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utw-Mephisto · Nov 9, 2007, 07:00 AM

I waited now the whole year for Apple to upgrade their graphics options. I couldn't wait any longer and now I bought a PC for about $5000 - this could have been yours Apple ...

7300 just doesn't cut it anymore !!!!...

ninahagen · Nov 9, 2007, 07:24 AM

Originally Posted by utw-Mephisto

I waited now the whole year for Apple to upgrade their graphics options. I couldn't wait any longer and now I bought a PC for about $5000 - this could have been yours Apple ...

7300 just doesn't cut it anymore !!!!...

The new Mac Pro will be out in days!

AND

The current Mac Pro can run Windows on a partioned HD with any dedicated PC-compatible video card. You could also have run it on a very fast SAS drive (15k rpm Seagate Cheetah) mounted in the second optical drive bay via a Mac-compatible ATTO cable. Apple won't miss you much since sales are through the roof, but you will miss Apple. It was all avoidable if you had just done your homework...

but hope you got a good machine anyway.

utw-Mephisto · Nov 9, 2007, 07:55 AM

I don't say they gonna miss me .. I am just disappointed - thats all ..
And it is still not sure what card will be in the new MacPro and even IF it is being released any time soon.

A lot of people have expected a lot over last few month

And running a 8800 Ultra on a MacPro and then having to dual boot to use it is not really ideal .. And yes, my new PC is a beast ...

I will buy a MacBook Pro next year instead ... I don't want to give up Mac but I also don't want to give up gaming ..(yea I know, gamer are the minority)

ninahagen · Nov 9, 2007, 08:13 AM

Originally Posted by utw-Mephisto

I don't say they gonna miss me .. I am just disappointed - thats all ..
And it is still not sure what card will be in the new MacPro and even IF it is being released any time soon.

A lot of people have expected a lot over last few month

And running a 8800 Ultra on a MacPro and then having to dual boot to use it is not really ideal .. And yes, my new PC is a beast ...

I will buy a MacBook Pro next year instead ... I don't want to give up Mac but I also don't want to give up gaming ..(yea I know, gamer are the minority)

What is your PC setup? Are you get serious fps rates?

besson3c · Nov 9, 2007, 11:02 AM

You could have just bought a faster video card from Newegg, installed it in your MacPro and if it didn't work all you'd have to do is pay a restocking fee at Newegg. If the OS X drivers are anything like the Linux driver, there is a single driver that works for a whole set of cards.

I agree that a 7300 GT in a Mac Pro is absolutely retarded though. The Mac Pro is overpriced as it is, why include a $60 video card?

goMac · Nov 9, 2007, 12:28 PM

New Mac Pros are supposed to come out next Tuesday or Wednesday. I'm waiting for them, I just have a little patience.

MacosNerd · Nov 9, 2007, 02:38 PM

Too bad with a little research you would have found out that new models are presumably on their way and/or you could have put in a different more powerful video card in the machine.

Your loss and there's really little reason to whine about it - as if you had done your homework it you wouldn't be in this situation.

Kenneth · Nov 9, 2007, 05:18 PM

Wait a minute, you just spent $5000 on a PC and you were talking about the standard GeForce 7300 GT card?

Todd Madson · Nov 9, 2007, 05:20 PM

For some reason, his post reminds me of when I bought an Amiga 1000 setup
two days before the Amiga 500/2000 was announced.

If it works for you, great. $5000 would have bought a hell of a Mac.

cube-dude · Nov 9, 2007, 09:31 PM

Originally Posted by goMac

New Mac Pros are supposed to come out next Tuesday or Wednesday. I'm waiting for them, I just have a little patience.

Same here ... see you back here Tuesday or Wednesday!

goMac · Nov 9, 2007, 10:46 PM

Originally Posted by cube-dude

Same here ... see you back here Tuesday or Wednesday!

I have a developers discount that expires after Wednesday. If there is no Mac Pro update on Tuesday or Wednesday I will literally implode.

bballe336 · Nov 9, 2007, 10:53 PM

Originally Posted by goMac

I have a developers discount that expires after Wednesday. If there is no Mac Pro update on Tuesday or Wednesday I will literally implode.

Get it on camera please.

On a more serious note, I bought a macbook pro a while back hoping it would tide me over until the new mac pros came. That was 7 months ago, and I'm glad I made that decision seeing as the MBP is a great machine, and it has taken over a year to get an update on the mac pros. If the update coming next week isn't extremely significant (read: entirely different machine inside) I 'll be a bit disappointed.

goMac · Nov 9, 2007, 11:03 PM

I have to wonder if the original poster here realized he could get the Mac Pro with a Radeon 1900xt, and if he wanted to he could just upgrade the video card when the new ones came out.

