PC users get 8800GT on OSX before real Apple owners?

[NamelessMC]

I'm not making this thread to "knock" on Apple users. To be honest, the modest and truthful Apple users that use Macs for production and stability are admirable to me. The narcissistic users that do nothing all day but say why Macs are better than PC's and how "ignorant" PC enthusiasts are, are the ones that bother me. To be honest, I don't care if you use a Mac or a PC, but you should also do the same. I love the good things about Apple computers, but just like my taste for PC's, I also dislike the faults.

One of them seems to be that they're currently disregarding their former Mac Pro owners. Last year, one of the main reasons people bought the Mac Pro for upwards of $3000-5000 was because of its emphasized "upgrade capability" which potentially allowed users to upgrade the video-cards and processors down the line and be fully compatible with later versions of OSX.

The problem? PCI-Express 2.0 has been released, and because of the firmware (EFI 64, versus EFI 32 on older Mac Pro) applied to the expansion slot, users can not upgrade G5 Power Macs to newer cards.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305346

The kick to the centerpiece? OSX86 users have now applied NVInject drivers to 10.5.1 and 10.5.2 that support 8800GT cards.

http://forum.insanelymac.com/i...&p=551392&#entry551392

To make matters worse, the update to the driver supports all G92 cards, so now Hackintosh users can even use 8800GTS G92 cards and GTX cards from the older series.

Now, I'm a full supporter of OSX86 and Hackintosh, because let's face it- Some creative minds have the dedication and talent deserving of the best tools and Apple software and architecture is the 100% best tool for an artist or aspiring producer/publisher, but the prices are very not-so attractive to said people, not to mention the specific gains you get with Apples which doesn't include PC Gaming to a high compatibility.

I know some of you will say, "There's cheaper iMacs and a gaming PC can be had for cheap", but just how cheap is cheap to some of you? I can barely fathom buying a $650 PC. I can't even afford a G5 iMac for that amount, but to be able to afford a current generation entry level iMac + that PC? Even working full time and getting financial aid, I can't squeeze that into my budget. I have bills, pay my own rent and no rich mama and daddy to help.

Here's the thing though- As much as I support OSX86, I only feel it is objectively right, as long as Apple enthusiasts themselves are able to maintain the highest tier of performance with an Apple, but sadly, Apple themselves are preventing that. This is all only my opinion though. I believe it's very easy for them to either flash the EFI on older Mac Pro's to 64 bit or they could very easily flash the 8800GT to be compatible with the older EFI. If PC users can use an 8800GT on PCI-Express 1.0 technology there's no reason Apple users can't.

Please share your thoughts.

 

[TheStu]

When you said G5 PowerMac, are you sure you meant that? I know that the G5 used PCIe in its very last iteration, and DDR2, but it didn't use EFI. They were still using OpenFirmware at that point. It wasn't until the Intel switch that they moved to EFI.

However, all that aside, I do agree that as it stands right now, the early Mac Pro adopters are being left in the lurch, and this is an actual problem as opposed to people that bought their MacBook Pros 2 months before the 8600m GT intro, or spent $600 on their iPhones (I feel bad for you, but not that bad) since the hardware is so similar. However, i did read that nVidia is working on making the 8800s work on the older EFI.

 

[ViRGE]

Could you explain the EFI bit in more detail? None of your links mention it. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume the cards approved for use with the recent Mac Pro have a firmware that only knows how to interface with EFI 64, and hence don't work in the first Mac Pros?

 

[NamelessMC]

Yes. Basically the 8800GT Mac version is going to be configured to use EFI 64 in the upcoming Mac Pro. The current generation Mac Pro's (Not the G5) are being listed as NOT being upgradeable to the 8800GT because they are configured to use EFI32.

I guess I shouldn't have gotten into too much detail about the G5 because that's an 05-older generation Mac Pro and a 3 year upgrade guarantee is rather steep especially by Apple standards.

But people from mid-06 until now, meaning someone that could've bought a Mac Pro last week, don't have upgrade options beyond the factory offered X1900XT? (Which is not only TWO generations old, but a mid-generation high end card from two generations ago?) It really is kind of a slap in the face to current Mac Pro owners, even as of last week or even the following weeks until the new Mac Pro is shipped, that were promised GPU upgrade options as part of the Mac Pro advertising campaign.

My coworker has a mid-07 Mac Pro with 1900XT and two Xeons and 4gb of ram that cost him roughly $4500 and the only thing he can upgrade is the ram and hard-drive space. The only reason he bought it, versus a regular Mac was because of the upgrade options. Now those are void and the machine is literally worth 40% less than what it was when he bought it.

 

[RichieZ]

http://www.macrumors.com/2008/...r-older-mac-pros-soon/

 

[Tegeril]

There has been a LOT of new-tech-made-me-obsolete whining from Apple product owners lately. I'm sad to bundle this one in that comment, because this one is certainly a very key issue, but man...this is a stupid trend. And lots of it comes from speculation (the Time Capsule thing, for example, had no basis in fact whatsoever).