But it is made for workstation type activities, not consumer ones like the 7300GT.
Mac Pro is not a consumer device.
Besides, an entry level workstation card isn't necessarily that much more powerful than an entry level discrete graphics card. Often, they use the same core design, the difference being a hardware feature or two being enabled for the workstation version, such as hardware clipping planes, and different drivers optimized for different uses. I can't find the info at the moment, but the Quadro NVS 285 may very well have the same GPU as a 7300GT.
But it is made for workstation type activities, not consumer ones like the 7300GT.
No, see this is what I'm asking you to clarify.
For example, what percentage of the Mac Pro buying population uses programs like Photoshop, which doesn't use the graphics card, or for scientific purposes, which don't use the graphics card, as opposed to Maya?
"Workstation activities" by and large have nothing to do with the GPU.
For example, what percentage of the Mac Pro buying population uses programs like Photoshop, which doesn't use the graphics card, or for scientific purposes, which don't use the graphics card, as opposed to Maya?
"Workstation activities" by and large have nothing to do with the GPU.
If that is the case then it would have been a fine base system graphics card, but they should have had a bigger range of card options. The only thing I can say that will put them in a better position in the highend graphics market is that Apple should support both EFI, and BIOS in Leopard. That way their will be a much wider range of cards available to mac users. And it would put them ahead of windows in the graphics department for the first time. It would also keep them ahead because windows does not support EFI. (I know it's like the 3rd time I've said it.)
If that is the case then it would have been a fine base system graphics card, but they should have had a bigger range of card options. The only thing I can say that will put them in a better position in the highend graphics market is that Apple should support both EFI, and BIOS in Leopard. That way their will be a much wider range of cards available to mac users. And it would put them ahead of windows in the graphics department for the first time. It would also keep them ahead because windows does not support EFI. (I know it's like the 3rd time I've said it.)
BIOS isn't the only thing keeping GPUs out of Macs.
Drivers are a major issue, and this comes down entirely to market share. ATI and NVIDIA just don't want to spend more money than is necessary, so they give Apple users the bare minimum of choices. Apple has some great people working on drivers, and so do ATI and NVIDIA, but Apple is really struggling with their OpenGL architecture.
That said, the choices cover the gamut.
A low-end card, a high-end card, a high-end workstation class card. Do you really need that mid-range card? Or the ever-so-slightly faster high-end card? A low-end worksation card? No. Apple picked the cards that would be most useful for most people, and they made a good choice.
I would like to see greater variety of cards, definitely—but from a business perspective, it's probably not a good idea.
Adding more cards will minimally increase sales, but greatly increase confusion and costs.
A low-end card, a high-end card, a high-end workstation class card. Do you really need that mid-range card? Or the ever-so-slightly faster high-end card? A low-end worksation card? No. Apple picked the cards that would be most useful for most people, and they made a good choice.
Aside from getting a little competition, another issue is timeliness, I don't think the ATI is considered a high end card anymore.
I do agree that it is hard to convince card makers to bother, the market is very small with basically only one machine to support it. You'll also see people advocating just flashing a regular PC card to get a Mac card, undercutting that market even farther. I'm surprised that ATI bothered to make a PCI-e card for the PCI-e G5s.
BIOS isn't the only thing keeping GPUs out of Macs.
Drivers are a major issue, and this comes down entirely to market share. ATI and NVIDIA just don't want to spend more money than is necessary, so they give Apple users the bare minimum of choices. Apple has some great people working on drivers, and so do ATI and NVIDIA, but Apple is really struggling with their OpenGL architecture.
That said, the choices cover the gamut.
A low-end card, a high-end card, a high-end workstation class card. Do you really need that mid-range card? Or the ever-so-slightly faster high-end card? A low-end worksation card? No. Apple picked the cards that would be most useful for most people, and they made a good choice.
I would like to see greater variety of cards, definitely—but from a business perspective, it's probably not a good idea.
Adding more cards will minimally increase sales, but greatly increase confusion and costs.
OK, Your last sentence first.
ATI writes their Mac driver, and that driver covers all their cards.
Nvidia gives Apple source code. Apple writes the drivers. Leopards OpenGL is 2.1 which is state of the art and up to date. So I don't see the problem with OpenGL at all.
