[Meadowfield]

Originally Posted by mduell 

It's about 3 times faster.

Faster than what? I'm considering a Mac Pro entry machine (one quad) and may drop this guy in if it helps with quicker gui...

[mr. burns]

Originally Posted by Meadowfield 

Faster than what? I'm considering a Mac Pro entry machine (one quad) and may drop this guy in if it helps with quicker gui...

faster than the 2600xt... like you asked.

3 times faster in games, that is. you won't see any difference in the gui.

[Meadowfield]

Originally Posted by mr. burns 

faster than the 2600xt... like you asked.

you won't see any difference in the gui.

I see ur a photographer. how about Aperture?

[mr. burns]

i wouldn't know. i use lightroom. it can't be all that different.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Meadowfield 

If I may reach back to the original inquiry - what real life benefit does the 8800 have over the stock 2600 offered in the new 08's?

Originally Posted by Meadowfield 

Faster than what? I'm considering a Mac Pro entry machine (one quad) and may drop this guy in if it helps with quicker gui...

Seriously dude? Are you even lucid?

[Meadowfield]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Seriously dude? Are you even lucid?

Apparently not. Sorry for not making myself clear. I'm just trying to determine if the extra investment would be worth it to me. Thanks all the same.

[Cadaver]

Originally Posted by Meadowfield 

Apparently not. Sorry for not making myself clear. I'm just trying to determine if the extra investment would be worth it to me. Thanks all the same.

A faster video card won't help with the GUI (might help a little with full-screen effects like Spaces and Exposé if you're running two 30" displays, but otherwise you'll never see a difference).

Will help with Aperture though since this app is very Core Image dependent. Will help with Motion if you use that. Won't help with Adobe applications (Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, etc) since these do not make any use of Core Image.

Will help with games, obviously.

But for things like Mail, Word, Safari, iPhoto, even Keynote (which does use Core Image), you wont see any change. You might be able to benchmark some percentage of a difference, but from experience you'll never "see" it real-world.

[SierraDragon]

Originally Posted by mr. burns 

i wouldn't know. i use lightroom. it can't be all that different.

I intend to pursue card compatibilities with Apple reps at Expo tomorrow. The question of "best available" reasonably priced cards for 2006 as well as for 2008 MPs is important.

As of 2007 versions Aperture pretty much needs an X1900XT or 8800 GT graphics card in MPs while Lightroom and other Adobe apps fail to take advantage of advanced graphics, except for PSCS3 3-D.

-Allen Wicks

[Meadowfield]

Thanks, Cadaver!

[devmage]

I have an original Mac Pro and Apple can't possibly expect me to use this ATI 1900XT for the entire time I have my computer that is ridiculous. There are hundreds of cards you can buy on the market that would work in windoze why the hell can't I use them in OSX? If Apple isn't going to give me a viable alternative they need to make off the shelf PC cards work!

[newtech]

Originally Posted by devmage 

I have an original Mac Pro and Apple can't possibly expect me to use this ATI 1900XT for the entire time I have my computer that is ridiculous. There are hundreds of cards you can buy on the market that would work in windoze why the hell can't I use them in OSX? If Apple isn't going to give me a viable alternative they need to make off the shelf PC cards work!

By that logic Apple is screwing everyone buying the Mac Mini as well, as the GMA graphics can never be upgraded. Difference is in a Mac Pro a third party can offer a graphics upgrade.

[devmage]

Originally Posted by newtech 

By that logic Apple is screwing everyone buying the Mac Mini as well, as the GMA graphics can never be upgraded. Difference is in a Mac Pro a third party can offer a graphics upgrade.

When you buy a mac mini you know you have integrated graphics and no expansion slots. I bought a Mac Pro which has expansion cards and a removable graphics card I expect to be able to update.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by devmage 

When you buy a mac mini you know you have integrated graphics and no expansion slots. I bought a Mac Pro which has expansion cards and a removable graphics card I expect to be able to update.

A lot of people bought PowerMac G5s expecting to upgrade the CPUs. Never happened.

Just because it's socketed doesn't mean you can upgrade it. FWIW I think Apple will release a software fix to get the 8800GT in the older Mac Pros.

[Richard Richard]

Originally Posted by devmage 

When you buy a mac mini you know you have integrated graphics and no expansion slots. I bought a Mac Pro which has expansion cards and a removable graphics card I expect to be able to update.

i agree 100%

why give people the supposed option of upgrading when it's not actually available ?

isn't that basically illegal ??

false advertising and all that , the trades description act etc ..

[devmage]

Originally Posted by mduell 

A lot of people bought PowerMac G5s expecting to upgrade the CPUs. Never happened.

