AMD Intros ATI Radeon HD 3870 for Mac

[malware]

AMD today announced the new ATI Radeon HD 3870 for Mac & PC Edition, delivering the power to go beyond high-definition visual computing for work and play. Optimized exclusively for Apple Mac Pro systems, the ATI Radeon HD 3870 Mac & PC edition can help drive productivity with built-in 256-bit 512MB GDDR4 frame buffer memory and 320 stream processors to deliver maximum performance for graphics-intensive applications such as 3D modeling, animation and games. Users also can expand visual workspace using twin dual-link DVI ports to connect two 30” Apple Cinema HD displays.

http://www.techpowerup.com/img/08-06-13/AMDRadeonHD3870Mac_thm.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/img/08-06-13/AMDRadeonHD3870Mac.jpg)
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“AMD is introducing the ATI Radeon HD 3870 Mac & PC Edition to enhance the Mac experience to maximum levels of 3D gaming and HD performance,” said Matt Skynner, vice president of marketing, Graphics Products Group, AMD. “Mac users demand the best when it comes to HD graphics performance, and the ATI Radeon 3870 Mac & PC Edition is designed to meet and exceed that need by delivering The Ultimate Visual Experience to our customers’ displays.”

Delivers More Power for Professional Applications
Superior performance and visual quality make the ATI Radeon HD 3870 Mac & PC Edition ideal for creative and professional applications on Apple Mac Pro systems, including Aperture, Motion and Final Cut Studio. Users can take advantage of the latest graphics features and drive productivity at an extraordinary price.

Advance to the Next Generation of HD Gaming
ATI Radeon HD 3870 Mac & PC Edition takes HD gaming to a whole new level by delivering a superior immersive gaming environment while enhancing overall image quality. The Unified Shader Architecture provides the ultimate in realistic game play experience. With PCI Express 2.0 support, users are now ready for games that demand blisteringly fast throughput. Ultimately, with ATI Radeon HD 3870 Mac & PC Edition, Mac users can enjoy a more complete next-generation gaming experience.

Experience Break-through Efficiency
ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series graphics processors have break-through efficiency, with up to twice the processing performance-per-watt compared to previous generations of high-end AMD graphics processors2. AMD also has added its patented ATI PowerPlay technology to the ATI Radeon HD 3800 series to provide increased control over the graphics processor in multiple power states. With PowerPlay technology, users benefit from dynamic adjustment of clocks and voltages depending on their usage scenario, which allows for a cool and quiet user experience.

With a manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of USD $219, the ATI Radeon HD 3870 Mac & PC Edition is scheduled to be available late June at leading Mac retailers world-wide.

Source: AMD (http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~126569,00.html)

[btarunr]

So how different are these "Mac" cards from PC cards? They look familiar PC-AT sized expansion cards, this one looks like the single-slot (non-Vapor Chamber) made by Sapphire.

[spud107]

so mac retailers can charge double?
edit - the one in pic looks exactly like mine:D

[newtekie1]

http://spherule.com/media/video/switch_parody/switch_dg.mov

Sorry, I just had to. I really don't see what the big deal is really. It is the exact same card as the standard PC version, it just has a special BIOS flashed on it to allow it to work with a Mac, oh and of course the price will be at least double that of a regular HD3870.

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

so buy regular and flash ftw?

[btarunr]

_FBi;836253']so buy regular and flash ftw?

If a mac is all you have, it's FTL, besides, you need a PowerMac. The Mac Desktop won't do.

[UnkAsn93]

Mac's have to be confusing and hard as hell for upgrading. Why apple, why?

Mac hardware ftl

[robodude666]

If a mac is all you have, it's FTL, besides, you need a PowerMac. The Mac Desktop won't do.

Don't you mean Mac Pro? A PowerMac won't work because they are AGP and PCI-X.

Release a PowerMac G5 version! My 9600XT is OLD! I can't even play free unity games on max settings!

[btarunr]

Don't you mean Mac Pro? A PowerMac won't work because they are AGP and PCI-X.

Release a PowerMac G5 version! My 9600XT is OLD! I can't even play free unity games on max settings!

My bad :o

Yes, I was referring to Mac Pro, the x86 tower Mac. The only thing that keeps it away from being a PC is its TPM. :laugh:

[thebeephaha]

Wow bash on Apple a little more guys... :shadedshu Mac Bashers FTL

Remember Apple is not really for gaming, it is usually for A/V creation and 3D work. This is a nice upgrade for Mac users who need a bit more in those areas but also for those who may want a better card for the occasional Mac game or for those running Boot Camp.

