Image quality between the two are going to be the same nowadays, but the ATI is far faster
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ATI Radeon HD 4870 Coming Soon For Older Mac Pros, Requires Unreleased OS X 10.5.7
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Image quality between the two are going to be the same nowadays, but the ATI is far faster
After the long fiasco that was the 8800 issue I don't trust Apple's word on video cards. We'll see out it shakes out this time, but if it turns out that the card works fine in Windows but not OS X I expect a repeat.
Hopefully we'll be lucky and the card will just work on 2006 Mac Pros.
Yeah lets be clear, when I said "it wont work" I mean that in the "because apple doesn't want it to" context not in the "there's a legitimate technical reason" context. There is (as always) absolutely no technical reason why it wouldn't work. Just the fact that apple doesn't want to invest in compatibility (since the EFI versions are different on the 06/07 Mac Pros)
BTW, it will work in Windows. I don't need to wait for it to come out to know that.
Its not quite just EFI and BIOS. GPU Companies need to write the drivers as well, and simply put, Macs are a much smaller market and thus do not get the same support from those GPU companies. Writing drivers is extremely hard too if they don't give the open source code. PC's (Windows) were designed to accept an infintie combination of hardware, but that's also why you see hardware and driver issues.
Not sure if its Maya cert., but this is something everyone can consider. If Grand Central and Snow Leopard do take advantage of the GPGPU capabilities of both Nvidia and ATI Gpus (and it should, per OpenCL), then the ATI card is the superior single GPU card right now.
The 4870 has 1.2 TERA flops of GPGPU power (over twice the 8800GT) so for number crunching and other GPGPU tasks, it's the best non-dual GPU out there.
The GT120 or whatever is nothing more than a rebranded 9500GT/8600GT. Nvidia fails again at marketing and card rebranding. The 4870 is easily 3-4x faster than the GT120, and is roughly 40-75% faster than the 8800GT (depends on resolution, newer games, etc.) and wil be rougly 60-120% faster than the 3870.
Simply put, the 4870 is the best all around card that Apple has received yet. It does suck though that the RV740 and RV790 are going to be released in early April. I guess that's the best way to confirm that ATI is coming out with new cards... when ATI adopts the last one.
Um, technically the 4870x2 does have 2gb of memory, but it really only uses 1GB. The other GPU in a crossfire configuration mirrors the other when it comes to memory, so it's not really a benefit.
And trust me, I used to have the 4870x2 in my rig, and I could not stand the crossfire driver issues. ATI really needs to improve their drivers.
It's not about BIOS or EFI. Those are only small technicalities. The only reason we don't get as many GPU's as PC users is because the lack of drivers. Writing drivers for GPU costs a lot. Apple ordering one extra GPU means couple million dollars getting paid to Nvidia or ATI for the graphic drivers. And how many people are gonna buy those high end GPU's? People don't buy Mac Pro's to play cutting edge games. Even if some do play games on their Mac Pro's, like I do, the number is so small, it's not worth to write drivers for every single high end GPU on the market. On top of that, you can already install all those high end GPU's on your Mac Pro (as long as your PSU supports the power usage of the card) and use them under Bootcamp, which many of the games work on exclusively. 4870 is enough for every game available for the Mac OS X right now.
You guys are completely wrong and full of ****. It has nothing to do with drivers, Linux and FreeBSD and Solaris have driver support from Nvidia for EVERY SINGLE MODERN VIDEO CARD but you think Mac OSX doesn't? The drivers are the same across Nvidias line of GPU's.
The problem IS EFI and lack of effort on Apples part. Apples drivers probably have a very limited number of hardware id's so their drivers will not attach to non-apple video cards. This is not a technical limitation as much as it's Apple intentionally gimping their drivers.
Also, Because EFI did not pass the video card hw information to the OS (since the card isn't efi aware) the driver probably wouldn't be loaded in the first place. That is why these cards all work fine in windows (provided you insert an apple video card so that the system boots and then load windows).
