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Bat wrote:

ScifiterX wrote:

Even AMD has adopted EFI as a standard. The video cards are still mired in BIOs. Maybe it's just time the video card makers caught the hell up in that in that respect instead of forcing computer makers from requiring that aspect of BIOs compatibility.

The AMD/ATi Radeon 3870, retail card, is a Mac & PC Edition.

Many hard core gamers with Mac Pros run PC games under Windows XP or Vista in their Boot Camp partition. Notice the Radeon HD 38700 is called "Mac & PC Edition." That means it not only works nicely under Windows XP or Vista, but there is driver support for Crossfire mode. We tested this capability using two Radeon HD 3870s. Not only does it work but the Control Center app has an Overdrive features that lets you automatically test your Radeon HD 3870 to see how much it can be overclocked before overheating. Check out our Radeon HD 3870 versus GeForce 8800 GT page running various "PC only" 3D accelerated games.

http://www.barefeats.com/harper17.html

It's be better than if it weren't a midrange card but it's a decent start. If they keep that up and expand into other card ranges it can only be good.

I should repeat that I'd love a shuttle class Mac. I'd also love MXM to not be bullsmurf and chips though.

ScifiterX wrote:

Uh no. All of machines that year had onboard dedicated cards featuring the only chipsets with Mac drivers at the time, the Rage LT, RageII+, Rage Pro & Rage Pro Turbo (upgrades came later). Games were more varied but still about as common as hens teeth and at a later date and higher cost than the PC release.

I was speaking more of an "era" than a specific year, but as a matter of fact, every desktop offered that year featured PCI expansion.  The fact that the dedicated graphics card was built into the motherboard as opposed to a standard card is irrelevant.  Those were very good "cards" for the time, at their respective pricepoints.  In fact, no better alternatives existed (even in the PC world) until much later in the year.  Obviously, upgrades can't exist when the technology is already at its peak.  However, Rag Pro upgrades for older Macs did exist (I had one), and "modern" Mac cards have always been available;  that is until Apple made expansion a luxury feature.  Game selection on the Mac was never on the same level as a PC, but it was much better then that it is now, which is especially remarkable considering that today's market share is several times what it was then.  Driver quality was also much better, and game performance was often as good, and sometimes better than on a PC.  So what the hell went wrong?  There's two scenarios: There's the scenario you suggest, where ATI, NVIDIA, every major game studio, and possibly end users, spontaneously and coincidentally stopped giving a damn about Mac gaming.  The other possibility (the one I propose) is that Apple's removal of expansion from consumer Macs resulted in a domino effect, killing the Mac's video card market (along with good-quality drivers), which in turn, killed the market for modern Mac games.  Parallel to this, Apple has turned to lesser factory graphics options, while preventing compatibility with standard PC cards.  So those are the two cases. Either it's a spontaneous and coincidental tragedy, or Apple is the root cause.

Maybe it's just time the video card makers caught the hell up in that in that respect instead of forcing computer makers from requiring that aspect of BIOs compatibility.

Who cares?  The cards are compatible (so adoption is not impeded), and EFI doesn't even offer any significant advantages over BIOS.  For end-users, EFI primarily offers a more user-friendly interface for changing pre-boot system settings with a mouse and GUI (since it avoids the Real Address Mode restriction).  But Apple doesn't even use EFI in this way.  In fact, the real purpose of EFI is to simplify life for device manufacturers, allowing them to write architecture-independent initialization code for their devices.  Ironically, Apple is using EFI for the opposite purpose, complicating life for device manufacturers to maintain hardware control.

Last edited by Mr. T (2008-08-07 2:01 am)

Yeah, I was thinking of ATI.  But as you observed, even the mighty Voodoo 2 was macified, and even for iMacs! Fun days, indeed.  Oh, don't leave out the Formac cards (still no Voodoo, though).

Last edited by Mr. T (2008-08-07 5:23 pm)

At least they recommended the wired mighty mouse; even if it is a mighty mouse..  They're right about one thing, though: I have been dreaming of owning a gaming rig with an 8800GT (and so I did); I have not, however, dreamt of owning an extreme high-end machine, with ludicrously priced RAM, to achieve my midrange gaming goal.