<strong>on the PC maybe. don't forget to add 3-4 months onto your mac Radeon ETA.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, I tought I saw ATI saying this time they will release it for both platforms at the same time. Which sounds believable, considering ATI wrote all the drivers from the ground up and thus probably developed on pc/mac simultaneously.
Yeah but when are we going to see games pushing these cards to their limit? The only game that may push the envelop is Doom 3. Unreal 2k3 doesn't look too hot...nor do the other 3D games coming out soon.
That certainly helps -- especially in getting around the AGP bottleneck. Depending on the kind of geometry work being done, and how well the app&driver are coded, it is possible for the hardware to reach across the AGP bus and read the geometry straight out of memory so that the CPU doesn't have to do any of the work. An Xserve style architecture is great for this since the GPU can use all of that extra bandwidth that the G4 can't use... without getting in the way of the G4.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
It is important to remember that your GPU having all that extra bandwidth is something of a poor consolation prize for the fact that the CPU's are not able to take full advantage of the bus. I for one would greatly prefer to not have such a situation. Yes, it is nice to know, but I would prefer to have a CPU that was not limited by its bus.
This is still future hardware...considering I don't see anyone with Radeon 9700s in their Macs.
The cards should be out about the same time as the PC version. I know that they already have the 9000 Pro listed at places like MacMall.
This is great news because we'll have the high-end option from both ATI & nVidia, plus I love to see competition. Also, we can't really go out and buy retail GF4 Ti cards (I haven't even heard of any flashing being done with these cards). ATI has a great product on their hands in the R300 (Radeon 9700).
The 9000 Pro looks to be a GF4 MX killer, but I'm not sure if it can pack more punch than the 8500 can.
Just wondering, but could you use a Xserve as a normal desktop computer? (All games/programs will run on it, right?) Or does the software limit it to server-type functions?</strong><hr></blockquote>
You wouldn't want to run it as a desktop. It has redundent power supplies, which I suppose you could only have one powered but... There are huge fans in it. All servers are loud, in my experience, even the 1ru ones.
I'd say that you should see many of the same technologies moved into the powermac, probably the same mother board, saves money for Apple to consolidate. You won't have hot swappable drives, but you won't need that for a desktop anyway.
The next PowerMacs, should essentially be xServes without some of the server related hardware.
<strong> . . . considering ATI wrote all the drivers from the ground up and thus probably developed on pc/mac simultaneously.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I installed the July ATI drivers [on G4/533/Radeon] and the change was astounding 50% increase in 2-D and 3-D frame rates. It's a whole new machine
Of course, this speaks both for how good the new drivers are, and how bad the previous versions were.
Comments
<strong>NV30 won't be out until very late in the year. ATI's offering will ship before you ever see nVidia's this time.</strong><hr></blockquote>
on the PC maybe. don't forget to add 3-4 months onto your mac Radeon ETA.
<strong>on the PC maybe. don't forget to add 3-4 months onto your mac Radeon ETA.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, I tought I saw ATI saying this time they will release it for both platforms at the same time. Which sounds believable, considering ATI wrote all the drivers from the ground up and thus probably developed on pc/mac simultaneously.
Anyhow, let's wait and see!
<strong>
That certainly helps -- especially in getting around the AGP bottleneck. Depending on the kind of geometry work being done, and how well the app&driver are coded, it is possible for the hardware to reach across the AGP bus and read the geometry straight out of memory so that the CPU doesn't have to do any of the work. An Xserve style architecture is great for this since the GPU can use all of that extra bandwidth that the G4 can't use... without getting in the way of the G4.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
It is important to remember that your GPU having all that extra bandwidth is something of a poor consolation prize for the fact that the CPU's are not able to take full advantage of the bus. I for one would greatly prefer to not have such a situation. Yes, it is nice to know, but I would prefer to have a CPU that was not limited by its bus.
The cards should be out about the same time as the PC version. I know that they already have the 9000 Pro listed at places like MacMall.
This is great news because we'll have the high-end option from both ATI & nVidia, plus I love to see competition. Also, we can't really go out and buy retail GF4 Ti cards (I haven't even heard of any flashing being done with these cards). ATI has a great product on their hands in the R300 (Radeon 9700).
The 9000 Pro looks to be a GF4 MX killer, but I'm not sure if it can pack more punch than the 8500 can.
Here's one early review:
<a href="http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1656" target="_blank">http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1656</a>
Specs:
? 0.15-micron GPU
? 110+ million transistors
? 8 pixel rendering pipelines, 1 texture unit per pipeline, can do 16 textures per pass
? 4 programmable vect4 vertex shader pipelines
? 256-bit DDR memory bus
? up to 256MB of memory on board, clocked at over 300MHz (resulting in a minimum of 19.2GB/s of memory bandwidth)
? AGP 8X Support
? Full DX9 Pixel and Vertex Shader Support
? Single Full Speed 165MHz integrated TMDS transmitter
I'm not sure about when OpenGL 1.4 is coming, but I think I heard something about 2.0 being fully programmable?
[ 07-23-2002: Message edited by: TigerWoods99 ]</p>
No. I think that was meant to describe the image compatibility characteristics.. Not the boards..
--
Ed
<strong>
Just wondering, but could you use a Xserve as a normal desktop computer? (All games/programs will run on it, right?) Or does the software limit it to server-type functions?</strong><hr></blockquote>
You wouldn't want to run it as a desktop. It has redundent power supplies, which I suppose you could only have one powered but... There are huge fans in it. All servers are loud, in my experience, even the 1ru ones.
I'd say that you should see many of the same technologies moved into the powermac, probably the same mother board, saves money for Apple to consolidate. You won't have hot swappable drives, but you won't need that for a desktop anyway.
The next PowerMacs, should essentially be xServes without some of the server related hardware.
I agree..the Powermacs should exceed the power of the Xserve which means good things for us!
<strong> . . . considering ATI wrote all the drivers from the ground up and thus probably developed on pc/mac simultaneously.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I installed the July ATI drivers [on G4/533/Radeon] and the change was astounding 50% increase in 2-D and 3-D frame rates. It's a whole new machine
Of course, this speaks both for how good the new drivers are, and how bad the previous versions were.