Forums | MacLife

IIRC, Neverwinter Nights has an ultra-high-insano texture quality option that requires 256 MB of graphics card VRAM...

I think it's great that ATI decided to do this, and frankly it's a bit surprising, considering they already make a very similar card that's already the undisputed champion of the Mac video card market, and that the Mac market is a small fraction the size of the Windows one (with accordingly less room for different card options). There's always a tiny number of hardcore enthusiasts who'll pay top dollar to get the absolute cutting edge, but normally one would think there wouldn't be quite enough of them to justify offering that cutting edge. ATI must have taken a look at some market numbers and decided otherwise, at least for the moment, just long enough to risk it.

I'm glad. For someone who wants the absolute best possible tech on his or her Mac and is willing to pay for it, this allows one to build a system with no compromises whatsoever - one can get the top card, presumably clocked at the full speed, with the maximum RAM allotment given any version of the card, complete with ATI's full-featured control panel software, and have ADC support. Swanktastic. Nice one, ATI. I just wish I had the money to get a G5, and then to get this card for it.

I can't personally contribute to this card's sales, but I really hope it does well; if it were clearly demonstrated that cardmakers can indeed profit from offering their absolute top of the line on the Mac (as opposed to having "close" versions that offer 90% or 95% or whatever of the performance), I think we'll all benefit from it.

I'm happy a video card manufacturer actually decided to up the video RAM on the card to match the video RAM on the PC version.  It always pissed me off that the cards were usually way more expensive and had half the video RAM.

Personally, I would much rather have seen a version of the 9600PRO.  It would really be nice to actually have the option of buying a quality mid-end card that most of us could actually afford.  At this time the only option we really have are obscenely expensive high-end cards or garbage that is still way over priced.  Thanks for nothing ATi.

Oh, I am so very pleased to see my Radeon 9000 at the bottom of the league table. Kind of a "we knew this ancient card was below spec, but we tried it for a laugh" gesture.

ATI posts PR page on Mac 9800 Pro Special Edition (256MB/ADC + DVI) - In a follow-up to Tuesday's news post, ATI's website now has a press release on the 9800 Pro Mac Special Edition for G5s. (Still nothing there as of this morning on the 9000 based Mac PCI card also shown at MWSF.) List price of the 9800 Pro Special Edition is $469. I thought it might have the higher core/memory clock speeds of the PC 9800 XT version but it doesn't based on the specs in the PR doc vs the XT PC model specs (412/730MHz vs 380/680MHz). Here's a clip from the press release page:

" ...The RADEON 9800 PRO Mac Special Edition has a leading edge 256 MB of ultra fast DDR memory, with 680 MHZ data rate and a core engine speed of 380 MHZ. To facilitate a trouble free upgrade, this new graphics card is supported by drivers included within Macintosh OS X and enables a direct connection with Apple branded displays through dual output ADC and DVI connectors.