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Will the ATI 48xx series make its way to the mac pro
- Thread starter hugodrax
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That would be fine, my 1900XT is still providing good performance but I would go for it in 09 for sure.
It isn't the same as the 38xx. There's more than double the number of shaders, they've tweaked the ROPs, more than doubled the number of texture units, optimized the memory controller, and more. There's a reason the 4850 can outrun the 3870 easily, and the 3870x2 more than half the time, making the 8800 GT look slow by comparison. . .
My guess is there'll probably be some sort of low-end version for the Mac, but no 4870. Kind of like how they had the 2600 XT but never the 2900 in the iMacs.
It's too bad. I don't really even get why they bothered with the 3870 when the 4870 is over twice as fast.... but they did.
My guess is there'll probably be some sort of low-end version for the Mac, but no 4870. Kind of like how they had the 2600 XT but never the 2900 in the iMacs.
It's too bad. I don't really even get why they bothered with the 3870 when the 4870 is over twice as fast.... but they did.
I don't think so. The 2900 was doing terribly on the PC side, and they could have unloaded that... the 3870 didn't do terribly well either, but they didn't port that until now.
The 4870 seems like the perfect 1900XT replacement. And with the new OpenCL having that extra power is nice. Who knows what is coming down the pike once OpenCL is released, I can see some cool virtual synth applications using the GPU as a DSP.
I'm with you on this one. The 1900XT is fast enough for most stuff I throw at it and the new 8800GT and the new ATI just don't seem enough of an upgrade to warrant the cash.
Well... on the PC side the 4870 is probably 3x faster than the 1900... at least. Actually probably 4 or 5 times faster, since it's about twice as fast as the 8800 GT.
I don't know how that makes it the "perfect upgrade" from the 1900, but sure.
It's too bad. It seems like maybe after the switch to Intel ATI stopped making cards frequently for the Mac. Before we had
Rage II/Rage IIc/Rage Pro/PowerVR Turbo--->
Rage 128/Orion/Nexus/Rage 128 Pro--->
Radeon/Radeon 7000--->
Radeon 7500/8500--->
Radeon 9000 Pro/9200/9600/9700-->
9800XT-->
Radeon X800XT--->
Radeon 1900... then they skipped like two (slow) generations, and there's only one card you can buy.
That kind of sucks.
I don't know how that makes it the "perfect upgrade" from the 1900, but sure.
It's too bad. It seems like maybe after the switch to Intel ATI stopped making cards frequently for the Mac. Before we had
Rage II/Rage IIc/Rage Pro/PowerVR Turbo--->
Rage 128/Orion/Nexus/Rage 128 Pro--->
Radeon/Radeon 7000--->
Radeon 7500/8500--->
Radeon 9000 Pro/9200/9600/9700-->
9800XT-->
Radeon X800XT--->
Radeon 1900... then they skipped like two (slow) generations, and there's only one card you can buy.
That kind of sucks.