MacosNerd · Nov 9, 2007, 11:44 PM

No I think the OP is embarrassed to have spent 5k on a windows box and he further compounded it by posting a whiney thread about it here

mduell · Nov 10, 2007, 12:10 AM

Originally Posted by goMac

I have to wonder if the original poster here realized he could get the Mac Pro with a Radeon 1900xt, and if he wanted to he could just upgrade the video card when the new ones came out.

I think part of the OP's point was that today you should be getting the performance of the X1900XT for the price they charge for the 7300GT.

besson3c · Nov 10, 2007, 12:37 AM

Yeah, I don't understand why Apple doesn't at least make newer components BTO options on their higher end gear, as these components become available. No matter what video card you put in there, as long as there is a driver for it and as long as it keeps cool, it will work. I don't see the need to be conservative here specifically with their high end stuff.

Wiskedjak · Nov 10, 2007, 12:53 AM

Originally Posted by Todd Madson

$5000 would have bought a hell of a Mac.

True, but in terms of hardware, it buys a hell of a lot more PC. You may be stuck with Windows, but the exact same components are alot cheaper in the Windows world.

Simon · Nov 10, 2007, 03:36 AM

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak

You may be stuck with Windows, but the exact same components are alot cheaper in the Windows world.

That argument to me sonds like you're telling a Mercedes driver to get his replacement parts from a Toyota dealership. Sure they're cheaper there, but what good is that if they just don't fit his car? PC parts are cheap, but they don't run OS X which is what this board is all about. So what's the point? IMHO the real point is why Apple hasn't updated the MP or at least either updated the BTO specs or reduced their price.

The OP had several options: wait till Tuesday (which he really should have done!), get the very decent X1900XT (which he also should have done), get the MP refurbished to reduce the cost, or get it used, etc. Obviously he needed new hardware more than he needed OS X. If that's actually the case, he'll be fine with his PC. If not, good luck with that PC on eBay next Tuesday.

Simon · Nov 10, 2007, 03:52 AM

On another note, I really like the MP I can get for $5k:
• eight cores @ 3.0 GHz
• ATI X1900 XT, 512 MB VRAM, dual DDL DVI
$4246
IOW that leaves $750 for more HDDs and RAM. You'd end up with 4 GB RAM and about 1 TB of disk space.

Obviously next Tuesday you'll be doing even better, but for my use, that would already be a very decent Mac.

besson3c · Nov 10, 2007, 01:10 PM

Originally Posted by Simon

That argument to me sonds like you're telling a Mercedes driver to get his replacement parts from a Toyota dealership. Sure they're cheaper there, but what good is that if they just don't fit his car? PC parts are cheap, but they don't run OS X which is what this board is all about. So what's the point? IMHO the real point is why Apple hasn't updated the MP or at least either updated the BTO specs or reduced their price.

The OP had several options: wait till Tuesday (which he really should have done!), get the very decent X1900XT (which he also should have done), get the MP refurbished to reduce the cost, or get it used, etc. Obviously he needed new hardware more than he needed OS X. If that's actually the case, he'll be fine with his PC. If not, good luck with that PC on eBay next Tuesday.

There is no PC parts/Mac parts dichotomy any longer. You can buy just about any PC component from Newegg and toss it in your Mac. I'd be willing to bet that drivers for video cards and optical drives and stuff are generic enough that they would work with any other components other than the ones Apple has "blessed".

Even if I'm wrong, you can still get the same PC components from the same sources that any other PC user would as long as you pick out something that Apple has blessed.

Simon · Nov 10, 2007, 01:13 PM

You need to get the GPU from Apple if you want it to work under OS X. You need to get the board from Apple if you want it to run OS X. What you can swap at leisure are RAM, HDDs, and optical drives.

besson3c · Nov 10, 2007, 01:14 PM

Why do you need to get your GPU from Apple? Are you certain of that?

MacosNerd · Nov 10, 2007, 02:08 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

Why do you need to get your GPU from Apple? Are you certain of that?

Yes, but if you slap a peecee video card into a MacPro and boot it up into windows your all set.

The explanation I've heard on the incompatibility was the difference in BIOS and EFI (windows has BIOS Macs use EFI) but that doesn't seem to make sense if you boot the macpro up into windows and are able to the a PC only video card.

besson3c · Nov 10, 2007, 02:12 PM

There is no reason why you couldn't put a different video card in a PCI-x slot and use it. The only difference there ever was between Mac and PC video cards was software, but now that Macs are using the Intel architecture I don't think there is any differences in firmware.

svtcontour · Nov 10, 2007, 02:14 PM

I dont even know how the original poster spent 5K on a PC. My box right now is quite good and it would barely cost 1/3 of that so I dont know what he purchased, unless he went with an 8 core setup, SAS drives...dual 8800 series cards...etc.

