Forums | MacLife

Snow Leopard is going to be $30, so it's not that big of a deal to get the computer now.

As for the graphics cards, you aren't going to be able to find a good deal on a Mac video card. There's no place where you can get a price comparable to the same card on the PC. For example, the Radeon 4870 for the Mac costs $350, while you can get one for the PC with twice the VRAM for $150. (and even when shopping around the price doesn't improve for the Mac card) However, some cards you can flash the PC firmware on the card with the Mac firmware. Others here have some experience with that, so perhaps they can help you. However, you might need a PC to do that, so you might be out of luck if you don't have one handy. If you don't have that option, then might as well configure the computer with the graphics card you want since at least the price for the stock graphics card will count towards the upgraded one.

CG5Addict wrote:

O.K. after months and months of saying I'm getting a new Mac Pro and just when I do have enough money in the bank something stupid comes, I finally saved enough money to buy one.

Question 1: Should I wait till snow Leopard till I buy??

Question 2:  I wanna game also, should I buy it with one of apple installed Graphics cards or go aftermarket?

As with any Mac tower, preinstalled tend to be lackluster. I'd opt for a BTO upgrade even if it costs more. But I dunno if you'd want to. Mac gaming is zombified atm and running on WoW fumes. Unless you'd plan to bootcamp Vista or 7 .

I'd be sure there is titles you want first. If its just dated games and a few titles then you have to consider if your $$$ is better spent on something else.

Bat wrote:

Boot Camp is definitely the best option, but IIRC Cee won't do MS, at all. There are a few major current titles for OSX, but they are few and far between. Best to see what's available and if it's worth it.

FWIW Newegg still has OEM copies of XP. OTOH Vista isn't much more, and includes a free W7 Upgrade coupon.

You can get a 4870/512M now for under $130, and 4770s seem to be finally increasing in the channel, i.e. available.

Well, Here are all of what I was (before reading the post) going to buy:

A Mac Pro with

Two 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon   

6GB (6x1GB) -  I know I can buy memory cheaper.

2 640GB Hard drives

ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Two SuperDrives   

AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi Card

and a AppleCare Protection Plan

Total: $6,498.00

So... let me know if there is anything on this list I can buy after market cheaper.                                                                                                                                                                                                               
BTW Bat, I did get a XBox 360 (off Ebay). Could not resist playing Gears of War 1 & 2.

Plus now that I live with my new girlfriend seems like I'm gonna have to start up Boot camp.

She has software for Radiology that only runs on a PC. Plus I decided to change my career, so I went back to school. I now go to Devry to get a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Computer Technology (ECT). I started last month and the software they are going to give me when I start my lab classes they say it will only run on a PC running windows XP or Vista. Don't know about windows 7, for now I'll assume their software will. So.. as much as I hate having to use windows software on my computer, I'm going to have to do it. Hopefully it won't crash my computer.

My other option is getting a MacBook Pro since I'll be using my mac also for school and would most likely when my lab classes start will have to use a computer there. They give you a laptop to keep (not really give) I know it's part of the cost of the tuition, and most likely it will be a P.O.S .

Here's the laptop I'm considering on buying:

A MacBook Pro 17-inch with Hi-Resolution Glossy Widescreen Display. (Is their Antiglare Widescreen Display worth the extra $50?)

3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

8GB RAM (only thinking of buying this from Apple since I really don't wanna open the laptop)

Their 7200 rpm 500GB Hard Drive 

and of course the AppleCare Protection Plan.

Total: $4,198.00
or      $4,248.00 with Antiglare Widescreen Display.

So... any and all help is appreciated on making this decision on what to (or not to buy)  at the Apple Store.
I'm Buying it online. BTW, I have a spending cap of $7000
                                                                                                               Thanks

The 285 stuff, with recent results, new post:

http://www.maclife.com/forums/topic/112160

http://www.maclife.com/forums/post/1677988#p1677988

Bat wrote:

Well, first off- what's the display to be? That'll influence both the budget and choice of videocard (more pixels, more card needed). Apple's 4870 is only the 512MB model- CTO is considerably cheaper than kit, but if you'll be driving a 30" display, a 1GB card is much better, even for general use. I see Steve seems to have the exclusive; ATi only offers the 3870 Mac/PC at retail- no 4870, 4890, 4870x2. Anyway the next gen is coming up soon, at least from ATi; but when Apple will update also is always a guess. If you must go 30" and now, the recent (for Mac) NV GTX 285 would seem to be choice (more expensive, too, and DX10.0, when DX11 is close. This'll eat your upgrade budget for some time).

Second, besides work use, what games do you have eyes for? That'll bear on system choices; there are still a few that challenge any current machine, especially at top settings.

