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Why ATI only?
- Thread starter sash
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Quite a price, almost 1/3 the price of the machine... My MP 8-cores costs 2888 without VAT.
Good news. Really want that card for the CUDA support in CS5. Better price than the 4800 so I'm not complaining.
Best,
ATF
I can't point to anything "official" but I sense a little uncomfortableness between Apple and Nvidia.
I imagine that the ROHS thing has something to do with it.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2377
Read that carefully, Apple comes very close to saying that Nvidia lied to them about extent of thermal failures under G92 and it's brethren. Not often that Apple chokes up a 4 year warranty based on a 3rd party's inability to get their sxxt together. Imagine costs for replacing logic boards on a few thousand MBPs.
Basically, the 8800 cards based on G92 are now dropping like flies, as were the 8600 cards in that post. The lead free solder isn't nearly as pliable/forgiving as the old deadly stuff. Hence the multi-hundred post threads on baking these cards to bring them back to life.
I would also point to the fact that Nvidia released their own Mac drivers and told customers to skip the 10.6.4 update from Apple due to poor performance.
When Nvidia first released the drivers, there was Fermi support. Perhaps not an "accidental" leak? Those very drivers, less the crucial NV100HAL fermi kext, are now rolled into the upcoming Snow Leopard Graphics update.
I don't think ATI has ever done something like that. Almost feels like Nvidia is forcing Apple's hand, like they feel their GPUs are being hampered by APple's poor driver support.
And to think just a few years back, we got the GeForce 3 BEFORE the WIndows world. The good old days.
I imagine that the ROHS thing has something to do with it.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2377
Read that carefully, Apple comes very close to saying that Nvidia lied to them about extent of thermal failures under G92 and it's brethren. Not often that Apple chokes up a 4 year warranty based on a 3rd party's inability to get their sxxt together. Imagine costs for replacing logic boards on a few thousand MBPs.
Basically, the 8800 cards based on G92 are now dropping like flies, as were the 8600 cards in that post. The lead free solder isn't nearly as pliable/forgiving as the old deadly stuff. Hence the multi-hundred post threads on baking these cards to bring them back to life.
I would also point to the fact that Nvidia released their own Mac drivers and told customers to skip the 10.6.4 update from Apple due to poor performance.
When Nvidia first released the drivers, there was Fermi support. Perhaps not an "accidental" leak? Those very drivers, less the crucial NV100HAL fermi kext, are now rolled into the upcoming Snow Leopard Graphics update.
I don't think ATI has ever done something like that. Almost feels like Nvidia is forcing Apple's hand, like they feel their GPUs are being hampered by APple's poor driver support.
And to think just a few years back, we got the GeForce 3 BEFORE the WIndows world. The good old days.
Also, I'd say a major reason for dropping NVidia off BTO is that the NVidia drivers suck, and Apple doesn't want to sell a machine that's basically broken out of the box.
NVidia will have Fermi Mac cards as aftermarket, likely once the driver issues get cleared up.
(Also, regarding Rominator's post above, NVidia handles all of the Mac drivers now, from what I understand NVidia themselves screwed up the drivers, not Apple, but everyone is stuck to Apple's release schedule with OS X updates. The drivers NVidia themselves released had the exact same issues.)
NVidia will have Fermi Mac cards as aftermarket, likely once the driver issues get cleared up.
(Also, regarding Rominator's post above, NVidia handles all of the Mac drivers now, from what I understand NVidia themselves screwed up the drivers, not Apple, but everyone is stuck to Apple's release schedule with OS X updates. The drivers NVidia themselves released had the exact same issues.)
I think at the moment we mostly all could be glad that apple has chosen ATI over NVIDIA. All of the last Nvidia Drivers suck at performance.
Even the older ATI 3870 outperformed at mac games (Call of Duty 4 for example) the Nvidia 285. Not that the Nvidia was slower - but the driver was quite bad.
So - i am a happy ATI purchaser
Even the older ATI 3870 outperformed at mac games (Call of Duty 4 for example) the Nvidia 285. Not that the Nvidia was slower - but the driver was quite bad.
So - i am a happy ATI purchaser
Doesn't apple write the drivers for the video cards? If so they only have themselves to blame.
This is a bit of a conspiracy theory, but I think Apple doesn't want Final Cut editors to switch to Premiere Pro CS5 and its CUDA accelerated timeline.
http://nofilmschool.com/2010/07/apple-snubs-adobe-again-with-new-mac-pros/
http://nofilmschool.com/2010/07/apple-snubs-adobe-again-with-new-mac-pros/
Nvidia has historically been very adverse to releasing byte code for their drivers to any of their manufacturing partners. It is very likely that they develop the driver.
My GTX 285 has been no end of trouble. Even with the "Snow Leopard Graphics Driver Update" that is currently in developer seeding, I still get kernel panics, where I do not with an ATI card installed. It's just one or two panics a week now, rather than the one or two a DAY that I was getting under 10.6.3.
I won't be purchasing another Nvidia card for use in a Mac if I have any say in it.
Because Nvidia sucks, period. Just my anecdotal experience, but, every Nvidia card I've had -- both PC and Mac -- has failed within 18 months of purchase, and some much quicker. In my two 2008 Mac Pros, both Nvidia cards failed within six months of purchase. Switched to ATI, no problems.
As of a few years ago, from what I heard, NVidia took them over.
ATI has been writing their Mac drivers for much longer.