Just because it's socketed doesn't mean you can upgrade it. FWIW I think Apple will release a software fix to get the 8800GT in the older Mac Pros.

We could go back and forth like this all day long but it wouldn't help anyone I guess

I expect whatever the issue is for the older rev Mac Pros to use the new cards will probably be fixed. I'm still a little boggled as to why they would have even created the issue to begin with. And if we don't see any action on that front us Mac Pro owners will just have to rally until we get some!

[Leonard]

Originally Posted by Richard Richard 

i agree 100%

why give people the supposed option of upgrading when it's not actually available ?

isn't that basically illegal ??

false advertising and all that , the trades description act etc ..

Why is it false advertising. The Mac Pro can accept any third party PCIe video card that has firmware for a Mac and Mac drivers. Any third party can make PCIe video card drivers and firmware for their cards. ATI has typically provided retail Mac cards. Heck they provide the only non-Apple upgrade for the PowerMac G5 with PCIe by providing the X1900GT for the PowerMac G5 (with PCIe). They probably don't provide anything for the first generation Mac Pro since Apple already provides the X1900XT (and that's where the catch-22 comes in - third parties don't seem interested in the Mac since Apple already provides video upgrades). ATI usually doesn't bring out Mac cards...ummmm... fast. ATI will probably bring out a new Mac card 6 months down the line.

Basically, the problem isn't that there aren't upgrades, but that there aren't a lot of upgrade options.

[Richard Richard]

" The Mac Pro can accept any third party PCIe video card that has firmware for a Mac and Mac drivers"

unfortunately it has to be written by apple themselves ... have fun waiting for that !!!

so if they deem it , they just won't bother and will force us all to either buy another mac pro or go pc

imo apple are becoming more and more a consumer level company and probably don't really care about the pro crowd

they make a lot more dough on ipods and iphones than they ever will with us lot . sad but true

[Tesselator]

Just a tick on the false advertising thing: This isn't. To actually carry as false advertising
the "claims" need to very specific and there also has to be damage. If there's no damage and
no specific claims it won't even make it to lit.

[newtech]

Originally Posted by Richard Richard 

" The Mac Pro can accept any third party PCIe video card that has firmware for a Mac and Mac drivers"

unfortunately it has to be written by apple themselves ... have fun waiting for that !!!

There is nothing stopping a third party, such as AMD/ATI or nVidia, from writing their own .kext's and drivers to support a non-Apple OEM card.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Richard Richard 

" The Mac Pro can accept any third party PCIe video card that has firmware for a Mac and Mac drivers"

unfortunately it has to be written by apple themselves ... have fun waiting for that !!!

Nope, just has to be EFI compatible. There are some other EFI cards out there for Itanium machines, but I don't think you'd want to use them in a Mac.

[Leonard]

Originally Posted by Richard Richard 

"
unfortunately it has to be written by apple themselves ... have fun waiting for that !!!

No, that's a myth. ATI, I'm sure writes their own drivers and firmware. I don't think Apple does much on the Radeon drivers and firmware except test them and add them into the MacOS in future updates.

[damiensmunki]

Update from Engadget:

Nvidia's Director of PR emailed us to let us know that the company is "in the middle of bringing out an upgrade kit based on the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTsolution for all Intel-based Mac Pros." What's more, this upgrade kit "should be out in a few weeks." So there you have it, folks. We'll see if they deliver as promised.

This leaves me hopeful. Anyone know if the new cards are HDCP compliant? I'm craving blu-ray support.

[mr. burns]

nice.

[newtech]

Originally Posted by damiensmunki 

Update from Engadget:


This leaves me hopeful. Anyone know if the new cards are HDCP compliant? I'm craving blu-ray support.

Cards yes, DVDplayer.app not yet. For Windows yes with PowerDVD player.

[glideslope]

Originally Posted by mr. burns 

nice.

Double nice.

[Leonard]

Link to the engadget article:

GeForce 8800 GT upgrade causes headaches for some Mac Pro users - Engadget

[damiensmunki]

Yes...sorry. Should have posted the link. It was late...

[Kikaida]

Hi - I'd like to pick up a ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT today from a local NYC store. Does anyone know if I have to specifically pick up a Mac edition of the card, or are they all compatible with the Mac Pro?

[Leonard]

Originally Posted by Kikaida 

Hi - I'd like to pick up a ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT today from a local NYC store. Does anyone know if I have to specifically pick up a Mac edition of the card, or are they all compatible with the Mac Pro?

You need the Mac edition of the card, which has the Mac firmware. I don't think the firmware Rom is available yet, so that you can flash PC editions of the card, or if it's even possible to flash a PC edition card.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Kikaida 

Hi - I'd like to pick up a ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT today from a local NYC store. Does anyone know if I have to specifically pick up a Mac edition of the card, or are they all compatible with the Mac Pro?

