[The Placid Casual]

http://www.nvidia.com/page/pg_20040406661996.html

Very cool news indeed.

[Peter]

if it needs 2 power rails... the G5 only has 1 spare I thought?

[Thain Esh Kelch]

Macintosh OS, including Mac OS X

Bite me....

[discotronic]

I guess nVidia doesn't consider OSX to be a Mac OS.

[xylon]

Originally posted by discotronic:
I guess nVidia doesn't consider OSX to be a Mac OS.

Is that a bad thing?

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by discotronic:
I guess nVidia doesn't consider OSX to be a Mac OS.

Macintosh OS, including Mac OS X

[Judge_Fire]

Here's link to a demo movie. Server quite busy, so you might need to refresh.

I think these demos of the new Unreal Engine are shown using a 6800, too.

J

[RooneyX]

Originally posted by Judge_Fire:
Here's link to a demo movie. Server quite busy, so you might need to refresh.

I think these demos of the new Unreal Engine are shown using a 6800, too.

J

Wow! Those demos are really compressive! Now if only the games developers stop churning out gothic buildings and monsters and do something original. Why are nearly all the games the same even with all the better FX over the years?

I want a Bladerunner style experience. Or I want to fight the English Civil War, then desert the war at any time I want and go on a Barry Lyndon style odyssey. Really really experience a proper virtual existence.

[DBvader]

hmm...wonder if maybe i should pull my 9600 out in favor of this for my Dual 867

Nah, probably overkill

[KS-Jayhawk]

Okay so i'm not the brightest when it comes to computers...but will this card fit into my DP G5 where the current video card is? The reason I ask is because of the whole PCI-X thing?? Thanks
Steve

[CheesePuff]

Originally posted by KS-Jayhawk:
Okay so i'm not the brightest when it comes to computers...but will this card fit into my DP G5 where the current video card is? The reason I ask is because of the whole PCI-X thing?? Thanks
Steve

Can't give you a certain answer, but your current graphics card slot is AGP 8x. The PCI-X slots are next to the AGP slot and are for sound cards, etc. I'm pretty sure this nVidia card is AGP 8x.

[Leonard]

Don't know why there is a thread on this. This isn't news to me, as Nvidia did say that all their GPUs would be Mac compatible. Of course Nvidia only creates the GPU chip, they don't create the cards. So what would be news, is if someone actually creates a Mac compatible card, one that didn't need to be flashed.

[Cadaver]

At present, Apple is the only distributor of Mac-compatible nvidia products.
We'll see this card only if and when Apple chooses to use it.

[Link]

While we might very well see the nvidia card come out with mac AND pc support out of the box, I think that might just be it's chipset comatibility... NOT the card comaptibility..

Err long story short the chip might be compatible, the cards may or may not depending on whether companies decide to develop them with the mac firmware on them in addition to the pc firmware, or something intercompatible with both.

It's a 50/50 chance. BTW a dual 867 will happily take a radeon 9800, which is roughly as far as it's worth pushing (these cards will be bloody expensive, no doubt!)

To the G5 owner: The cards will come out in PCI Express and AGP 8x. The 8x will work in your g5. (PCI express however is different than PCI-X).

[saru boy]

Originally posted by KS-Jayhawk:
Okay so i'm not the brightest when it comes to computers...but will this card fit into my DP G5 where the current video card is? The reason I ask is because of the whole PCI-X thing?? Thanks
Steve

It needs to be powered from 2 separate rails. Even if you connect it to the rail powering the optical drive, where are you gonna get the other power connection from?

[The Placid Casual]

I'm wondering if we will need another rail...

For ages Macs have had an extra power connector connected to the graphics cards to power the ADC connection. Perhaps this will be enough?

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by The Placid Casual:
I'm wondering if we will need another rail...

For ages Macs have had an extra power connector connected to the graphics cards to power the ADC connection. Perhaps this will be enough?

Maybe, because power supplies often suck on the PC side, and nVidia is likely just erring on the safe side.

[djohnson]

It should be enough.

<soapbox>I want to know why the graphics card companies need that much power for their GPU's! Can they not make them more power friendly? I know they do some serious crunching... but enough is enough! When will they require us to plug in a power cord just for the graphics card???</soapbox>

Ok I feel better now.

[RooneyX]

Originally posted by djohnson:
It should be enough.

<soapbox>I want to know why the graphics card companies need that much power for their GPU's! Can they not make them more power friendly? I know they do some serious crunching... but enough is enough! When will they require us to plug in a power cord just for the graphics card???</soapbox>

Ok I feel better now.

A couple of years ago 3dFX's last card needed an external power supply plugged into the wall! And it was a **** card!

[Peter]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
Maybe, because power supplies often suck on the PC side, and nVidia is likely just erring on the safe side.

it requires 2 for the AGP x8 model, 1 for the PCIe version... I'd be amazed if the mac version didnt need 2 rails.

[THE MAC GOD]

OK, So I have WMP9 for the mac, but why doesn't that page show me the official demo? EH? usually it tells me that it can't read the file, then Safari opens up WMP and the video starts playing... Any ideas?

