I've been using MP since 07...and if I were to complain about one thing it would definitely be graphics and drivers.
1900 xt in my 06 mac pro was a nightmare...a faulty, loud vacuum cleaner, topped with terrible drivers. That got promptly replaced with 1st gen 8800gt, which worked fine up to 10.6.4, where the whole screen would progressively slow down to a complete freeze. I had to roll back to 10.6.3 and wait for the graphics update. I never had any physical problems with the card, but I've been reading about it overhearing and pretty much melting...To be honest, I freaked out (card wasn't cheap), plus it got discontinued, so I slapped on arctic cooling fan on it, which not only made the card silent but also brought down the temperatures by quite a bit.
Few weeks after I got a MP 5,1 and 5870, my 30" ACD started to flicker which after a while morphed into static - by sleeping the display (hot corners) both the static and flicker would go away. Initially I thought it was the 150W power brick that was failing since the 23" connected through MDP was working perfectly. The new power brick sort of fixed the problem, I didn't the the full-on static, but a rare flicker happened. Ever since 10.6.6 everything appears to work as it should (I also got the 23" running on the gt120, so the 30" as the 5870 by itself). Fingers crossed.
Why am I brining this up? I was browsing apple discussions forums few minutes ago, and noticed a post about static with 5870 and different brand monitors including older ACD. It looks like a major issue, and from what I've gathered it appears to be Apple driver problem. Again, up until 30 minutes ago I tought my monitor was failing, even with the new power brick, but it's just a bad driver.
I don't understand why Apple fails to see any priority in proper graphics drivers. With such high profits is really that difficult to dedicate a team (or maybe fire the old one, and make a new one) just to work on drivers and finally move pass open gl 2.1 (which, in 2011 is pretty sad)....
a.
1900 xt in my 06 mac pro was a nightmare...a faulty, loud vacuum cleaner, topped with terrible drivers. That got promptly replaced with 1st gen 8800gt, which worked fine up to 10.6.4, where the whole screen would progressively slow down to a complete freeze. I had to roll back to 10.6.3 and wait for the graphics update. I never had any physical problems with the card, but I've been reading about it overhearing and pretty much melting...To be honest, I freaked out (card wasn't cheap), plus it got discontinued, so I slapped on arctic cooling fan on it, which not only made the card silent but also brought down the temperatures by quite a bit.
Few weeks after I got a MP 5,1 and 5870, my 30" ACD started to flicker which after a while morphed into static - by sleeping the display (hot corners) both the static and flicker would go away. Initially I thought it was the 150W power brick that was failing since the 23" connected through MDP was working perfectly. The new power brick sort of fixed the problem, I didn't the the full-on static, but a rare flicker happened. Ever since 10.6.6 everything appears to work as it should (I also got the 23" running on the gt120, so the 30" as the 5870 by itself). Fingers crossed.
Why am I brining this up? I was browsing apple discussions forums few minutes ago, and noticed a post about static with 5870 and different brand monitors including older ACD. It looks like a major issue, and from what I've gathered it appears to be Apple driver problem. Again, up until 30 minutes ago I tought my monitor was failing, even with the new power brick, but it's just a bad driver.
I don't understand why Apple fails to see any priority in proper graphics drivers. With such high profits is really that difficult to dedicate a team (or maybe fire the old one, and make a new one) just to work on drivers and finally move pass open gl 2.1 (which, in 2011 is pretty sad)....
a.