Also the reason it is hard to flash a regular one is regular cards don't support EFI which the Mac Pro requires as it does not use conventional BIOS.

[robodude666]

Also the reason it is hard to flash a regular one is regular cards don't support EFI which the Mac Pro requires as it does not use conventional BIOS.

Isn't that the excuse Apple gave for not supporting Windows? Then a group of h4x0rz made it work.

[btarunr]

If it's going to sell for $300+, you can actually make money out of it. All you need is a mobo with two x16 slots, the mac card's BIOS. Buy that Sapphire card for $150~$160, flash, sell for {insert reasonable price below $300 here} and make some cash. Just peel off that Sapphire sticker :laugh:

jk

[Ravenas]

Lol, people who buy prebuilt desktops (the majority) don't know the difference. Nor does the majority know what the term "flash" means.

[btarunr]

They needn't. You just flash PC cards, sell them as mac cards. Afterall, mac video-cards are sold as units too.

[Conti027]

Wow bash on Apple a little more guys... :shadedshu Mac Bashers FTL

Remember Apple is not really for gaming, it is usually for A/V creation and 3D work. This is a nice upgrade for Mac users who need a bit more in those areas but also for those who may want a better card for the occasional Mac game or for those running Boot Camp.

Also the reason it is hard to flash a regular one is regular cards don't support EFI which the Mac Pro requires as it does not use conventional BIOS.

It also for the peeps that what to be "Kool" :cool: :shadedshu

[newtekie1]

If it's going to sell for $300+, you can actually make money out of it. All you need is a mobo with two x16 slots, the mac card's BIOS. Buy that Sapphire card for $150~$160, flash, sell for {insert reasonable price below $300 here} and make some cash. Just peel off that Sapphire sticker :laugh:

jk

That isn't really that far off, people used to do that all the time back in the 9800Pro days.

[timta2]

Yes, the only bad thing about flashing cards to Mac versions is that it lowers demand and profit for ATI. This will make it less likely for Mac versions of cards, which in turn is a bad thing for Mac users. ATI claims (essentially) that the price difference is because they have to write a custom bios for the card that will sell in a lot lower volume than the PC counterpart. I'm not sure how much truth there is in that or how much money they have to put into it. It is nice to see ATI and Nvida releasing more modern Mac cards. Its really hard to beat a Mac Pro running XP with a nice video card these days, if you have the money anyway.

[DaedalusHelios]

Wow bash on Apple a little more guys... :shadedshu Mac Bashers FTL

Remember Apple is not really for gaming, it is usually for A/V creation and 3D work. This is a nice upgrade for Mac users who need a bit more in those areas but also for those who may want a better card for the occasional Mac game or for those running Boot Camp.

Also the reason it is hard to flash a regular one is regular cards don't support EFI which the Mac Pro requires as it does not use conventional BIOS.

Well since Adobe products won't be x64 for ages due to the lack of completed code offered to them by Apple....... yes macs will soon lack in that department aswell. (Creative department)

[DaedalusHelios]

Yes, the only bad thing about flashing cards to Mac versions is that it lowers demand and profit for ATI. This will make it less likely for Mac versions of cards, which in turn is a bad thing for Mac users. ATI claims (essentially) that the price difference is because they have to write a custom bios for the card that will sell in a lot lower volume than the PC counterpart. I'm not sure how much truth there is in that or how much money they have to put into it. It is nice to see ATI and Nvida releasing more modern Mac cards. Its really hard to beat a Mac Pro running XP with a nice video card these days, if you have the money anyway.

I have a feeling they have to pay some sort of licensing. :(

[jbizzler]

Apple releasing cards specific for their machines is just a way of controlling the Mac world. It's a different business model from PCs, and is both a strength and weakness. It allows them to only have to support a handful of hardware, and support it REAL well.

I agree, it shouldn't be priced much higher, but it's simply a supply/demand thing. I was hoping they'd lay off the 3870 and wait a few weeks for the 4870.

[cdawall]

If it's going to sell for $300+, you can actually make money out of it. All you need is a mobo with two x16 slots, the mac card's BIOS. Buy that Sapphire card for $150~$160, flash, sell for {insert reasonable price below $300 here} and make some cash. Just peel off that Sapphire sticker :laugh:

jk

i'm going to do it if i can find the mac BIOS and its the same size cause that was the issue in the old days the mac BIOS was bigger and you had to do something to get it to work idr what

[Easy Rhino]

50 bucks says that if you buy a mac with this card, install vmware and install xp you get higher FPS in a game like COD4 then if you just install COD4 on an PC running XP with the same settings.