One thing I've noticed about the Mac community above all else is a constant need for people who are not very tech savvy to BS and spew misinformation and speculation all over the place.
*edit*
one other thing. "It's not about BIOS or EFI. Those are only small technicalities." <-- Designing special firmware and shipping a piece of hardware with special firmware (EFI Aware) which is different than what the rest of the computer world uses is MUCH more of a "technicality" than writing a piece of software that can be disseminated via the Internet (a driver)
Don't know where you got that Idea.. professional cards are expensive because their drivers are extensively tested and certified with professional OpenGL applications. Grand Central has absolutely nothing to do with this, nor does OpenCL.
As a software developer and relative geek, I agree. I don't think it is necessarily deliberate -- I think it is mostly just ignorance and misinformed readers not doing their own research and simply repeating what they hear in the Mac echo chamber.
Sorry but even end users can flash the firmware on some of the PC GPU's and boot their Mac with them, do you think it's a big technicality for Apple to do it? How do you think there are Hackintosh's sold with 8800GTX or Ultra?
Edit: If the card uses the same driver of a GPU which is already available for Apple, like an overclocked version of the same card, you can find a way to flash the firmware to make it run on your Mac Pro. But that doesn't mean you can do the same thing for a different generation card. Driver development for Windows is neck to neck with game development. ATI and Nvidia write their drivers for feature games and even release some hotfixes for single game titles alone. Since there's no game development going on for Mac in the first place both those companies wouldn't spend much money to develop and update drivers for Apple in the same manner they do for Win. That's why you wouldn't see an active driver development for Mac Pro's.
Edit: Found it on wiki "Because of the closed nature of the drivers, Nvidia video cards do not deliver adequate features on several platforms and architectures, such as FreeBSD on the x86-64 architecture and the other BSD operating systems on any architecture."
Yeah, I know I sound like a dick. The only time I ever post on the forums is when it's a Mac Pro video card discussion (or lack there of) or a ZFS discussion.
The things people say in those conversations are always so far off base it blows my mind.
On the bright side, with ATI's history of compatibility with the Mac Pro's I actually have a little bit of hope that I will get something better than the 8800gt in this thing.
It's relative, it is much more of a hassle to touch hardware than it is to provide software
Why would a Hackintosh require an EFI card? A Hackintosh would be on a computer with a bios...
Yes, Apple's drivers don't support a lot of cards because Apple doesn't want them to, not because they actually have to write new drivers. Unless you count adding a few hardware ids as new drivers.
Yeah, There's no 64bit version of Nvidia's driver for FreeBSD, It's a shame too. What exactly do you think that has to do with what we're talking about though? You should quit while you're ahead..er, less behind.
So you are saying it's quite easy to write drivers for GTX285 which support all the features of its Win drivers, by easy I mean doesn't cost a lot of manhours and money? Easier than taking the card from Nvidia, and simply writing an EFI so OSX boots with it?
Edit: Actually even the drivers available for Apple's own GPU's don't have all the features of their Win counterparts. Even the most basic features like anti aliasing and texture filtering are not the same.
It's highly relevant. Some drivers for Linux don't even support 3D acceleration, only 2D. Writing a basic driver is not the same as writing a full featured driver which gives great performance for every game title out there.
so i guess this won't work with the 1st gen mac pros, but glad to see it will work with last year's mac pro at least
Okay. This is the last time I'm going to respond to you, The more you talk the more you show the lack of depth in to what you're talking about. I'm just going to explain a few general things.
Nvidia supports the above mentioned projects (Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris) for Free. They write and maintain these 3d accelerated drivers for ->Free Operating Systems!<- So there is no reason what so ever for Apple to be in a worse position compared to ->Free OS's that can't give nvidia money<- (excluding Sun)
Next. You are aware that Apple doesn't write these drivers right? They may write a portion and have something to do with it but Nvidia are the only ones who have access to Nvidia's intellectual property in respect to their GPU's and because of that only they can write functional drivers.
Which brings me to my next point..
