Reason for delay of iMac with ATI 4850

[gasport]

I ordered the iMac 3.06 with the ATI 4850 option. When I saw the shipping date move out to April, I called Apple about it. The person told me it was because of the high volume of orders. This did not sound right so I asked if I switched to the NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 would I get it sooner. She said probably not. We all know that is incorrect as I did a configuration with the NVIDIA card and the delivery date was the 7th of March to the 10th. I was sure her explanation of the delay is totally incorrect and that it is not hardware supply related.

I did see some speculation that it was actually related to OSX 10.5 and the need to have the OS recognize the ATI 4800 chip series. If this is true, then shipment of the iMac with the ATI 4850 will totally depend on the release of 10.5.7. One can assume that will be in mid April the given shipping date for the iMac configured with the ATI 4850.

 

[FoxHoundADAM]

I ordered the iMac 3.06 with the ATI 4850 option. When I saw the shipping date move out to April, I called Apple about it. The person told me it was because of the high volume of orders. This did not sound right so I asked if I switched to the NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 would I get it sooner. She said probably not. We all know that is incorrect as I did a configuration with the NVIDIA card and the delivery date was the 7th of March to the 10th. I was sure her explanation of the delay is totally incorrect and that it is not hardware supply related.

I did see some speculation that it was actually related to OSX 10.5 and the need to have the OS recognize the ATI 4800 chip series. If this is true, then shipment of the iMac with the ATI 4850 will totally depend on the release of 10.5.7. One can assume that will be in mid April the given shipping date for the iMac configured with the ATI 4850.

Yes apperently it has something to do with the fact that the ATI 4800 chips aren't recognized by OSX 10.5. The needed code will be updated at the end of March, hence the 4 week delay.

 

[cathul]

That's correct. Drivers for the ATI 48x0 based cards are included in the developers seed of 10.5.7 as pointed out by the hackintosh community.
They already put together packages to get these cards run in hackintoshes.

 

[jpcannon]

Ordering from Singapore!

I ordered my new iMac on 3rd march with the ATI card and yesterday they told me it'll take another 3-4 weeks.