[cdawall]

50 bucks says that if you buy a mac with this card, install vmware and install xp you get higher FPS in a game like COD4 then if you just install COD4 on an PC running XP with the same settings.

i strongly doubt it running a virtual machine will degrade performance and all a mac is now is an overpriced dell with OSX installed on it

[Easy Rhino]

i strongly doubt it running a virtual machine will degrade performance and all a mac is now is an overpriced dell with OSX installed on it

most people doubt it. however, i ran a similiar test on a macbook pro. it had vmware installed and running windows xp and i got better 3d rendering doing that then on a laptop with the same specs and just running xp.

[robodude666]

50 bucks says that if you buy a mac with this card, install vmware and install xp you get higher FPS in a game like COD4 then if you just install COD4 on an PC running XP with the same settings.

I just made $50.

When running VMWare Fusion you use a 32-64MB virtual video card which can't handle the basic of games. You are probably thinking of Boot camp which allows you to install and run Windows natively on a Mac.

[cdawall]

most people doubt it. however, i ran a similiar test on a macbook pro. it had vmware installed and running windows xp and i got better 3d rendering doing that then on a laptop with the same specs and just running xp.

:slap: well more power to you thats crazy and makes no sense but hey why not

[Easy Rhino]

:slap: well more power to you thats crazy and makes no sense but hey why not

haha, well i didnt believe it myself when i started rendering. so i looked around on google and there was a bunch of info on virtual machine performance on a mac.

[Ripper3]

I'm unsure if a flash of this BIOS would be the only change for these cards, maybe something is also needed for communication with the TPM on Mac Pros. Also, the flash module itself might be different leading to problems, but it certainly would be interesting to see the video card flashing days come back.
I bought a cheapo 6200 AGP for my PowerMac G4, and flashed it with a modified 6600 BIOS, worked right away, improved performance an awful lot, in fact (that 400MHz G4 was really stressed with the UI and the code it had to run, now everything flies, but the upgrade to a dual 450MHz G4 certainly helped, heheh). I hope we can do this soon, after someone figures out how to write a compatible video BIOS, or when ATi and Nvidia start giving us EFI based video cards for our regular PCs. This should also help bring the prices of Mac cards down.

Oh, and DaedalusHelios, it's more likely to be Adobe's fault that they can't get their products working under x64 properly, but CS2 could already address greater than 2GB of RAM under OS X and Windows, so there's no excuse in the RAM department, while other operations might not stand to gain as much from running under 64-bit, compared to running multi-threaded.

[Dippyskoodlez]

I just made $50.

When running VMWare Fusion you use a 32-64MB virtual video card which can't handle the basic of games. You are probably thinking of Boot camp which allows you to install and run Windows natively on a Mac.

parallels is pretty good at playing games. :)

I just wish apple would update the MacBook pros soon....

But AMD releasing a GPU for the mac pros shows intel doesn't have a stranglehold on apple products.

Good to see!

[robodude666]

parallels is pretty good at playing games. :)

I just wish apple would update the MacBook pros soon....

But AMD releasing a GPU for the mac pros shows intel doesn't have a stranglehold on apple products.

Good to see!

But parallels has performance issues compared to VMWare.

MacBook Pros were released back in feb. Not getting anytime soon. I want new Mac Minis!

nVidia makes GPUs for Apple to.

[WarEagleAU]

They list the MSRP at $219. Which is really on a $50 delta from the cost of my HD 3870.

[Easy Rhino]

yea the benchies ive seen show vmware fusion performs better than parallels.

[panchoman]

aren't the bios chips on macs bigger and hold some extra stuff, etc.?
my guess is that its efi and the like that wont let you use a flashed card with macs..

[btarunr]

BIOS chip? video-BIOS is stored on an EEPROM that's part of the GPU die itself. Unless they modified the RV670 itself....

