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New Mac G4's to ship with GeForce2 MX

Q

qadesh

Member
Steve Jobs just announced this at Macworld today. I wonder how the drivers are going to be for the Mac?

😕
 
That is scary.. drivers are going to blow.. well at least for a little while. thank god they got our driver people.
 
As far as I can tell from the Apple site, the card looks like an Apple part, lots of empty space and ugly. Supposedly Macs use a different "endian" system than PC, I wonder if other NVidia cards will work with the Apple drivers, ala detonator's containing support for all card ?!
 
One of the 100, nope. Didn't expect to be.. but ya never know where I might be ending up. 🙂

and my basis for that statement is that before the 3dfx stuff, they had one person working on the drivers full time.
 
I just watched Steve on c|net's www site. I was cracking up when he was telling us about the new Macs.

Just off the top of my head.

5 pci slots= wow.. you finally realized that 1-3 isn't enough

133mhz bus= that's really cutting edge Steve, how long have PCs had that....

GF MX video card= Cool so the TOP of the line Macs now come with the BOTTOM of the line Nvidia graphics card, way to pump up your flag ships.

1gig ethernet= ok, I've got to give it to them there, nice!

cdrw drives= ahh.. welcome to the rest of the world, finally

laptops with dvd= again welcome to the real world, but it does have cool slot loading.

Steve talks about how much a huge succes the osX beta was saying the manny more people PURCHACED the beta than expected. "more suckers beta tested our software then we ever expected and you guys actually PAYED us to do it..LOL you guys are great!"


I don't know that's just what I got from watching his address.


Bart
 
What made me the happiest was when he announced the option to turn off the feature that opens a folder in a new window. This was very annoying. Now if they can just add one more button to Apple's mouse, then I would be happy.
 
and they really need to work on how there swap drive works. It's not smart enought to swap files that arn't in use, it dosent' care so you wind up swaping files your working on right now into the drive killing speed.

Bart
 
I don't know, first nVidia works with Microshaft on the X-Box, then they buy 3dfx, now they have their chips in G4s? I'm getting a little paranoid. So does this mean no more ATI in Macs?
 
Well ATI is still in their iMac line and powerbooks but you never know how that will turn out. What I am really excited about is X-Box. When I saw Gigapixel last year at GDC, I was bummed that Microsoft went with NVIDIA at the last moment since Gigapixel's technology seemed good and cheap to manufacture but now with everything the X-box will include including NVIDIA's next chip, it should be an awesome console. I hope the Dreamcast will keep making good enough games to keep me happy until the X Box comes out so that I won't be stupid enough to buy a PS2.
 
5 PCI slots? Nope, 5 slots - total = 1 AGP ([Steve Jobs]super duper 4X advanced graphics AGP port[/Steve Jobs] 😉) and 4 PCI slots.
 
Apple's charging $3500 for a 733 MHz system which has the features of a year old PC. No thanks.

Also the 667 MHz and 733 MHz models aren't even available yet. The highest you can get is a 533 MHz system. The faster systems depend on Motorolla's chip yields, and we all know how good those have been in the past. 😉

In addition Macs don't have DDR RAM/RDRAM/AGP x 8/Ultra ATA 100. Basically Macs have gone from being 18 months behind to 12 months behind.

Regarding Dave's comments about nVidia's drivers, I've heard that at the moment all they'll do is accelerate 3D stuff and 2D things will be unaccelerated.

qadesh:

I wonder if other NVidia cards will work with the Apple drivers, ala detonator's containing support for all card ?!

The answer is no (unless nVidia add in extra driver hacks). Only the GF2 MX supports the Mac's reverse endian data format. Plus the other GF cards will require BIOS flashes in a very similar manner to Voodoo3s. I am not aware of this currently being possible.
 
Well, in the Apple store, you have an option of either
a) Radeon 32MB
or
b) Geforce2MX 32MB

with no difference in price between a) and b) or

c) a downgrade to ATI Rage 128 for less $

back at the last MacWorld, ATI let slip details of the new Macs to the public, so Apple punished ATI by removing their flagship (at the time) RADEON card from the presentation Mac, and not even mentioning it once.

Since then Apple has been exploring NVidia products, and it's pretty funny that the bottom of the barrel GF2MX is on par or better than the ATI.

I just hope that Nvidia doesn't stagnate once it destroys ATI, and becomes ATI, with horrible drivers, and just a plain SUCK company.

Down the road, Nvidia will probably have more Mac cards, but I doubt there will be much if any at all retail presence in the Mac market. With the great PC retail market and a nice OEM piece from Apple, things look great for NVidia
 
qadesh:

Since then Apple has been exploring NVidia products, and it's pretty funny that the bottom of the barrel GF2MX is on par or better than the ATI.

A Radeon DDR is more powerful than a GF2 MX. A Radeon SDR is about the same.

I just hope that Nvidia doesn't stagnate once it destroys ATI, and becomes ATI, with horrible drivers, and just a plain SUCK company

ATi are much better now and don't suck. Look at all of the awards the Radeon has won. Look at all of the statisfied customers who bought a Radeon.

So, it's mostly in the BIOS, I mean the endian changes?

Both, but the endian issues can be resolved by using driver hacks. The BIOS issue can't.
 
Ignore my comments about a lack of 2D acceleration in nVidia's Mac drivers. I have confirmed that this isn't true and it was just a stupid rumour.
 
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