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ATI shows Radeon X800 on Power Mac G5
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Addicted to MacNN
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Graphics card and chip maker ATI Technologies Inc. is one of dozens of vendors exhibiting at the Digital Life expo happening in New York City this week, and the company has quietly unveiled a new Mac-compatible graphics card that can drive Apple's 30-inch Cinema Display. Although ATI has not formally announced the card, it is being shown on a Power Mac G5 equipped with both a 30-inch display and an older 23-inch Cinema Display. This is the first card ATI has produced that can drive the massive 30-inch display, which up to now has depended on Nvidia's GeForce 6800 Ultra card -- available only as a build-to-order option with Power Mac G5s.
Sources at ATI confirmed with MacCentral that the card is based on ATI's Radeon X800 graphics chip -- the company's current high-end graphics hardware that has, to this point, not been available on the Macintosh. The card is equipped 256MB of VRAM, and features one dual-link Digital Visual Interface (DVI) connection capable of driving the 30-inch Cinema Display. An Apple Display Connector (ADC) interface is also provided. The system was shown running an older 23-inch Cinema HD Display side-by-side with the 30-inch model.
Details remain scant on the card's planned availability or price, but a placard above the display in ATI's booth describe it as "Next generation technology for Apple's Power Mac G5," and confirm that it has native support for the 30-inch display. What's more, the card occupies a single slot -- Nvidia's GeForce 6800 Ultra card occupies two slots because of its large cooling assembly
http://www.macworld.com/news/2004/10/14/ati/index.php
ATi > Nvidia 
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Just read about it in the game forum.
Yummers.
I'm just glad it has an ADC port! My ADC CRT—you know, "whoops, screw you guys" monitor from Apple—will still have some when I upgrade to a G5 (with X800!11!).
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"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
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Mac Elite
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my bro has the ati x800 for windoze, MAN THAT CARD IS SWEET. i would def. take that over the 6800. but since its so expensive i guess i'm stuck with my crappy 9600xt ^^ 
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http://www.mafia-designs.com
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Originally posted by Mafia:
my bro has the ati x800 for windoze, MAN THAT CARD IS SWEET. i would def. take that over the 6800. but since its so expensive i guess i'm stuck with my crappy 9600xt ^^
The GeForce 6800 is faster than the X800 in a majority of benchmarks. Also, while currently similar in speed, the X800 represents the end of the line for ATI's recent technology (as far as it can be pushed) while the GeForce 6800 is based on new technology from nVIDIA that will be able to scale for a good while down the road.
Also nVIDIA's Mac OS X drivers are more solid than ATI's.
blakespot
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Originally posted by Mafia:
my bro has the ati x800 for windoze, MAN THAT CARD IS SWEET. i would def. take that over the 6800. but since its so expensive i guess i'm stuck with my crappy 9600xt ^^
yeah -- i have the x800 PE card. FAF!
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Originally posted by blakespot:
Also nVIDIA's Mac OS X drivers are more solid than ATI's.
blakespot
That is true, does happen under every platform.
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"That plane's dustin' crops where there ain't no crops."
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Wait, I wonder if it will be an X800 XT? That and the 6800 Ultra are roughly on par. I've seen the X800 take some benchmarks, and I've seen the 6800 take others, with the 6800 taking a few more than the X800. But they're quite close—and they're both graphical beasts; anyone would be happy with either.
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Originally posted by blakespot:
The GeForce 6800 is faster than the X800 in a majority of benchmarks. Also, while currently similar in speed, the X800 represents the end of the line for ATI's recent technology (as far as it can be pushed) while the GeForce 6800 is based on new technology from nVIDIA that will be able to scale for a good while down the road.
Also nVIDIA's Mac OS X drivers are more solid than ATI's.
blakespot
all tru, but i don't like the idea of 2 pci slots being taken up for one. two i've always had a better experience with ati(well i mean i had problems with my nvidia card and i havne't had problems with my ati card) and i have seen the x800 in action i haven't seen the 6800 i'd have to use both before i made a decision. either way it could be a while 
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http://www.mafia-designs.com
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My ATI cards have been solid for what I do. The GeForce FX 5200 always seems to be having driver issues of late.
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I wonder if it'll be possible to hack this card for use on AGP 4x ala the radeon 9600 
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Aloha
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Mac Elite
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Originally posted by Link:
I wonder if it'll be possible to hack this card for use on AGP 4x ala the radeon 9600
Well, based on the fact that the 9800 Pro Mac Special Edition was an AGP Pro card, then the X800 at Digital Life was probably an AGP Pro card as well, so no, it wouldn't fit in a G4 in that case.
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Which of the two cards ATI x800 or nVIDEA 6800 would be better suited to FinalCut Pro4 and Motion?
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As far as Final Cut Pro HD... either would be fine, unless you need two 30" displays at once. 
Motion would be harder to settle on: odds are that the difference between the two wouldn't be enough for you to worry about.
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 24-inch iMac Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz
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i would say the x800 would be better for motion considering its constantly using the vram to real time render.
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Originally posted by blakespot:
Also nVIDIA's Mac OS X drivers are more solid than ATI's.
this assertion is based on what exactly?
every problem that seems to be cropping up under OS X and graphics seems to be nVidia related. Whether it was command and conquer generals running at 1fps in 10.3.4 and earlier; or Homeworld 2 running at 1fps on the iMac G5s; ATI's hardware shading running faster on OS X in Halo than nVidias on nVidia hardware!
In fact, in my experience, the nVidia drivers on OS X royally suck!
-- james
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Originally posted by jamesa:
In fact, in my experience, the nVidia drivers on OS X royally suck!
-- james
i had never used a nvidia for mac so i wasn't sure. but i knew they sucked for windows so i didn't really understand how they would be so much better for os x.
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Originally posted by Mafia:
i had never used a nvidia for mac so i wasn't sure. but i knew they sucked for windows so i didn't really understand how they would be so much better for os x.
There are really no problems with either on OSX. I've had both the GeForce 4 Ti and the 9800XT and both were great driver-wise.
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on the PC side the 6800 is a better card for everything openGL thanks to nvidias superior drivers. Theoretically it should perform a lot better than the x800 since macs use only opengl. However at the moment the 6800 doesn't seem to have as much of a lead as it should over the 9800xt, the only good answer for this being bad drivers. I'm sure once nvidia releases a couple of driver revisions things should improve for the 6800. However with nvidias poor mac support, who knows when that might happen. Even though ATI cards are not quite as good at openGl then their nvidia counterparts their mac support is a lot better.
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Nvidia 6800 drivers on the Mac are effectively all but in "beta" according to a friend of mine who works at Nvidia... there is a lot of potential yet to be opened up with X.4 in '05...
As for the X800, I only wish ATI didn't sleep at the wheel so that I had the choice of getting one of those with my Mac... but then it took Nvidia 6 months after the PC version to start shipping out Mac cards.. we're always going to be relegated to PC leftovers unfortunately.
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