The reason systems like Linux have ****** 3d support is not because it's "hard", it's because these pieces of hardware have no documentation and their drivers are closed source and proprietary. So any drivers that are written by anyone other than Nvidia themselves have to be reverse engineered.
Which brings me to my last point..
I'm not trying to say that Apple isn't also being very cheap in regard to keeping their drivers up to date..I'm sure they are. Apple are cheap in a lot of ways.
Given that up to know ATI has gotten their asses kicked by nvidia regarding most GPGPU apps out there. I fail to see how you can claim ATI as having the best GPGPU "out there."
Good numbers on paper mean little if your silicon can not delivered the quoted peak performance in most cases.
Comparing the performance of some of our codes running on CUDA on a GT200 GPU vs. the same app on Brooks (or even CAL/CTM) on a RV770, we have seen well the nvidia parts perform over 30% speed differential in the best cases for the ATI. The common cases are far far worse, which was quite eye opening. Esp. since I really like ATI's current architecture...
If anything, the complete lack of GT200 on the apple lineup is a tad disappointing for some of us doing actual GPGPU work. Waiting for OpenCL if it arrives is not a good solution for those apps which are already using CUDA for example.
Besides, if Apple is going to be using GPU acceleration pervasively. It seems their approach regarding multi-GPU setups is retarded to say the least.
This update is underwhelming in most aspects. For such a "graphics-oriented" company, Apple's offerings in the GPU arena are pathetic at best.
I ordered my Radeon 4870 tonight here in The Netherlands.
315 Euro's and a 5-7 week wait. Also shows a 10.5.7 requirement.
Funny to see the US store doesn't even show a price, let alone a wait period nor the 10.5.7 requirement.
(Followed a link to it from barefeats.com)
I get this card to upgrade my 8800GT in my Early 2008.
315 Euro's and a 5-7 week wait. Also shows a 10.5.7 requirement.
Funny to see the US store doesn't even show a price, let alone a wait period nor the 10.5.7 requirement.
(Followed a link to it from barefeats.com)
I get this card to upgrade my 8800GT in my Early 2008.
No doubt that RIGHT NOW, because Nvidia has pushed all its effort to GPGPU lately (and ignoring GPUs pretty much), CUDA has made their cards better off, but I see nothing wrong with wanting OpenCL since it will utilize both sides and ATI will have the higher throughput in all likelihood of those cards offered when things get rolling (soon enough).
Also, not offering the GTX series is also likely due to power consumption issues, as well as using ATI as a bargaining chip against Nvidia being the sole provider
Seems like we are saying the same thing. You say writing EFI is hard, I say writing and maintaining drivers is hard. But I think that's because my lack of knowledge about how much of device info goes into EFI and how much goes into the software driver. I thought EFI is simply there to tell the OS it's ok to boot with this device and software driver handles all the features of the device. But it seems like I'm wrong on that.
If you configure the ATI card the shipping still stays at 4-6 days, so 10.5.7 must be imminent, as well as availability. Wouldn't ya think? Should we hope?
Now if only I had money to upgrade, the 4870 sounds like a nice addition to my 08 MP.
Now if only I had money to upgrade, the 4870 sounds like a nice addition to my 08 MP.
You sure about power consumption? GTX280 doesn't consume much more power than 4870. Not to mention Mac Pro's come with 1060 watt PSU which is generous enough.
That's only for new Mac Pro, which will presumably come with a special version of 10.5.6 as always, which include 4870 drivers. But for the early 2008 upgrades 10.5.7 will be required.
I have a first-gen '06/07 Mac Pro, with the lousy Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT. Both Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4 are often slow and difficult dealing with it - can someone recommend me a good GPU upgrade?
System Specs -
Mac Pro - Clovertown 8 cores (1st gen) @ 3.0 Ghz
8 GB RAM
1.5 TB software RAID storage (JBOD).
System Specs -
Mac Pro - Clovertown 8 cores (1st gen) @ 3.0 Ghz
8 GB RAM
1.5 TB software RAID storage (JBOD).