[Easy Rhino]

all this talk really makes me want to build a hackintosh!! then install vmware fusion and put vista on it :laugh: just for fun !

http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-attack/build-a-hackintosh-mac-for-under-800-321913.php

[Ripper3]

The BIOS chips used to be bigger, depending on the graphics card. I believe Nvidia cards used 64k code for regular PC compatible cards, and 128k for Macs, while ATi used mostly 128k for both, while sometimes, you would be unlucky to find a card with only 64k, but there are plenty of reduced size ROMs to reflect that, and people would sometimes also just simply solder on a bigger ROM to the card anyway.
EFI certainly does affect it, yes, and part of the increased cost comes from the need to develop a new compatible ROM for the graphics card. Hence the higher cost for the 8800GT as well, and the longer wait until we finally had, and now have, new graphics cards.
EFI will be the norm for our PCs soon, so here's hoping that ATi and Nvidia are prepared with their graphics cards too, but something tells me we'll still be using our current cards with EFI motherboards.

The Mac forums must be going nuts with this, as the 3870 has been wanted for so long for Mac Pros, especially since people have been getting them to work with custom kexts under OS X.

Well, live and learn, didn't realise this:
BIOS chip? video-BIOS is stored on an EEPROM that's part of the GPU die itself. Unless they modified the RV670 itself....

This would make it even easier for a flash, since there's almost no way that ATi will bother changing the EEPROM just to accomodate a different type of BIOS.

[jbizzler]

i strongly doubt it running a virtual machine will degrade performance and all a mac is now is an overpriced dell with OSX installed on it

How is a Mac Pro an overpriced Dell??? If you're playing games, it is, but these are server/workstation parts. It has dual Xeons and fully-buffered memory. Building a custom computer comparable to a Mac Pro is just as, if not more expensive.

The Macbook Pros can be configured similarly to Dell notebooks, but aren't much more expensive, and have a lot of other features that make them better outside of the usual specs (like build quality). As I type this, I'm on a Dell Inspiron 1520 that has a Core 2 Duo processor and an 8600M GT, like the Macbook Pro. It has a 15.4'' screen, except it is much bigger and heavier than a 15.4'' Macbook Pro. This 8600M GT has slower VRAM than the Macbook Pro, older IO ports, and a loud as Hell optical drive.

But AMD releasing a GPU for the mac pros shows intel doesn't have a stranglehold on apple products.

Macs have had Radeons for a while now. Radeons were the only option on iMacs until recently, and are the defaults on Mac Pros. Intel has nothing against AMD graphics cards. Intel has Havok, and Havok is developing the on-GPU physics solution for AMD graphics cards. And AMD Crossfire is supported on Intel chipsets. In a recent ad-video from Intel, they were actually promoting individual Radeon cards.

[panchoman]

BIOS chip? video-BIOS is stored on an EEPROM that's part of the GPU die itself. Unless they modified the RV670 itself....

thats what i meant...

[Mussels]

Oh, and DaedalusHelios, it's more likely to be Adobe's fault that they can't get their products working under x64 properly, but CS2 could already address greater than 2GB of RAM under OS X and Windows, so there's no excuse in the RAM department, while other operations might not stand to gain as much from running under 64-bit, compared to running multi-threaded.

actually they said they're doing x64, but apple refused to let them do it on mac. so for at least one generation of adobe products, only PC will be 64 bit.

[Easy Rhino]

heh, macbook pros are no dells. #1 macs have WAY better screens #2 keyboard/touchpad are sturdier #3 osx based off bsd which is more effecient than windows #4 the amount of software you get (and great software it is) is amazing.

[Mussels]

heh, macbook pros are no dells. #1 macs have WAY better screens #2 keyboard/touchpad are sturdier #3 osx based off bsd which is more effecient than windows #4 the amount of software you get (and great software it is) is amazing.

the screen, keyboard and touchpad argument is the best i have ever heard as a reason to buy a mac. Macbook pros do indeed have good quality screens and peripherals.

i'll argue the rest a million times, just stick with the first ones and you're a winner :D

[Easy Rhino]

the screen, keyboard and touchpad argument is the best i have ever heard as a reason to buy a mac. Macbook pros do indeed have good quality screens and peripherals.

i'll argue the rest a million times, just stick with the first ones and you're a winner :D

haha i know. everyone has their preference. but like you said, you cannot really argue over the build quality of the macbooks. top notch.

[jbizzler]

haha i know. everyone has their preference. but like you said, you cannot really argue over the build quality of the macbooks. top notch.

And they have better battery life than other notebooks in their class. But this is off topic.

From what I understand, the 8800GT will still outperform the 3870 in 3D apps. But the 8800GT is slow with apps that use Core Animation. I thought this was mostly fixed, though, with the last update.

I'm wondering when OpenGL 3.0 will be finalized, and how that will end up on Mac systems, and how it'll affect the performance of these cards.