The problem I have is the single Apple Nvidia Driver for geforce that does not cover the quadro. They don't have a specific Quadro driver. That is Apples problem, They need two Nvidia drivers depending on what card you have installed.
BIOS cards isn't a problem either. If Apple is only going to offer the EFI cards at the site users that want another card (BIOS card) they can get it elsewhere, but that option should be available for them because it gives people freedom of chioce. Again the blanket driver should work for the card weather it be a BIOS Card = GeForce 7950 GX2, or EFI Card= GeForce 8800 GTX, (Geforce driver), or a BIOS Card = NVIDIA Quadro® FX 4500 X2, or EFI Card = NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600, (Quadro Drivers).
Where is the problem in that? Apple will still only have to offer the choice of 3 cards. All they need is one additional driver that gets detected by software update and downloaded specific to the type of card in their machine. Apple should have a graphics development team working on graphics, and OpenGL all the time anyway.
ATI writes their Mac driver, and that driver covers all their cards.
Nvidia gives Apple source code. Apple writes the drivers. Leopards OpenGL is 2.1 which is state of the art and up to date. So I don't see the problem with OpenGL at all.
The problem I have is the single Apple Nvidia Driver for geforce that does not cover the quadro. They don't have a specific Quadro driver. That is Apples problem, They need two Nvidia drivers depending on what card you have installed.
BIOS cards isn't a problem either. If Apple is only going to offer the EFI cards at the site users that want another card (BIOS card) they can get it elsewhere, but that option should be available for them because it gives people freedom of chioce. Again the blanket driver should work for the card weather it be a BIOS Card = GeForce 7950 GX2, or EFI Card= GeForce 8800 GTX, (Geforce driver), or a BIOS Card = NVIDIA Quadro® FX 4500 X2, or EFI Card = NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600, (Quadro Drivers).
Where is the problem in that? Apple will still only have to offer the choice of 3 cards. All they need is one additional driver that gets detected by software update and downloaded specific to the type of card in their machine. Apple should have a graphics development team working on graphics, and OpenGL all the time anyway.
With Leopard's Open Gl 2.1, it begins to look like Apple might actually be starting to put their back into 3d and Open GL.
They're on the Open GL development board/team?
Another intriguing development with Open GL was that the 'standards body' became home to some 'mobile' organisation? (Appleinsider news story I'm too lazy to look up...) which is certainly intriguing considering the iPhone?
With 100 million iPhones/iPods sold in the next several years? Open GL is in no danger of being a redundant player vs Direct X.
But, in a workstation? the 7600GT should be the least we should expect. The 7300 is pathetic. Pathetic. Sorry, PATHETIC in a 1700 quid machine. The use of 3D is growing ever more important. OS level, core image, core video, core animation...games...etc. The days of '2D only crappy cards' and 'Quickdraw 3d' and Rage 16 Ati cards are, thankfully, consigned to Apple's equivalent of the 3d 'dark ages'.
Not so much the Octo, Onlooker, but the rest of the range? It is no update.
It's a mere drop in at the top.
For that kind of money? I want 2 gigs of ram standard. 500 gig HD. A 8800 card or R600.
By the time the cards become available. By the time Leopard is available. By the time it's patched. By the time they ship? Penryn will be imminent. In truth. The 'Mac Pro' has had no update since last year. I'm waiting until Post June to see what the Mac landscape is.
But no mistake. After 7 years of waiting? The Octo machine is the Mac of my dreams. But I want that with 2 gigs of ram, a 500 gig hd and a RD600/8800 to go. I'll be buying this year. A mere 3-4 months longer is of no consequence to me.
With Leopard's Open Gl 2.1, it begins to look like Apple might actually be starting to put their back into 3d and Open GL.
They're on the Open GL development board/team?
Another intriguing development with Open GL was that the 'standards body' became home to some 'mobile' organisation? (Appleinsider news story I'm too lazy to look up...) which is certainly intriguing considering the iPhone?
With 100 million iPhones/iPods sold in the next several years? Open GL is in no danger of being a redundant player vs Direct X.
But, in a workstation? the 7600GT should be the least we should expect. The 7300 is pathetic. Pathetic. Sorry, PATHETIC in a 1700 quid machine. The use of 3D is growing ever more important. OS level, core image, core video, core animation...games...etc. The days of '2D only crappy cards' and 'Quickdraw 3d' and Rage 16 Ati cards are, thankfully, consigned to Apple's equivalent of the 3d 'dark ages'.
