while currently licensing discrete SLI to mainboard manufacturers. Since the Mac Pro will not have an embedded GPU or an Nvidia chipset, the support for Hybrid SLI is of little direct consequence to Mac Pro users.
While Apple could license discrete SLI for it's main-boards in the Mac Pro, I'm not sure there is a lot to be gained by it. I suppose OpenCL could benefit significantly, however, gaming on the Mac leaves a lot to be desired... SLI support is the least of the problems. In fact, ask anyone that's owned an SLI gaming rig running Windows and they will likely say they would never do it again. That's certainly how I feel. Nvidia's drivers are flaky as hell and when you add SLI to the mix, it's a disaster.
OSX users should not be too eager to inherit the mess that graphics has become on the Windows platform. Graphics drivers and API's have been nothing but headaches for Microsoft and users of Windows. I wouldn't wish any of it on OSX users and it's in large part why I'm defecting from Windows. Stability is king and Apple tightly controlling all aspects of the OS and system are the only way's to maintain that. Be careful what you wish for.
It's important to keep in mind that Hybrid SLI support for embedded GPU's does not automatically imply SLI support for multiple discrete GPU's. NVIDIA markets Hybrid SLI as a way of pushing it's chipset business while currently licensing discrete SLI to mainboard manufacturers. Since the Mac Pro will not have an embedded GPU or an Nvidia chipset, the support for Hybrid SLI is of little direct consequence to Mac Pro users.
While Apple could license discrete SLI for it's main-boards in the Mac Pro, I'm not sure there is a lot to be gained by it. I suppose OpenCL could benefit significantly, however, gaming on the Mac leaves a lot to be desired... SLI support is the least of the problems. In fact, ask anyone that's owned an SLI gaming rig running Windows and they will likely say they would never do it again. That's certainly how I feel. Nvidia's drivers are flaky as hell and when you add SLI to the mix, it's a disaster.
OSX users should not be too eager to inherit the mess that graphics has become on the Windows platform. Graphics drivers and API's have been nothing but headaches for Microsoft and users of Windows. I wouldn't wish any of it on OSX users and it's in large part why I'm defecting from Windows. Stability is king and Apple tightly controlling all aspects of the OS and system are the only way's to maintain that. Be careful what you wish for.
I'd be fine with a GTX 260, though if Apple offers something faster(not Quadro mind you) I'll be more than tempted to buy the fastest card possible. It will be faster than my 8600M and X800XT combined and faster than my girlfriend's 8800GT. If I had the money, I'd buy a faster card just to use in Windows like people have been doing. *sends Terragen and Vue files to his gf to render on her shiny 4GHz Core i7 that he built*.
I noticed the lack of a comparison to the 5800 myself. Hmm...
Going on a tight budget, the V8700 shines. Though I expect the 5800 to edge it on benchmarks. But it won't be worth it for 3x+ the $$$ for some. Possibly becoming a greater concern, given the current economy.
I've noticed at my company, and others we work with, are suspending what they can, and reducing the rest (equipment purchases). Given this attitude, and I would think it will become common quickly, the V8700 is situated quite nicely I think in the cost/performance ratio.
Even the lower cards are more than enough for smooth viewport performance on complex models for many users. A lot of content creation is being done on the consumer cards too as autodesk and others move stuff to D3D. I think it is more of a 3D sound and having a pro card on the line up than offering "a solution" to CAD/CAM users.
I'd laugh if it was the GTS 250, which is rumored to be a restickered 8800GT (It's the Inq, so that's probably BS). But, if that's true and Apple uses it, not only will I laugh - I'll stab. A lot.
It's not just the Inquierer who is saying that. It's rather a restickered 9800GTX+ which is just a die shrunk overclocked 8800GTS 512. At least it has a theoretical 13% performance game over the 8800GTS 512 based on the FLOPS. If you clocked the 8800 to the same rate, you might get the same result.
A GTS 250 would make me cry, it's not the new chip
Sorry chart doesnt quite line up.
You still don't know how to quote...
And no, games don't run in SLI in OS X.
Who's the idiot that told you Tuesday? It's impossible.
WWDC.
For the record, I want to state that this thread cracks me up every time I see it in the topic list.
Shouldn't it be titled "Everything we think we know" or "everything we speculate"?
Shouldn't it be titled "Everything we think we know" or "everything we speculate"?
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