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Mac OS X 10.7.3 Beta Drivers Reveal Evidence of New Mac Pros
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FrankMcPartland
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Christian Munoz D
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Jeff Kilgroe
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...And this actually tells us NOTHING about the new Mac Pros. All it tells us is that Apple is showing drivers support for the Radeon 7xxx series. Just as likely that this represents new iMacs too. Really, it could be either.
It's really sad that hooks and clues in beta drivers are suddenly newsworthy about forthcoming products. I suppose that means we're just starved for real news.
It's really sad that hooks and clues in beta drivers are suddenly newsworthy about forthcoming products. I suppose that means we're just starved for real news.
Subhadip Sen
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...And this actually tells us NOTHING about the new Mac Pros. All it tells us is that Apple is showing drivers support for the Radeon 7xxx series. Just as likely that this represents new iMacs too. Really, it could be either.
It's really sad that hooks and clues in beta drivers are suddenly newsworthy about forthcoming products. I suppose that means we're just starved for real news.
Tahiti will be the enthusiast desktop-only chip covering TDPs in the range of 150W to 250W. The only Apple product which can support that is the Mac Pro. Mac Mini, iMac and Macbook Pro all have mid-range laptop class graphics. That said, it does say nothing about a new Mac Pro - just that existing ones might support AMD GPUs based on Tahiti. Even that is a step forward, I think, considering OS X still doesn't officially support what is now a year / generation old GTX 500/HD 6900.
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Jeff Kilgroe
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I thought Tahiti encapsulated all the 7000-series GPUs and not just the desktop models. ?
Subhadip Sen
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The entire 7000 series is Southern Islands. Tahiti is the top enthusiast desktop-only chip (or island...) - which succeeds Cayman / HD 6900. Like Cayman, it will most likely not make it as a laptop GPU. (6990M is Barts, 7990M will be Pitcairn) The laptop parts have a sub-codename London and they are supposed to be announced today in... London.
The last flagship GPU officially supported by OS X was GTX 480, if I am not mistaken, over 18 months back. So Tahiti will be a significant advancement. Here's hoping OpenCL becomes popular among software developers. (particularly Adobe)
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Jeff Kilgroe
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OK, got it.
OSX never supported the GTX 480. There was mention of it in some past beta drivers, but gone with the official releases and no one ever made a GTX480 with a Mac-compliant EFI. It's not too difficult to hack one to work, but you can't take full advantage of the card. What a shame because it was an option many of us were really hoping for, way back when. We'll see what comes of this, the AMD Radeon 7xxx support is pretty much a given anyway, if they update at this point. Not sure what it means for future systems, other than Apple is continuing to support AMD graphics solutions, possibly as their preferred choice, as per usual.
Best video card option right now for the Mac Pro is the Quadro 4000, but at typical street price of about $700USD, it's tough for a lot of people to swallow. And sales are dwindling for the card, and many items related to the Mac Pro, as it seems Apple will update soon or perhaps replace the Mac Pro line with something different.