If you want to be able to use it in OS X it needs to be the Mac edition. If you simply want to use it under Windows you can buy any 2600 XT card.

[PaperNotes]

Benchmarks for the budget Geforce 9600 GT are already leaking out. The card's performance is faster than the the Geforce 8800 GTS and costs less while consuming less power.

DailyTech - GeForce 9600GT Benchmarked Out in the Wild

[mr. burns]

Originally Posted by PaperNotes 

The card's performance is faster than the the Geforce 8800 GTS and costs less while consuming less power.

you mean the 8600GTS, which isn't that surprising.

[PaperNotes]

It's faster than the 8800 GTS is exactly what I meant and linked to. Other cards are also benched in the comparison.

Quote for effect:

The 9600GT reached an overall score of 10813 while the 8600GTS and 8800GS had scores of 6251 and 10391, respectively. Additionally, the 9600GT scored higher than the 8800 GTS in many of the tests.

The 8800 GS mentioned in the first sentence of the quote is a typo in the article. It's the GTS. There isn't an 8800 GS in existence.

[mr. burns]

Originally Posted by PaperNotes 

It's faster than the 8800 GTS is exactly what I meant and linked to. Other cards are also benched in the comparison.

Quote for effect:



The 8800 GS mentioned in the first sentence of the quote is a typo in the article. It's the GTS. There isn't an 8800 GS in existence.

[first look] Geforce 8800GS 192bit 384MB/768MB released [keep updating the thread] - XtremeSystems Forums

[PaperNotes]

The GS was an abandoned card and not included in those benchmarks.

[jamil5454]

Originally Posted by PaperNotes 

It's faster than the 8800 GTS is exactly what I meant and linked to. Other cards are also benched in the comparison.

Quote for effect:



The 8800 GS mentioned in the first sentence of the quote is a typo in the article. It's the GTS. There isn't an 8800 GS in existence.

Keep in mind they're probably referring to the old GTS 640MB and not the new GTS 512MB. Although the old GTS isn't a slouch, the new one is quite a bit faster.

9600GT will still be a great card, though.

[mr. burns]

Originally Posted by PaperNotes 

The GS was an abandoned card and not included in those benchmarks.

did you even read the article that daily tech linked to? there was no 8800GTS in the tests. it's the 8800GS. read the specs they list for the cards. if it were an 8800GTS it wouldn't have a 192-bit memory interface and 384MB of RAM.

[PaperNotes]

Oh right. So the GS is leaking now. It was abandonated last year.

Nevertheless, the 9600 GT is a good deal closer to the 8800GT's performance and good bit cheaper.

[devmage]

I'm a little curious and though I haven't done much research on the topic I wanted to pose the question. I keep reading about people creating hackintoshes, or whatever you want to call them. Installing OSX on generic PCs. Why does OSX work with off the shelf video cards in this instance, but not if you put one in a Mac Pro (which admittedly I've never tried). The Mac Pro is nothing more than a well designed PC aside from the BIOS being different. Is the BIOS the whole reason? It wouldn't seem so if the card will work under windows in the same machine. It would seem like it would be a driver issue but Nvidia and ATI both make universal drivers so that wouldn't make sense either. Is it something apple does to intentionally disable the video cards that the hackers have figured out how to disable?

Yes even though they are suppose to be releasing the new card for older Mac Pros I'm still kind of bitter I'm at the whim of apple deciding to choose 1 card to be made available to me...

Devmage

[Big Mac]

That's a good question, devmage. Someone will probably say that Hackintosh machines don't run very reliably, but that doesn't account for how the video cards are running. I'm sure someone with more knowledge of those projects could explain it, but the fact that video does usually work on those machines makes one wonder what the true limitation on running third party cards is.

If it truly were a matter of EFI support in the GPU ROM, then the cards shouldn't work in OS X, whether in a real Apple computer or in a Hackintosh. If it's the case that the cards in the hacked PCs are running with hacked drivers then it's got to be a driver and not a ROM issue. I never really thought about this until you raised the question. Let me know if you find anything out because it is rather ridiculous that Apple has found a way to continue locking customers into a single GPU upgrade option when the Mac Pros truly are PCs. I never thought it would be possible for Apple to do that. Now that I think about it, perhaps, just perhaps, EFI on the Mactel boards not only enables OS X but locks down OS X to using only explicitly EFI enabled cards. Make sense at all?

[mduell]

Note the GTS moniker was reused: initially it was the (slower than GT) 320/640MB models, now it's the (faster than GT) 256/512MB models.