First : I brought a Gateway 22"  LCD Computer Monitor, I believe (don't have a box to look at) is Resolution 1680 x 1050.

Second: Did they ever bring ever put out a Unreal tournament 3 for mac??
Have not looked into other games since I have a XBox.

akb825 wrote:

Nope, Windows only. It didn't do very well, so don't expect it to ever come to Mac... If you're adamant to never boot into Windows for games, you pretty much have to prepare yourself for the oxymoron that is Mac gaming.

[Rumour] AMD DX11 Cypress is Radeon HD 5870 & HD 5850

AMD has informed their partners that their upcoming DX11 Cypress cards will be known as Radeon HD 5800 series. Cypress XT is Radeon HD 5870 while Cypress PRO is Radeon HD 5850. The key features of these DX11 cards are :

• 1GB GDDR5 memory
• ATI Eyefinity technology with support for up to three displays
• ATI Stream technology,
• Designed for DirectCompute 5.0 and OpenCL
• Accelerated Video Transcoding (AVT)
• Compliant with DirectX® 11 and earlier revisions
• Supports OpenGL 3.1
• ATI CrossFireX™ multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance6
• ATI Avivo™ HD video and display technology
• Dynamic power management with ATI PowerPlay™ technology
• DL-DVI, DL-DVI, DisplayPort, HDMI
• PCI Express® 2.0 support

The launch will take place in September and retail availability in October, same time as Windows 7 launch. More details later.

http://vr-zone.com/articles/-rumour-amd … l?doc=7469

Other rumors are for $250 & $300 price points, respectively, which sound ballpark. And remember that PCIe 2.0 can supply twice the power thru the mobo- *only* 75w for PCIe 1.0, IIRC, unless I'm confoozling 6 and 8-pin back-card connectors.

SW: TOR has high sysreqs? How 'bout ArmA II or the new flight sim with the amazing physics 'n' grfx? Much more demanding.

(Gee, I think my next PSU will be a supplemental GPU PSU, since my '04 unit is 550w [but has no PCIe connectors]. Now if there were only smaller units like that discontinued 250 watter... :whistle:)

Good stuff from Theo at BSN.

ATI Radeon 5850, 5870, 5870X2 pricing revealed?
9/2/2009 by: Theo Valich

Next week, AMD will reveal its top-to-bottom DirectX 11 lineup, with the top three parts heading out to the stores. As ATI Evergreen family of graphics cards is taking its shape as multiple parts that cover top to bottom of world's PC line-up. As it usually goes, the availability won't be on the same date, but ATI will do a multi-part launch targeting hard availability in the whole world for each part.

We managed to learn some interesting details about the top-end, Radeon 5800 series. Unlike some inaccurate publications that toyed with the name "Radeon 7", the Radeon 5000 series is a natural continuation of trend started with X1K series.

The top dog carries the name Radeon HD 5870X2, and we are talking about single-PCB, dual-GPU card that will retail for cool $599. This is still $50 cheaper than GTX280 at the time of its debut [do you remember the outrageous $649?], but bear in mind that this is a top dog part.

For some odd reason, the $499 bracket will remain without a card. We expect that slot will be filled with a water-cooled edition of 5870, or more likely - 5870X2 once that nVidia launches their competing products. Afore mentioned Radeon HD 5870 is set to go on sale for $379-399, while the cheapest entry into the 5800 series, the Radeon HD 5850 is priced in the $279-299 bracket.

We expect that the first batch of products will come without any MIR [Mail-In-Rebates], so priced at 299-399-599, but with the launch of GT300, market incentives will go into action and this time around, AMD does not want to stop its momentum and wants to rule the roost. According to sources close to the heart of the company, they want to firmly beat nVidia and establish themselves as the kings of GPU market.

Even though the chip is huge, and rotated at a certain angle compared to the organic package [remember ATI R600 GPU?], the yields for RV870 are really good and there should be a significant chunk of chips coming to the market. According to the sources at hand, TSMC significantly improved the yield from the first batch of chips and that should significantly help the margins on these multi-billion parts. Bear in mind that AMD Graphics e.g. ATI is expected to carry the company in consumer segment until the Bulldozer architecture arrives in 2011, so a lot is expected from Evergreen generation. In a way, AMD plans to recapture the crown it took in 2002 with the world's first DirectX 9 parts.

Which brings us to the interesting comparison: in the past seven years, nVidia was the top dog for paired versions of DirectX - 8 [GeForce 3] and 10 [GeForce 8800], while ATI was brilliant in DirectX 9 [Radeon 9700] and looks good for DirectX 11 [Radeon HD 5000]. After all, DirectX 11 is being considered as the key API for the upcoming generation of not just the personal computers, but consoles as well. Whoever wins the "Xbox 3" contract, they will build the part upon the features introduced with DX11, and same thing applies to other consoles on the market, only they will use those features using available Open API's such as OpenGL and OpenCL.

