[mr. natural]

I just bought a new Mac, a refurbished 1.42 DP, and also decided to upgrade to a Ge Force Titanium video card. I bought the card thru Apple's Store and the card arrived with a Ge Force Titanium (software) install disk. But when trying to install what I had assumed were a set of drivers to run the card I was informed by the Installer that "This model Macintosh is not compatible with this software." End of discussion and install process.

So I checked Apple's database and indeed this model G4 is compatible. The real problem seems to be that there are no Titanium drivers.

I opened the software package with Pacifist to check what the hell was on this disk and it has various ATI drivers and nVidia MX drivers, but no Titanium drivers.

I've also looked in my osX 2.6 system/library/extensions folder for any such drivers and there aren't any there already installed.

Seeing as Apple has been selling this card for $400 for a year, but apparently running it off of drivers optimized for MX cards, isn't this a case of fraudulent sales practice?

Apart from that dicey question, can anyone tell me how or where I am benefiting from this upgrade (?) card?

Thanks.

[Superchicken]

Call 1 800 MY APPLE, and I bet you get the right CD sent out right away.

[AssassyN]

You're in an unfortunate boat that I too just discovered today. You're not alone. My PowerMac that's on the way has the GeForce 4 Ti in it (I BTO'd it that way) and come to find out, it may have just been a waste of money...why? Because evidently there's NO actual GF4 Ti DRIVERS! Basically what people think has been going is that Apple's using the GF4MX drivers on the Ti, GREATLY hindering it's performance. People on the Apple forums are hot about this, and I'm going to be as well. It's EXTREMELY unfair that we pay this premium and can't even get DRIVERS for the card!

Just give this a read: Click Here

Most importantly, read the last post:

"So, let me get this straight.
Apple is selling a $400 video card along with a Titanium software (drivers) install disk that DOES NOT WORK?!

I just bought a Mirror Door 1.42 DP and forked over the $400 for the Ge Force Titanium card, but when attempting to install the software disk that came with the card I am informed that: "This model Macintosh is not compatible with this software." WTF?!!!!

Are we actually running this card off of MX drivers?

This is wrong and if Apple doesn't address this soon (i.e., with Panther) a case could well be made for fraudulent sales practices.

This is WRONG!"

When my PowerMac arrives, the performance I see in my games better be stellar, or else I'm gonna have a bit to say to Apple. It's completely ludacrious for them to release a product w/o fully supporting it with drivers.

[mr. natural]

I have indeed called Apple about this and they had little to say about it; i.e., It's nVidia's fault.

I told them that didn't cut it with me if they are sending a $400 product from their store with an Apple stamped "Ge Force Titanium" software install disk.

Also, over the past year how many of these cards has Apple sold. A lot I bet -- and there are folks bitching on their support discusions pages too. Yet they still don't have optimized drivers to go with this best of the best G4 card's they are selling?

This not only sucks but reeks of fraudulent sales practice.

I also insisted to speak with someone higher up the support food chain, a tech specialist, and once I got him on the phone I suggested they needed to escalate this issue; i.e., they better get on the ball with this for "Panther" or they could be rightly sued for fraudulent sales.

It works but not as it should. This is plainly wrong and they have had plenty of time to know it.

[Conscript]

this may be a stupid question, but does Nvidia just have detenator drivers for the mac as well? In the PC world, all Nvidia cards use the same drivers, from a mx200 to a GF5900 FXUltra...actually one of the selling points for Nvidia. Now not all cards can take advantage of all the features in those drivers, but no card is by any means crippled because of them...

[derekn]

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=161490

I'm pretty sure there are no GeForce 4 Ti specific drivers. It's just a bumped up GeForce 3 so uses those drivers. Like the Radeon 9000 just uses the existing 8500 drivers.

[striker100]

There's a whole page on Nvidias website about the benifits of the Geforce TI card:
http://www.nvidia.com/page/macintosh.html

[AssassyN]

I still find it fishy that DP 1.42 owners have discs telling them the GF4 Ti they just installed won't work on their system.

It's possible you guys are right about the unified driver issue, however I'm skeptical the drivers from a GF2, GF3, and escp. a GF4MX could propell a GF4 Ti to it's maximum ability.

[Axo1ot1]

It's not that the card doesn't work with your system. It's that your system doesn't need the software. The beauty of OS X, guys. I have that card in a dual 1 GHz and it screams. Haven't even cracked the seal on that silly installer CD.

[Hydra]

I have a BTO dual 800 w/ a GF3 running 10.2.6 and I have extensions for the GF2 MX and GF3 as well as the ATI rage Pro, Rage 128, Radeon 8500 and 9700 in my extension folder. I think the Nvidia drivers really give you unified drivers whereas the ATI drivers seems to be card specific. I don't think you are missing anything by not having a driver named fro your card. What features are you missing with the GF4 Ti? The biggest advantage the 4Ti has over the 3 is pure speed at higher resolutions anyway.
The GF4 Ti is really a new and improved version of the GF3. I think the GF4 has fatter pipelines and more of them but the programable nature of the card is very similar to the GF3 (think of it as a 400MHz G4 vs. a 1.25 GHz G4e). They do most of the same stuff but in a slightly different way and more clock-speed. Also the GF4MX is really a cut-rate GF2 with a better name. The GF3 still is a far better card despite the lower number compared to the 4MX. This also explains why the drivers installed on my system only include the GF2MX and GF3 - which are probably enough for the entire range of Nvidia products up till now.