Yup Apple is there at a high level. Direct X is solid but it hasn't gotten enough traction outside of gaming to supplant OpenGL which now has the shader language support to compete more effectively in version 2.1.
As you might know, the ARB is planning a lot for 2007. We're hard at work on not one, but two, OpenGL specification revisions code named "OpenGL Longs Peak" and "OpenGL Mount Evans."
Longs Peak represents the first major API revision in OpenGL's lifetime. It consists of a refactoring of the way that OpenGL works, from the object model to shaders. To support backwards compatibility, all of the old API will still be available. However, no new functionality will be exposed via the old API in later versions of OpenGL. The timeframe for the release of the Longs Peak is set for summer of 2007.
Mt Evans builds upon the work done in Longs Peak, adding new graphics hardware features like geometry shaders, instanced rendering, and other Direct3D 10 functionality. Similar functionality has already been provided via extensions against the 2.1 specification, but Mt Evans will bring these extensions to the Longs Peak API. The timeframe for the release of Mt Evans is October 2007.
Looks like Think Secret is onto some Open GL improvements.
But, for a while now, Open GL has needed a good shake of the neck on the Mac version to compete more directly in PC games. It removes another barrier to the Mac as the premier gaming platform.
hmurchison that is some pretty spectacular news IMO for OGL. Those dates seem pretty ambitious. Are they almost done with those or something?
Those dates are just for the specification release. It's up to Apple, NVIDIA, ATI, et al. to actually implement it, which may take another few years.
But it is spectacular. OpenGL is really crusty, there's about 3 or 4 conflicting design ideologies throughout, and too many reduntant/useless ways of doing anything (VBO/VAR/immediate mode). This is very well-timed.
Well, the HD2800XT is basically a whole generation above and beyond the Nvidia 8800 series. At last some good news from AMD/ATI. No wonder this thing is rumored to use 240W, it a beast however you look at it!!!!
Well, the HD2800XT is basically a whole generation above and beyond the Nvidia 8800 series. At last some good news from AMD/ATI. No wonder this thing is rumored to use 240W, it a beast however you look at it!!!!
the XT version is due out May with the XTX version due out about a month after, according to DailyTech the XTX (ultimate) version has become a bit of a flop against the Nvidia 8800GTX, while the XT version is better than the 8800GTS.
Im quite disappointed that something so late is beaten by nvidia's 10 month old release, but the good news is that it will probably mean both the 8800 and R600 are quite affordable as AMD have said the XTX will be level with the 8800 series - which will probably reduce in price a bit once the competition arrives
Not so much the Octo, Onlooker, but the rest of the range? It is no update.
It's a mere drop in at the top.
For that kind of money? I want 2 gigs of ram standard. 500 gig HD. A 8800 card or R600.
By the time the cards become available. By the time Leopard is available. By the time it's patched. By the time they ship? Penryn will be imminent. In truth. The 'Mac Pro' has had no update since last year. I'm waiting until Post June to see what the Mac landscape is.
But no mistake. After 7 years of waiting? The Octo machine is the Mac of my dreams. But I want that with 2 gigs of ram, a 500 gig hd and a RD600/8800 to go. I'll be buying this year. A mere 3-4 months longer is of no consequence to me.
Lemon Bon Bon
would agree with that.
I am in the market for a new mac, and have made the decision to sod the iMac and plump for a baseline mac pro, then gonna buy some memory from crucial as i aint paying apples prices for RAM.
personally not too fussed about the hard disk but think it is definately about time they made 2GB Ram the standard and offered a better graphics card than the Nvidia 7300.
Hopefully they will have some form of update in the near future RE these options, if only to tide it over untill penryn hits.
Well, the HD2800XT is basically a whole generation above and beyond the Nvidia 8800 series. At last some good news from AMD/ATI. No wonder this thing is rumored to use 240W, it a beast however you look at it!!!!
Unfortunately, it didn't really work out that way.
Comments
But it is made for workstation type activities, not consumer ones like the 7300GT.
Mac Pro is not a consumer device.
