I want the ATI Radeon 9700 now!
It says on techbargains.com that J&R is getting the ATI Radeon 9700 video card any day now.
I whipped out my credit card and called them but damn! the version they're getting is only for PC's, the Mac version is not even in their system.
I hope its not only going to be sold through the Apple Store as the nVidia Geforce 4Ti is.
I whipped out my credit card and called them but damn! the version they're getting is only for PC's, the Mac version is not even in their system.
I hope its not only going to be sold through the Apple Store as the nVidia Geforce 4Ti is.
Comments
[ 09-04-2002: Message edited by: Bodhi ]</p>
<strong>So should I get the 9700 or wait for nividia's next card? I do mostly photoshop work and have the GF4MX inmmy dual gig.</strong><hr></blockquote>
If you're doing mostly Photoshop work, the card you have is more than adequate.
The NV30 will be better than the 9700, but it will be like comparing the 4Ti to the 8500... yes its better in most ways, but not enough better to really make a difference. Both the 9700 and NV30 are significantly faster than the 4Ti and 8500, however. They support both AGP 4x and 8x so current Macs can use them.
As for using these cards with Photoshop: the speed improvement won't be that significant since PS does all of its real work on the CPU. I wonder, however, if they will eventually implement some of their algorithms using the OpenGL shaders (the 9700 & NV30 have the necessary capability)... then you will see a big speed boost on those cards. I don't know if Adobe is looking at that, but they should be.
"The NV30 will be better than the 9700, but it will be like comparing the 4Ti to the 8500... yes its better in most ways, but not enough better to really make a difference. Both the 9700 and NV30 are significantly faster than the 4Ti and 8500, however. They support both AGP 4x and 8x so current Macs can use them."
Sorry to butt in, but how can you compare the 9700, a shipping product, to the nv30, a paper product that nobody knows when it will ship? Just because the nv30 is to be a .13 micron chip means nothing in terms of competitive performance. Internal design plays as much a part in the final performance as does the actual fabrication technology. The fact ATI hasn't announced the MAC version may mean that ATI is letting Jobs' ego get first crack at announcing it.
<strong>Programmer,
"The NV30 will be better than the 9700, but it will be like comparing the 4Ti to the 8500... yes its better in most ways, but not enough better to really make a difference. Both the 9700 and NV30 are significantly faster than the 4Ti and 8500, however. They support both AGP 4x and 8x so current Macs can use them."
Sorry to butt in, but how can you compare the 9700, a shipping product, to the nv30, a paper product that nobody knows when it will ship? Just because the nv30 is to be a .13 micron chip means nothing in terms of competitive performance. Internal design plays as much a part in the final performance as does the actual fabrication technology. The fact ATI hasn't announced the MAC version may mean that ATI is letting Jobs' ego get first crack at announcing it.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Sometimes people have information about products before they ship.
Jesus....the card requires EXTERNAL power supply! :eek: :eek:
<strong>Just read the preview from Tom's hardware.
Jesus....the card requires EXTERNAL power supply! :eek: :eek: </strong><hr></blockquote>
Nice, eh? The power spec on the standard AGP bus isn't particularly high, that's why AGP Pro was introduced. Unfortunately the Pro variant isn't too common so for the consumer market (which the 9700 and NV30 are targeted at) they have to resort to ugly hacks like powering the cards externally. >sigh< yet another AC converter in the powerbar. I figure its for cards like these that the new PowerMacs have their heavy duty cooling capability.
I noticed that the ATI 9000 Pro card HAS NO FAN. In fact the heat sink on it looks exactly like the small heat sink ATI was putting on the old 16MB 128 Pro cards 2 years ago. Not that a card's fan would make any difference in the volume of the MDD wind tunnel. But just that's one less fan to worry about failing ? expecially on a video card that you wouldn't know had failed until after the processor had MELTED.
I think any time you can get a video card without a fan, you're ahead of the game. Perhaps this is the last of the fanless video cards. I don't pretend to know. But I think anytime engineering can figure out how to cool a card without a fan it's a good thing.
[ 09-08-2002: Message edited by: Multimedia ]</p>
As chip processes shrink continuously, I also see this going on for at least another year.
The release of the NV30 shall be interesting.
G_News