Latest AMD/ATI Graphics Chip Destined For Mac Pro? Crossfire?

As much as I'd like this to be true, like they said the Inquirer has a rep similar to MOSR.

Also won't the current Mac Pros not see the best performance from a crossfire configuration since the PCI Express lanes can't support 2 16x slots at once? These will probably be a new offering for the Mac Pro Octo when is it released at WWDC. Perhaps that's a moot point since from what I read, most video cards can't saturate a 16x bus anyway.

I can remember having a conversation with a bunch of Windoze users, they kept mentioning that the ATI cards in the Macs suck and tha nVidia cards are much better. In all the experience I have had with youthful computer gaming and professional video editing I cannot tell the difference between the two companies products. I know when a card sucks and I know when there is a good one. But when it comes to the difference between an ATI with 256mb and an nVidia with 256 I don't see a difference. Can anyone fill me in....?

On the other hand, I have heard a lot of good things with SLI with the Dell workstation. I haven't been able to tell the difference between the Dell with SLI and the MacPros (at my school) with one nVidia FX Quadro card. I don't know if it will be a major advantage but if the industry is accepting it as the gold standard then I guess Apple should do it to remain competitive.

I've always wondered why we haven't seen a 1 GB Video card and the price of 512MB cards go down further sooner?

I would love to see the MacPro go with a 512MB as standard with a 1GB as a $400 option.

I think it's a given that the R600 will come to the Mac Pro...the question is when and in what trim level. Will we get an XT or XTX model, or both? will it be offered with Crossfire? Will it run at the same speeds as the PC model, or will it be downclocked? Will it launch simultaneously with the PC version, a month later, or six months later?

Furthermore (perhaps most importantly), what about availability? Will ATI offer a retail version that we can buy from Newegg, OWC or even brick-and-morter stores like Microcenter? Will you be able to buy one retail at an Apple Store or will they be impossible to get without ordering with a new Mac, like the GeForce 7800 was? I hope Apple learned from their mistake with that one.

In my opinion, this could be an important transition point for Apple - they need to give us more video card options and make them easy to get as well as competitively priced with the PC world, even if that means eating ROM development costs to keep the price down.

Frankly, I'm not too excited about Crossfire/SLI. They don't represent a big cost savings or big jump in performance except at the extreme high end. One very high end card is usually the best setup in terms of performance, cost and power consumption. Still, I won't complain one bit if they add crossfire/SLI capability to Mac Pro video cards!

Also won't the current Mac Pros not see the best performance from a crossfire configuration since the PCI Express lanes can't support 2 16x slots at once? These will probably be a new offering for the Mac Pro Octo when is it released at WWDC. Perhaps that's a moot point since from what I read, most video cards can't saturate a 16x bus anyway.

Most PCI Express cards wouldn't even saturate an 8X AGP bus. It's only with the last DX9 cards that we began to get to that point.

"While The Inquirer should not to be confused with tabloid publication The National Enquirer, the reliability of the two may be similar. "

ROFLMAO

I don't know, a dual-GPU sounds like the perfect companion to the latest features in Leopard and Tiger 10.4.8, with the OpenGL running in a seperate thread. I think that Apple may have reached a breakthrough in this area, and multipule GPUs would benefit from this automatically (unlike DirectX for example).

Oded S.

Also won't the current Mac Pros not see the best performance from a crossfire configuration since the PCI Express lanes can't support 2 16x slots at once? These will probably be a new offering for the Mac Pro Octo when is it released at WWDC. Perhaps that's a moot point since from what I read, most video cards can't saturate a 16x bus anyway.

The only way I see crossfire being remotely possible is if they release a single Dore 2 Duo model based on the crossfire compatible 975x chipset. AMD doesn't make a crossfire solution for their opterons, there is zero chance they'll make one that works with Intel's Xeons. The only multi-gpu platform available is Nvidia's nforce pro which is neither for xeon or crossfire.

By the way, just so nobody asks using a Xeon is not possible. They use socket 771 which limits them to the non-crossifre 5000 series as used in the mac Pro and xServe. The 975x is socket T and is the only Intel Chipset with crossfire

As much as I'd like this to be true,

yeah me too, but i just don't think it will happen. but i hope it does though

This monster uses 230W power.