Besides, an entry level workstation card isn't necessarily that much more powerful than an entry level discrete graphics card. Often, they use the same core design, the difference being a hardware feature or two being enabled for the workstation version, such as hardware clipping planes, and different drivers optimized for different uses. I can't find the info at the moment, but the Quadro NVS 285 may very well have the same GPU as a 7300GT.
But it is made for workstation type activities, not consumer ones like the 7300GT.
No, see this is what I'm asking you to clarify.
For example, what percentage of the Mac Pro buying population uses programs like Photoshop, which doesn't use the graphics card, or for scientific purposes, which don't use the graphics card, as opposed to Maya?
"Workstation activities" by and large have nothing to do with the GPU.
No, see this is what I'm asking you to clarify.
For example, what percentage of the Mac Pro buying population uses programs like Photoshop, which doesn't use the graphics card, or for scientific purposes, which don't use the graphics card, as opposed to Maya?
"Workstation activities" by and large have nothing to do with the GPU.
If that is the case then it would have been a fine base system graphics card, but they should have had a bigger range of card options. The only thing I can say that will put them in a better position in the highend graphics market is that Apple should support both EFI, and BIOS in Leopard. That way their will be a much wider range of cards available to mac users. And it would put them ahead of windows in the graphics department for the first time. It would also keep them ahead because windows does not support EFI. (I know it's like the 3rd time I've said it.)
If that is the case then it would have been a fine base system graphics card, but they should have had a bigger range of card options. The only thing I can say that will put them in a better position in the highend graphics market is that Apple should support both EFI, and BIOS in Leopard. That way their will be a much wider range of cards available to mac users. And it would put them ahead of windows in the graphics department for the first time. It would also keep them ahead because windows does not support EFI. (I know it's like the 3rd time I've said it.)
BIOS isn't the only thing keeping GPUs out of Macs.
Drivers are a major issue, and this comes down entirely to market share. ATI and NVIDIA just don't want to spend more money than is necessary, so they give Apple users the bare minimum of choices. Apple has some great people working on drivers, and so do ATI and NVIDIA, but Apple is really struggling with their OpenGL architecture.
That said, the choices cover the gamut.
A low-end card, a high-end card, a high-end workstation class card. Do you really need that mid-range card? Or the ever-so-slightly faster high-end card? A low-end worksation card? No. Apple picked the cards that would be most useful for most people, and they made a good choice.
I would like to see greater variety of cards, definitely—but from a business perspective, it's probably not a good idea.
Adding more cards will minimally increase sales, but greatly increase confusion and costs.
A low-end card, a high-end card, a high-end workstation class card. Do you really need that mid-range card? Or the ever-so-slightly faster high-end card? A low-end worksation card? No. Apple picked the cards that would be most useful for most people, and they made a good choice.
Aside from getting a little competition, another issue is timeliness, I don't think the ATI is considered a high end card anymore.
I do agree that it is hard to convince card makers to bother, the market is very small with basically only one machine to support it. You'll also see people advocating just flashing a regular PC card to get a Mac card, undercutting that market even farther. I'm surprised that ATI bothered to make a PCI-e card for the PCI-e G5s.
BIOS isn't the only thing keeping GPUs out of Macs.
Drivers are a major issue, and this comes down entirely to market share. ATI and NVIDIA just don't want to spend more money than is necessary, so they give Apple users the bare minimum of choices. Apple has some great people working on drivers, and so do ATI and NVIDIA, but Apple is really struggling with their OpenGL architecture.
That said, the choices cover the gamut.
A low-end card, a high-end card, a high-end workstation class card. Do you really need that mid-range card? Or the ever-so-slightly faster high-end card? A low-end worksation card? No. Apple picked the cards that would be most useful for most people, and they made a good choice.
I would like to see greater variety of cards, definitely—but from a business perspective, it's probably not a good idea.
Adding more cards will minimally increase sales, but greatly increase confusion and costs.
OK, Your last sentence first.
ATI writes their Mac driver, and that driver covers all their cards.
Nvidia gives Apple source code. Apple writes the drivers. Leopards OpenGL is 2.1 which is state of the art and up to date. So I don't see the problem with OpenGL at all.
The problem I have is the single Apple Nvidia Driver for geforce that does not cover the quadro. They don't have a specific Quadro driver. That is Apples problem, They need two Nvidia drivers depending on what card you have installed.