Mine is a Q6600 quad core, 4GB RAM, Antec P180 case, Asus workstation board, SCSI drives, PCI-X SCSI controller, 8800GT, dual optical drives, ..etc. I think it works out to about $1650

besson3c · Nov 10, 2007, 02:17 PM

Maybe his PC is gold plated?

goMac · Nov 10, 2007, 02:38 PM

The deal with video cards is that they need to support EFI. Currently I don't know of any retail cards that do. That said, as EFI becomes more of a standard on the PC side, we should start seeing more retail cards supporting EFI.

The hardware in the Mac cards and PC cards is completely identical. All you really need to do is flash the PC card with the Mac EFI compatible firmware.

Simon · Nov 10, 2007, 03:47 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

TThe only difference there ever was between Mac and PC video cards was software, but now that Macs are using the Intel architecture I don't think there is any differences in firmware.

Wrong. EFI support. Mac GPUs need it, PC GPUs don't have it.

You cannot put any old PC GPU in a Mac and use it under OS X. The only GPU type OS X will work with is the type Apple sells. Anything else will work only work under Windows. End of story.

besson3c · Nov 10, 2007, 03:50 PM

I stand corrected. Are there any GPUs available through normal retail channels that support EFI? Isn't EFI an open standard? At least this time around it is perfectly feasible that a vendor could make a single GPU that would work under both Windows and the Mac, unlike in years past.

Simon · Nov 10, 2007, 03:51 PM

Originally Posted by svtcontour

Mine is a Q6600 quad core, 4GB RAM, Antec P180 case, Asus workstation board, SCSI drives, PCI-X SCSI controller, 8800GT, dual optical drives, ..etc. I think it works out to about $1650

If you exchange that Kentsfield ($266) with a Clovertown ($455 or $754 depending on clock) and use a 5000 series (Xeon-type) chipset instead of that 'workstation board' (nice spin there, Asus!), you would also be pretty far from $1650. That said, I'd also like to see what he put in his $5k PC. I'm guessing a whole lot of RAM.

mduell · Nov 10, 2007, 05:49 PM

$5k on a PC is pretty easy... a pair of 3Ghz quad Xeons is $2500, $500 motherboard, $400 case+psu, $300 video card (8800GT), $500 for 4x2GB RAM, $300 for a 1TB HDD, $150 for WinXP is $4650. You could save $1000 by going to 2.67Ghz, but where's the fun in that?

As far as COTS video cards in OS X, you need a EFI compatible video card to boot, but once your in OS X a second COTS card in the system should work as far as I know. Actually the first EFI card may even need to be a special Apple-blessed EFI card; there are a few others on the market (for Itanium systems among others) and I don't know if anyone has tried one in a Mac Pro.

Smillz · Nov 10, 2007, 05:56 PM

Well I would hope you got water cooled for $5000...I also hope it was a custom build

Wiskedjak · Nov 10, 2007, 05:57 PM

What, exactly, is EFI?
(besides something apparently invented so you couldn't stick any video card in a Mac)

goMac · Nov 10, 2007, 06:06 PM

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak

What, exactly, is EFI?
(besides something apparently invented so you couldn't stick any video card in a Mac)

EFI is Intel's replacement to BIOS. It's an open standard. All Intel PC's today use EFI.

The issue is that Windows is not EFI compatible. To solve this, Intel wrote a BIOS emulator into EFI (which is actually the same technology Macs use to run WIndows). The BIOS emulator works with all old BIOS compatible hardware and operating systems. Because Windows runs under the BIOS emulator, and hardware manufacturers only seem to care about WIndows, they've never bothered adding EFI support to their cards because Windows doesn't work with EFI anyway.

This may start to change with Vista SP1. Vista SP1 is supposed to run under EFI, which means that graphics cards makers may have a reason to start shipping their retail cards with EFI support. At that point, those cards should start to work with the Mac too.

As a side note, this is why you can put a PC card into a Mac, and it will run under Windows but not OS X. Mac OS X is an EFI OS, so when it boots the BIOS emulator never runs, and none of your BIOS compatible hardware will work. When you boot Windows on a Mac, it runs under the BIOS emulator, which means all your BIOS compatible hardware works.

As a side side note, the OS X x86 project has Mac OS X booting under BIOS, which means that all the BIOS hardware works with OS X, including retail GPU's.

Wiskedjak · Nov 10, 2007, 06:26 PM

But, what does EFI do?

Sijmen · Nov 10, 2007, 07:28 PM

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak

But, what does EFI do?

On my mothers Swift it says: Electric Fuel Injection....

goMac · Nov 10, 2007, 07:32 PM

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak

But, what does EFI do?