[Rosyna]

If this was an AGP Pro card it would only need (theoretically) one Power connector (if any) as AGP Pro would already supply some of the power. This is also why the Apple OEM ATI 9800 card doesn't need a power connector as the AGP Pro slot provides the power.

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by THE MAC GOD:
OK, So I have WMP9 for the mac, but why doesn't that page show me the official demo? EH? usually it tells me that it can't read the file, then Safari opens up WMP and the video starts playing... Any ideas?

You could try airbursting a nuke over the Redmond campus. That might fix it.

[Laurence]

I read a review on HardOCP or Toms hardware or something like that and they said that they hooked it up to one PS connector with a splitter and it worked fine. They did say that if your PS was not a very good one then this would probably cause issues but if the supply could send enough current through one output then everything should be fine.

BTW, What do you think the significance of the PCI-X -vs- Express -vs- AGP will be in the next PowerMac? Is there any reason to have both PCI Express -and- AGP or will PCI Extreme just replace AGP? Also, since you can have more than one PCI Express slot and maximum bandwidth seems to be greater than PCI-X, why have any PCI-X slots at all, why not just 5 PCI Express slots?

[Shaddim]

Originally posted by Laurence:
I read a review on HardOCP or Toms hardware or something like that and they said that they hooked it up to one PS connector with a splitter and it worked fine. They did say that if your PS was not a very good one then this would probably cause issues but if the supply could send enough current through one output then everything should be fine.

BTW, What do you think the significance of the PCI-X -vs- Express -vs- AGP will be in the next PowerMac? Is there any reason to have both PCI Express -and- AGP or will PCI Extreme just replace AGP? Also, since you can have more than one PCI Express slot and maximum bandwidth seems to be greater than PCI-X, why have any PCI-X slots at all, why not just 5 PCI Express slots?

The G5 duals have 600W power supplies (far more than almost any PC case), no worries.

[milhous]

What a fine card. I expect that when it's available for the Mac that it will offload 100% of the work in Quartz.

[THE MAC GOD]

Originally posted by milhous:
What a fine card. I expect that when it's available for the Mac that it will offload 100% of the work in Quartz.

Well, it's definitely more than capable!

[Big Mac]

Originally posted by Laurence:
BTW, What do you think the significance of the PCI-X -vs- Express -vs- AGP will be in the next PowerMac? Is there any reason to have both PCI Express -and- AGP or will PCI Extreme just replace AGP? Also, since you can have more than one PCI Express slot and maximum bandwidth seems to be greater than PCI-X, why have any PCI-X slots at all, why not just 5 PCI Express slots?

Backward compatibility. PCI Express is not backward compatible with PCI, whereas PCI-X is (for the most part, of course). People are assuming Apple will go half and half with PCI-X and PCI Express. But I'm not really expecting PCI Express to be in Rev B, since Apple usually adopts new technology at a slow rate. Remember how long it took us to DDR and USB2, for instance.

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
Backward compatibility. PCI Express is not backward compatible with PCI

Actually, it is. PCI Express is software compatible with PCI-X and PCI, however, it requires a bridge for you to use a PCI card in a PCI Express slot.

[ahmshaegar]

I thought PCI-X and PCI Express had two totally different targets. PCI-X is supposed to replace PCI conventional, and PCI Express is supposed to dethrone AGP. See here [pcisig.com], the PCI spec homepage.

[mfessenden]

Originally posted by Link:
While we might very well see the nvidia card come out with mac AND pc support out of the box, I think that might just be it's chipset comatibility... NOT the card comaptibility..

That's right. The FX 5950 also has Mac compatiblity, but the card was never built. Apple seems to be favoring ATI again these days with the higher end cards, so maybe this one will grab Apple's attention enough to build it.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by ahmshaegar:
I thought PCI-X and PCI Express had two totally different targets. PCI-X is supposed to replace PCI conventional, and PCI Express is supposed to dethrone AGP. See here [pcisig.com], the PCI spec homepage.

No. PCI Express is intended to replace both AGP and PCI.

There's nothing stopping a motherboard from having both PCI Express and PCI-X though.

[Drakino]

The Mac version of this card will not need two power connectors, since it will be able to pull a large amount of power from the AGP-Pro slots the G5 machines feature. It's likely the cooling solutions on card won't be as "extreme", since the G5 has a fan in the I/O area only for cooling I/O cards.

The ATI Radeon 9800 normally needs one power connector in a normal AGP slot, but the G5 version just uses the AGP-Pro power.

ATI announces the Radeon x800 on the 26th, should be interesting to see how it does. NVidia is saying 45 days for availability from their announcement, where as ATI likes to hold to 30 days.

[Cadaver]

The GeForce 6800 Ultra is a pretty damn fast card, though.
Twice as fast as a Radeon 9800XT (on a PC of course) per AnandTech.com
Halo and UT2K4 at 1600x1200 with something ridiculous like 16x AF and 8x FSAA, at 55+ fps! Damn!

[Peter]

Originally posted by Rosyna:
If this was an AGP Pro card it would only need (theoretically) one Power connector (if any) as AGP Pro would already supply some of the power. This is also why the Apple OEM ATI 9800 card doesn't need a power connector as the AGP Pro slot provides the power.

I have used 9800pros which have 0, 1 and 2 power connectors.