BIOS cards isn't a problem either. If Apple is only going to offer the EFI cards at the site users that want another card (BIOS card) they can get it elsewhere, but that option should be available for them because it gives people freedom of chioce. Again the blanket driver should work for the card weather it be a BIOS Card = GeForce 7950 GX2, or EFI Card= GeForce 8800 GTX, (Geforce driver), or a BIOS Card = NVIDIA Quadro® FX 4500 X2, or EFI Card = NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600, (Quadro Drivers).
Where is the problem in that? Apple will still only have to offer the choice of 3 cards. All they need is one additional driver that gets detected by software update and downloaded specific to the type of card in their machine. Apple should have a graphics development team working on graphics, and OpenGL all the time anyway.
OK, Your last sentence first.
ATI writes their Mac driver, and that driver covers all their cards.
Nvidia gives Apple source code. Apple writes the drivers. Leopards OpenGL is 2.1 which is state of the art and up to date. So I don't see the problem with OpenGL at all.
The problem I have is the single Apple Nvidia Driver for geforce that does not cover the quadro. They don't have a specific Quadro driver. That is Apples problem, They need two Nvidia drivers depending on what card you have installed.
BIOS cards isn't a problem either. If Apple is only going to offer the EFI cards at the site users that want another card (BIOS card) they can get it elsewhere, but that option should be available for them because it gives people freedom of chioce. Again the blanket driver should work for the card weather it be a BIOS Card = GeForce 7950 GX2, or EFI Card= GeForce 8800 GTX, (Geforce driver), or a BIOS Card = NVIDIA Quadro® FX 4500 X2, or EFI Card = NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600, (Quadro Drivers).
Where is the problem in that? Apple will still only have to offer the choice of 3 cards. All they need is one additional driver that gets detected by software update and downloaded specific to the type of card in their machine. Apple should have a graphics development team working on graphics, and OpenGL all the time anyway.
Amen.
Lemon Bon Bon.
They're on the Open GL development board/team?
Another intriguing development with Open GL was that the 'standards body' became home to some 'mobile' organisation? (Appleinsider news story I'm too lazy to look up...) which is certainly intriguing considering the iPhone?
With 100 million iPhones/iPods sold in the next several years? Open GL is in no danger of being a redundant player vs Direct X.
But, in a workstation? the 7600GT should be the least we should expect. The 7300 is pathetic. Pathetic. Sorry, PATHETIC in a 1700 quid machine. The use of 3D is growing ever more important. OS level, core image, core video, core animation...games...etc. The days of '2D only crappy cards' and 'Quickdraw 3d' and Rage 16 Ati cards are, thankfully, consigned to Apple's equivalent of the 3d 'dark ages'.
Lemon Bon Bon
It's a mere drop in at the top.
For that kind of money? I want 2 gigs of ram standard. 500 gig HD. A 8800 card or R600.
By the time the cards become available. By the time Leopard is available. By the time it's patched. By the time they ship? Penryn will be imminent. In truth. The 'Mac Pro' has had no update since last year. I'm waiting until Post June to see what the Mac landscape is.
But no mistake. After 7 years of waiting? The Octo machine is the Mac of my dreams. But I want that with 2 gigs of ram, a 500 gig hd and a RD600/8800 to go. I'll be buying this year. A mere 3-4 months longer is of no consequence to me.
Lemon Bon Bon
With Leopard's Open Gl 2.1, it begins to look like Apple might actually be starting to put their back into 3d and Open GL.
They're on the Open GL development board/team?
Another intriguing development with Open GL was that the 'standards body' became home to some 'mobile' organisation? (Appleinsider news story I'm too lazy to look up...) which is certainly intriguing considering the iPhone?
With 100 million iPhones/iPods sold in the next several years? Open GL is in no danger of being a redundant player vs Direct X.
But, in a workstation? the 7600GT should be the least we should expect. The 7300 is pathetic. Pathetic. Sorry, PATHETIC in a 1700 quid machine. The use of 3D is growing ever more important. OS level, core image, core video, core animation...games...etc. The days of '2D only crappy cards' and 'Quickdraw 3d' and Rage 16 Ati cards are, thankfully, consigned to Apple's equivalent of the 3d 'dark ages'.
