[Commodus]

Anandtech's article

In short: it looks like it'll be considerably faster than the FX 5200 (for one, you can play Doom 3 and expect to get >30 FPS at a decent resolution) and sometimes is closer to the performance of a current mid-range card, but it's not an absolute miracle.

I would also take the pricing with a grain of salt, since Apple's design won't be an add-on card sold seperately.

[iPoder]

It is a PCI express card, unfortunately.

Unless Apple is willing to make a significant mobo modification (AGP to PCI-E), it is unlikely to happen, IMO.

[P]

Just thought the same thing, iPodder. Either nVidia makes an AGP version of it or Apple goes PCIe. The second will happen, but not soon - PCIe is not in the current chipset revision, and that revision is only a year or so old (came with the G5 Powermacs). The first could of course appear, but I think not - for two reasons:

* The 5500 was recently launched as an AGP part (a minor revision of the 5200, essentially a new stepping). Why do that if there is a 6x00 AGP around the corner?

* The name. The chip is 6200, not 6300 - even with ATi calling their crippled 9600 the X300. For those who didn't know, the 5300 is the PCIe version of the 5200. Logically, if there was an AGP version it would be the 6200 and the PCIe the 6300.

Oh well. For those who wonder, the 6200 is a Geforce 6-class chip, but cut down to 4x1 pipelines, no z-buffer or texture compression in the memory interface and of course clocked down a bit. A lot like the 5200, only that chip has 2x2 pipes and the Geforce 5-class GPU. Tests show that it can run anything in 800*600 and much in 1024*768 but chokes on higher resolutions, due to the lack of any compression in the memory interface.

[iPoder]

Very good insight on the nVidia chip technologies in the P's message above.

It will take a couple years before whole industry switches from AGP to PCI-E, just as it was from PCI to AGP.

As long as it can get its hand on AGP graphic chips, there is little incentive for Apple to redesign the mother board to accommodate PCI-E chipset.

Let's not get our hope up on this.

[Commodus]

Just remember that the iMac probably won't see a revision for at least 5 months. I could see Apple having a PCIe mainboard in time for the next iMac revision, presumably just after the PowerMac gets its own.

[P]

Apple uses one chipset that usually first surfaces in the Powermacs and is then moved across to the other lines - of course it was designed with portables in mind from the beginning as well, but that is the way it flows. Adding Hypertransport, dual-channel memory, G5 support, SATA and PCI-X was a completely new chipset, the biggest redesign since the Sawtooth G4s. PCIe is almost as big. I don't doubt that they have something brewing, but 5 months from now?

This uniform design thinking is the main reason I think G5 Powerbooks are coming after all - supporting two chipsets isn't as easy. If not for this, I could see Mac portables using G4s for a long time, just like PC portables use Pentium M (Pentium III+ if you will) and the desktops use Pentium4.

No, after thinking about it a bit I can see nVidia making an AGP version of the chip at some point - after all, there are PCIe and AGP versions of the 6800 with the same numbering scheme, and that they're not doing it now is likely because the 5200 still sells very well. They could still launch an AGP version 3 months from now if ATi releases anything worthwhile in the low-end AGP sector - such as a cut price underclocked 9600 as the 9300 or something.

BTW, does anyone have a comparison between the 5200U, the 5500U and the 6200? That would be very interesting to see.

[iPoder]

Originally posted by P:
BTW, does anyone have a comparison between the 5200U, the 5500U and the 6200? That would be very interesting to see.

Here is the link of Tom's Hardware comparing all modern Video cards. No 5500U, though.

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...charts-04.html

[Commodus]

Originally posted by P:
[B]Apple uses one chipset that usually first surfaces in the Powermacs and is then moved across to the other lines - of course it was designed with portables in mind from the beginning as well, but that is the way it flows. Adding Hypertransport, dual-channel memory, G5 support, SATA and PCI-X was a completely new chipset, the biggest redesign since the Sawtooth G4s. PCIe is almost as big. I don't doubt that they have something brewing, but 5 months from now?

Remember the "at least" part - I'm very exacting that way. I wouldn't be surprised if it was really 6, 7, or 8 months from now.

And PCIe isn't *that* big. You do have to add support to it on the system controller, but it's a fairly arbitrary difference; a bigger change would be something like putting the memory controller on the CPU die itself (which I understand IBM intends to do soon).

Besides, it's not like Apple doesn't have experience with serial architecture in the G5. Look at SATA as an example.