ATI Mac Radeon Vs PC Version

mac xmac x
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Okay I am kind of new here so this question may have been asked before.

But why is a Mac edition radeon video card with 64mb at least 100.00(267.00) dollars more than a radeon card for the pc( 160.00) with double the memory?



I mean it seems to me that Apple , other than the cpu componet, has adopted most of the industries hardware that peecee users have....ie ata drives usb memory..etc!!!



So why do we have to still make sure that a video card you see in a store has to be a mac edition?



To me all that would be required is to check the AGP and Monitor connector compatibility, install, and then download needed drivers.

Gee I wonder why ATi is almost nonexsistant on the apple store?

Okay..... I'll stop venting

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    tigerwoods99tigerwoods99 Posts: 2,633member
    Hey. The PC Radeon 8500 can be flashed to work on a Mac. I suggest you check out <a href="http://www.xlr8yourmac.com"; target="_blank">www.xlr8yourmac.com</a> and the message board at <a href="http://www.macnn.com"; target="_blank">www.macnn.com</a> (thread about this is in the PowerMac section) to find out instructions on how to do this. You have to get the retail 64 MB version (some success with 128 MB version but it's more risky.
  • Reply 2 of 6
    allenchristopherallenchristopher Posts: 135member
    Macs do arithmetic differently than PCs.



    Imagine that you and a friend are trying to run a business together. Tax-time comes, and you both hit the books to add everything up, but you're in for a big surprise. You write one thousand three hundred and four as 1304.00. Your friend writes it as 00.4031. You can do the books together, but either one of you is going to have to switch ways, in which case whoever switches is going to be unused to the other system and is likely to go slower and make more mistakes, or you can split the work and flip one person's figures after it's all done. Either way you've got issues.



    That's exactly how the Intel and Macintosh processors are. It's called having a different endianness. So for Apple computers to use PC parts, some decision has to be made about how to handle the conflict. The card companies could put this information in the driver, but the driver would tie up CPU resources making the changes, so instead the changes are made directly in the firmware of the card, which was already designed to be changeable in case issues came up on the Windows machines. The extra steps still make the Mac firmware a little slower, though, and the Mac cards aren't in such demand that Ati or nVidia can charge the same low price. The development of the Mac drivers has to be paid for by the Mac community, whereas the PC community can spread the development cost across more buyers. The same goes for the cost of shutting down the assembly line and switching it to make Mac-flashed cards for a little while.



    Then the card goes to Apple, and Apple dumps a part of the total cost of its research and development on all its products. Apple does an amazing amount of research, far more than Dell, Gateway, Compaq and the rest. IBM does more research than Apple, but IBM mostly explores the boundaries of known science, not consumer products.



    Jobs likes to have all the patents and information he needs so that when a trend appears on the horizon, like MP3 players or WiFi, Apple's engineers can whip one up faster and better than anybody else. After so many years of Jobs back at the helm, Apple's renewed research is starting to change Apple from a PC maker to a modern Edison laboratory again, as the counter-balances on the iMac's screen show. If the engineers at Apple didn't have plenty of time for playing, Apple couldn't have made the new iMac. Better, if NeXT hadn't made Cocoa and a host of other technologies, we wouldn't have OS X.



    Apple funds that market-readiness and all that intellectual property by charging computer novices double for BTO RAM installed at the factory, by upcharging everybody on video cards, and on everything else. It's not cheating, though. Apple grosses more per item, but nets about the same relative to its market share as other distributors.
  • Reply 3 of 6
    mac xmac x Posts: 9member
    Tiger! .............Thanks for the web info; however, that flashing business sounds too risky. Flashing a card while your hoping not to have any glitch while your engaged in that procedure gives me the "hee-bee gee-bees". My computer has had no hickups at all and I would like to keep it that way.



    All I really wanted was an explanation and it seems that for the most part "Allen" answered that. I never knew that Apple was behind much of the extra pricing.

    Which make one think!... isn't R&D research already incorporated into the higher priced Apple computer line?



    Again! thanks for all responses.
  • Reply 4 of 6
    rogue27rogue27 Posts: 607member
    The card needs a different BIOS for Mac and PC.



    I believe some nVidia cards have Mac and PC BIOS on them and it detects what type of computer it's in...



    ...but I'm not sure about that.



    Anyway, ATI doesn't do that. It would be nice if they charged prices that were closer together though.
  • Reply 5 of 6
    tigerwoods99tigerwoods99 Posts: 2,633member
    You can try eBay for already flashed ones.
  • Reply 6 of 6
    yurin8oryurin8or Posts: 120member
    [quote]Originally posted by Mac X:

    <strong>

    I mean it seems to me that Apple , other than the cpu componet, has adopted most of the industries hardware that peecee users have....ie ata drives usb memory..etc!!!

    </strong><hr></blockquote>



    Apple innovates through software and soft/hard intregration...not through hardware alone. It is completely reliant on the pc-centric component industry to drive its own hardware.



    Should you be suprised that you pay more for esssentially the same hardware (radeon card)? No.
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