Lemon Bon Bon
http://www.khronos.org/members/promoters/
Yup Apple is there at a high level. Direct X is solid but it hasn't gotten enough traction outside of gaming to supplant OpenGL which now has the shader language support to compete more effectively in version 2.1.
"Longs Peak" is next. http://www.opengl.org/pipeline/article/vol003_1/
As you might know, the ARB is planning a lot for 2007. We're hard at work on not one, but two, OpenGL specification revisions code named "OpenGL Longs Peak" and "OpenGL Mount Evans."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL#Longs_Peak_Details
Longs Peak represents the first major API revision in OpenGL's lifetime. It consists of a refactoring of the way that OpenGL works, from the object model to shaders. To support backwards compatibility, all of the old API will still be available. However, no new functionality will be exposed via the old API in later versions of OpenGL. The timeframe for the release of the Longs Peak is set for summer of 2007.
Mt Evans builds upon the work done in Longs Peak, adding new graphics hardware features like geometry shaders, instanced rendering, and other Direct3D 10 functionality. Similar functionality has already been provided via extensions against the 2.1 specification, but Mt Evans will bring these extensions to the Longs Peak API. The timeframe for the release of Mt Evans is October 2007.
DirectX better watch out. OpenGL is coming.
Looks like Think Secret is onto some Open GL improvements.
But, for a while now, Open GL has needed a good shake of the neck on the Mac version to compete more directly in PC games. It removes another barrier to the Mac as the premier gaming platform.
Lemon Bon Bon
It's nice, as a non-developer, to know what Open GL is up to.
Lemon Bon Bon
hmurchison that is some pretty spectacular news IMO for OGL. Those dates seem pretty ambitious. Are they almost done with those or something?
Those dates are just for the specification release. It's up to Apple, NVIDIA, ATI, et al. to actually implement it, which may take another few years.
But it is spectacular. OpenGL is really crusty, there's about 3 or 4 conflicting design ideologies throughout, and too many reduntant/useless ways of doing anything (VBO/VAR/immediate mode). This is very well-timed.
http://www.dailytech.com/ATI+Release...rticle6903.htm
Well, the HD2800XT is basically a whole generation above and beyond the Nvidia 8800 series. At last some good news from AMD/ATI. No wonder this thing is rumored to use 240W, it a beast however you look at it!!!!
http://www.dailytech.com/ATI+Release...rticle6903.htm
Any new dirt on when this will be out ?
Any new dirt on when this will be out ?
the XT version is due out May with the XTX version due out about a month after, according to DailyTech the XTX (ultimate) version has become a bit of a flop against the Nvidia 8800GTX, while the XT version is better than the 8800GTS.
Im quite disappointed that something so late is beaten by nvidia's 10 month old release, but the good news is that it will probably mean both the 8800 and R600 are quite affordable as AMD have said the XTX will be level with the 8800 series - which will probably reduce in price a bit once the competition arrives
Not so much the Octo, Onlooker, but the rest of the range? It is no update.
It's a mere drop in at the top.
For that kind of money? I want 2 gigs of ram standard. 500 gig HD. A 8800 card or R600.
By the time the cards become available. By the time Leopard is available. By the time it's patched. By the time they ship? Penryn will be imminent. In truth. The 'Mac Pro' has had no update since last year. I'm waiting until Post June to see what the Mac landscape is.
But no mistake. After 7 years of waiting? The Octo machine is the Mac of my dreams. But I want that with 2 gigs of ram, a 500 gig hd and a RD600/8800 to go. I'll be buying this year. A mere 3-4 months longer is of no consequence to me.
Lemon Bon Bon
would agree with that.
I am in the market for a new mac, and have made the decision to sod the iMac and plump for a baseline mac pro, then gonna buy some memory from crucial as i aint paying apples prices for RAM.
personally not too fussed about the hard disk but think it is definately about time they made 2GB Ram the standard and offered a better graphics card than the Nvidia 7300.
Hopefully they will have some form of update in the near future RE these options, if only to tide it over untill penryn hits.
Well, the HD2800XT is basically a whole generation above and beyond the Nvidia 8800 series. At last some good news from AMD/ATI. No wonder this thing is rumored to use 240W, it a beast however you look at it!!!!
Unfortunately, it didn't really work out that way.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7052