InsideMacGames spoke with ATI regarding the inclusion of the ATI Radeon X1600 series in the new Intel Macs. The new graphics hardware is a welcome boost to Apple's hardware line.
According to ATI, they've been working closely with Apple to get the ATI hardware working alongside the new Intel Macs.
Close work was done alongside Apple during development, and features such as the color depth display engine and the VIVO technology were greatly influenced by Apple's input. It was also a scramble to make sure that all of Apple's professional applications ran with the new ATI hardware in time for the unveiling at Macworld, with the closed firmware of Apple's latest machines making things more difficult.
Meanwhile a Mac running an X1800 graphics card was reportedly on display at ATI's conference room. This card hasn't been officially released for the Mac.
The new X1600 offers accelerated MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and H.264 decoding.
And directly from IMG:
Quote:
Notable facts include the fact that both the Mobility and the standard X1600 use the same driver sets, and that future optimization should be made easier by the fact that both the Mac and PC sides will be using the same basic sets of hardware. When asked about using a PC ATI card in a Mac, however, it was pointed out that the Mac cards still feature different firmware sets as well as use different drivers.
I read that (Without having any tehnical knowledge) it means we still have to buy specific mac boards, but that we'll probably get them a bit closer to the PC-unveiling.. *Sigh*
Well, since it's a GPU in a laptop board, I would have assumed that some redesign of the hardware would have been required, especially since, uh, dunno.
And I don't think Apple had X1600/1800 series drivers prior to this release? That might have been the redesign part of it.
Comments
InsideMacGames spoke with ATI regarding the inclusion of the ATI Radeon X1600 series in the new Intel Macs. The new graphics hardware is a welcome boost to Apple's hardware line.
According to ATI, they've been working closely with Apple to get the ATI hardware working alongside the new Intel Macs.
Close work was done alongside Apple during development, and features such as the color depth display engine and the VIVO technology were greatly influenced by Apple's input. It was also a scramble to make sure that all of Apple's professional applications ran with the new ATI hardware in time for the unveiling at Macworld, with the closed firmware of Apple's latest machines making things more difficult.
Meanwhile a Mac running an X1800 graphics card was reportedly on display at ATI's conference room. This card hasn't been officially released for the Mac.
The new X1600 offers accelerated MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and H.264 decoding.
And directly from IMG:
Notable facts include the fact that both the Mobility and the standard X1600 use the same driver sets, and that future optimization should be made easier by the fact that both the Mac and PC sides will be using the same basic sets of hardware. When asked about using a PC ATI card in a Mac, however, it was pointed out that the Mac cards still feature different firmware sets as well as use different drivers.
I read that (Without having any tehnical knowledge) it means we still have to buy specific mac boards, but that we'll probably get them a bit closer to the PC-unveiling.. *Sigh*
And I don't think Apple had X1600/1800 series drivers prior to this release? That might have been the redesign part of it.
Originally posted by wmf
I think Mactel graphics cards may need an EFI boot ROM, which standard Wintel graphics cards do not have.
I wonder if this problem will be solved once all PCs start using EFI.