Determination is the key, and AMD wants to beat nVidia badly. [..]

Nice shiny chip pic. 9700 Pro all over again? I'm in... (Well, when $ offer, so...)

Otherwise, w00ts.

Can't really blame them. NV did the exact same thing with the 8800GTS/GTX when they has DX10 parts and ATi did not. The GTS/GTX were very expensive without much of a price drop for nearly a year, and then suddenly when the 3870 was near to release they came out with the GT for a very competitive price.

NightCougar_37 wrote:

Well ATI's 2 series really wasn't competition either.

The 2400/2600 were only intended to compete with the 8400/8600. Chalk up perf deficits to those inert DX10 transistors that never saw action- budgeted, never used.

Between exploding chips, arguably picking the wrong (monolitihic megachip) path, and lack of exerience with the features they wouldn't support back then, NV's paying the price for their '07 gains now, and going forward.

They're only showing GT300 this month. Volume release looks like December, earliest.

Despite the insane res, at least one screen cap showed 2xMSAA being used. That must look smoooooth... anyhow, fine article at BSN:

We visited AMD's HQ in Sunnyvale prior to the event that is taking place on USS Hornet, and discussed the development of this technology with several key executives. AMD's GPG engineering team decided to take a good use of modern display connectivity technologies such as DisplayPort and HDMI and created a line of chips with multiple display pipelines, enabling insane resolutions such as the afore mentioned 7680x3200 pixels. From one side, embedding multiple display pipelines was an "easy task" compared to effort it took to create software side of things. We saw a completely new driver panel which enabled us to change the position of displays in quite an easy way, but more importantly, the Eyefinity driver inserts these new resolutions inside the games [for titles that don't come with hard-coded resolutions]. AMD is promising support for numerous DirectX 9, 10, 10.1 and 11 games. To be clearer, the Eyefinity driver sends a list of supported resolutions by the graphics adapter, neatly adding the new wide resolutions.

If you're a graphics oldtimer like myself, you'll probably like the bit about where this technology comes from: a while ago, Matrox demonstrated Triple-Head Gaming and called it Surround Gaming. The team behind the Surround Gaming utility left Matrox and joined ATI, and started pitching the idea. Unfortunately, the display connectivity technology was just too complicated for high-volume parts, so the idea was on the backburner until "future technologies kick-off". Those future technologies were none other than DisplayPort and HDMI. Back in 2007, when ATI shaped the envelope around R800 hardware, the time was right to start developing "Real Surround Gaming", now called Eyefinity.

Another Canuckistanian company- they're everywhere, they're everywhere! Widescreen in Halo PC with no hack?

Carrell Killebrew shows that his head is smaller than most people think...  ^Big Daddy?^

The end result is impressive; as you can see on the pictures in this article, combining DisplayPort with multiple display pipelines inside the Evergreen chips and an Eyefinity driver - six 30" displays give you a 7680x3200 pixel resolution. The list of Eyefinity-compliant games is quite impressive, and includes games released as far as seven years ago. If an OpenGL engine supports manual resolution input, such as Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Quake or Doom 3 - you can manually set the resolution and play without any patches. We checked several titles, such as World of Warcraft as DirectX 9 game, Left 4 Dead, one unnamed title and DiRT 2 as a DirectX 11 game.

What made our experience great was the fact that all of the games we tested ran perfectly at 60 frames per second [Vsync enabled] while running on a single product from the upcoming Evergreen family. This is a testament of 3D performance that was created by wizards at AMD, no question about it.

The RV870 rumor fest continues

Fudo has posted no fewer than four different RV870 stories on Fudzilla this morning. According to his sources, RV870 cards will be broken up into multiple price segments, with high-end Radeon HD 5870 2GB cards selling for $449, while a 1GB SKU will carry an MSRP of $399. Fudo believes the card will come with 1600 shaders clocked at 825MHz, which will run alongside 1300MHz GDDR5 memory. Expreview has snagged shots of the card (courtesy of Tweakers) from multiple angles. It's basically the same card Chiphell posted photos of last month, minus the annoying watermark of course.

Fudzilla's also posted more info on the 5850. The site claims the card will ship with 1440 shaders (2 SIMD units disabled) clocked at 725MHz, and 1GHz GDDR5 memory. They believe the card will sell for $299.

Fudzilla says the cards will launch on Sept 22nd in the US, and the 23rd for gamers in Europe. A 5870 X2 card should arrive a month later.