-Jerry C

[power142]

I've been dealing with nvidia cards in Linux boxes for a long time now and as others have said, nvidia use a single unified driver for all cards from the TNT up to the latest and greatest. The driver itself enables the relevant capabilities when it recognizes a given chip.

I somehow doubt that Apple wrote the GF4MX driver all by themselves, ie without the help of nvidia, in which case, it's likely the same principle has been applied. It's convenient for all involved that nvidia works their driver like this. After all, a GF4MX is just a tweaked GF2MX and a GF4Ti is just a souped-up GF3... so if the GF3 worked better than a GF2, then we should be OK. One thing that has been demonstrated a number of times is that these cards are CPU limited....

[joe]

I'm not sure if Apple uses the unified drivers or not. But from my own experience it seems likely that they use them to some extent. I'm into gaming and have a 1.467GHz G4 Tower that originally came with an OEM GF2MX. I temporarily installed an OEM GF3 (from my Cube) before buying the OEM GF4Ti that's currently installed. Essentially my Tower has had every NVidia card Apple offered except for the new 8x AGP G5 cards (which don't fit). And at every step of the way there was a significant increase in performance without installing new drivers.

The GF2MX slows down after about 800*600, the GF3 drops off at about 1280*1024, and the GF4Ti makes it to 1600*1200 before slowing down - though it still benchmarks 90fps in Q3 HQ at that res (89.7fps actually). Also, the GF4Ti seems to drop off less sharply than the older NVidia cards. If my monitor refresh weren't so low at 1600*1200 (only 64Hz) I'd be happy to run at 1600*1200. Running that high helps to offset the lack of FSAA support in Q3. And 90fps seems more than fast enough to get smooth game play. OTOH ATI's recent approach with their 3D overides seems a better idea IMHO. This forces advanced features like FSAA to work even in older Mac games that don't support it - VERY cool! Not sure what 3D overides has to do with unified drivers but I wanted to mention it anyway since it's such an amazing feature ......joe

[Conscript]

both card companies nowadays use unified driver, with Nvidia using the detenators, and ATI the Catalysts. They support all geforce and radeon gpu's, respectively. And Apple has absolutely NOTHING to do with writing the drivers, it's 100% done by the card companies.

[mr. natural]

This has been very helpful, thanks for straightening me out on this.

I just wish Apple could have explained this when I called them. The alleged "tech specialist" I spoke with seemed uncertain about this issue, which only heightened my concern.

If nothing else they could post a notice in their Knowledge Base about this. It would also help if the install disk had a Read Me file that explained "This software is not needed on v.10.2.x. or above."

Getting a message that says: "This model Macintosh is not compatible with this software" is bound to set one off.

The Apple Discussions page about this also suggests that some folks are not getting what they expected as far as FPS goes for this type of card. As one fellow wrote: "How could a driver designed to handle a 32mb GeForce4MX possible get the most out of the ti card? I'm certainly not seeing the framerates to back that up, and it seems like others aren't, either." Especially when compared to a Ti on a PC set-up.

Why is this? Are the games not properly optimized for osX, or is it the other way around or some other issue. Having started this ball rolling I'm curious to hear further opinions.

Thanks.

[joe]

Originally posted by mr. natural:
Why is this? Are the games not properly optimized for osX, or is it the other way around or some other issue. Having started this ball rolling I'm curious to hear further opinions.

One problem is that we're more cpu bound on Mac compared to PC (GHz). Dual processors can help. Programs that are SMP enabled (symmetric multi-processor) get anywhere from 50-90% boost on a dual processor Mac vs single processor Mac. You can really see this with apps like Final Cut Pro, PhotoShop, and Quake3.

But the problem for gamers is that most Mac games aren't SMP enabled. Complaining to Mac game developers doesn't help because the game is usually ported from the PC code. And if the PC code doesn't support dual processors, it takes a major rewrite to add that feature in the Mac version. This amounts to huge development cost and delays in getting the Mac version out to market. All the while they get pressure from Mac gamers complaining that the PC version is already out - where's the Mac version? This usually means specific support for speedy hardware features like SMP and velocity engine don't make it to the game. Even if this makes perfect sense from a business perspective, it still sucks

On the bright side, clock speeds are really starting to pick up with the new G5s. A few months ago the fastest Mac was a dual 1.42GHz G4 Tower. But the new Towers start with a single 1.6GHz G5. For most Mac games which don't support SMP this entry level G5 Tower should seriously kick ass even compared to the former high end dual 1.42GHz G4 Tower. And for the precious few SMP Mac games out there, the new high end dual 2Ghz G5 Tower will kick ass! If the new G5s are out of reach, check out the available cpu and graphics card updates. CPU upgrades in particular have recently come down in price. Another idea to improve gaming performance is to ask for help with a config setup for your fav game in the game forums. There's usually someone with a similar hardware setup that's come up with an optimized config file for the game. regards....joe