EFI just basically starts up the machine, gets the hardware talking, and then starts the OS. Same sort of stuff Open Firmware and BIOS did.

Extensible Firmware Interface - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wiskedjak · Nov 10, 2007, 08:07 PM

Originally Posted by goMac

EFI just basically starts up the machine, gets the hardware talking, and then starts the OS. Same sort of stuff Open Firmware and BIOS did.

Extensible Firmware Interface - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Right. But, what does it do that BIOS doesn't do?

goMac · Nov 10, 2007, 08:09 PM

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak

Right. But, what does it do that BIOS doesn't do?

Oh. It's extensible. You can actually load new things into EFI to make it do different things. Stuff like custom boot menus, special extensions, and so on.

mduell · Nov 10, 2007, 09:30 PM

EFI cleans up a lot of the cruft/hacks accumulated over the years of using the BIOS system; it also provides a better framework for future enhancements.

Originally Posted by goMac

All Intel PC's today use EFI.

Most Intel motherboards shipped today (and for the past couple years) use the Intel Platform Innovation Framework for EFI; they do not, however, support EFI in the production firmware.

goMac · Nov 10, 2007, 10:20 PM

Originally Posted by mduell

Most Intel motherboards shipped today (and for the past couple years) use the Intel Platform Innovation Framework for EFI; they do not, however, support EFI in the production firmware.

Huh. I wasn't aware Intel was still shipping boards that were not fully EFI. My Intel board from a few years ago ran with EFI (Bad Axe).

Kar98 · Nov 10, 2007, 11:15 PM

Originally Posted by MacosNerd

Too bad with a little research you would have found out that new models are presumably on their way

There's always new models "just around the corner".

mduell · Nov 10, 2007, 11:32 PM

Originally Posted by goMac

Huh. I wasn't aware Intel was still shipping boards that were not fully EFI. My Intel board from a few years ago ran with EFI (Bad Axe).

Bad Axe was sort of a specialty high-end board at the time. Intel found that even that crowd had no interest in EFI.

Originally Posted by Kar98

There's always new models "just around the corner".

I know it's popular to parrot that line, but in this case it really is true. The line hasn't been updated in over a year and Intel has a big product release on Monday.

svtcontour · Nov 11, 2007, 12:41 AM

Just out of curiosity, has apple made any major changes in EFI on the Mac Pro systems for example...anything that may not be available in a standard BIOS update?

I still dont get the whole EFI thing. You can fix or update a lot of things with a firmware update.

goMac · Nov 11, 2007, 03:59 AM

Originally Posted by svtcontour

Just out of curiosity, has apple made any major changes in EFI on the Mac Pro systems for example...anything that may not be available in a standard BIOS update?

I still dont get the whole EFI thing. You can fix or update a lot of things with a firmware update.

EFI lets you add things to the firmware without actually flashing the firmware. EFI also has an open API. People have coded boot menus for EFI for example (and they work on the Mac). EFI, unlike BIOS, also has a graphical API, so boot managers are nice and graphical instead of the ugly ones on BIOS.

mduell · Nov 11, 2007, 10:23 AM

Originally Posted by svtcontour

Just out of curiosity, has apple made any major changes in EFI on the Mac Pro systems for example...anything that may not be available in a standard BIOS update?

I've never seen target disk mode done on a non-EFI PC. That's not to say that it couldn't be done with a BIOS, but it would likely be more difficult to do.

CaptainHaddock · Nov 11, 2007, 10:57 AM

I believe EFI lets hardware store drivers in firmware, so all your hardware works without having to boot into an OS, and sophisticated hardware features like target disc mode can easily be added without needing to boot into an OS.

If you've built and customized your own PCs, you've spent a lot of time dickering about in text-only setup menus that only work with your keyboard, and had plenty of Windows installations that just couldn't identify your hardware correctly. EFI does away with those artifacts of late-70s computing.

cgc · Nov 11, 2007, 12:04 PM

I was considering getting a PC card and putting it in my MacPro. With a DVI switch I should be able to share one monitor with two vid cards (one for Mac and another for Windows). Since I know very little about this I'm curious if it'll work as advertised (should).

mduell · Nov 11, 2007, 12:50 PM

Originally Posted by cgc

I was considering getting a PC card and putting it in my MacPro. With a DVI switch I should be able to share one monitor with two vid cards (one for Mac and another for Windows). Since I know very little about this I'm curious if it'll work as advertised (should).

Yea, a DVI switch should work fine.
You may (I haven't seen confirmation) be able to use the 'PC' card in OS X after booting.

goMac · Nov 11, 2007, 03:23 PM

I'd wait until the new Mac Pros come out to look at PC cards. Because the new cards should be identical hardware wise to their PC counterparts, you may have a wider range of options for PC cards you can buy and then flash with a Mac firmware.