7 replies to this topic

[IMG News]

Hexus.net is running an exclusive report that claims that XFX has revealed that it has signed a licensing agreement to develop and bring to market a range of NVIDIA GeForce-based Shader Model 3.0 graphics accelerators to upgrade Apple G4 Macs.

Apparently XFX and Apple have been engaged in negotiation for some 18 months and the first fruits of their agreement are set to be available around June of this year.

The initial offerings will be XFX GeForce 6600 GT AGP products, though other, even more powerful and higher-end, variants should follow soon after.

For the present it seems these XFX graphics cards will be available from Apple's own on-line store, from specialist Apple Mac resellers and Apple's distribution chain.

Follow the link below for the full exclusive report.

Return to Full Article - InsideMacGames News

[iEvan]

I'm quite excited about this and I hope that it is true. Other than BFG, I can't think of another video card vendor that I trust more. Especially with their double lifetime warranties (lifetime for you, and to whoever you sell you card to). If we can buy third party video cards as well as the upcoming AGEIA Physics Board... the new Apple ProTowers are going to be serious gaming machines. No where is SoundBlaster?.. they are missing out!

[PMAvers162]

iEvan, on March 13th 2006, 05:33 PM, said:

Now where is SoundBlaster?.. they are missing out!

*looks at the SoundBlaster Pro Mac Edition he has sitting on the shelf*

With their track record, hopefully nowhere nearby. That was a bungle of massive proportions.

It's kinda nice, though, to help fill a empty PCI slot in a machine running OS X. Don't want dust filling it... *coughs*

Not that I'm bitter or anything. Oh no.

[calroth]

iEvan, on March 14th 2006, 04:33 AM, said:

If we can buy third party video cards as well as the upcoming AGEIA Physics Board... the new Apple ProTowers are going to be serious gaming machines.

Uh, the article said that the cards are going to be for the G4. Nothing in it implied that it could be used for G5 or Intel PowerMacs.

And given that it's for the G4, what's the point? Even the highest-end G4 PowerMac is CPU-bound with the Radeon 9800 Pro.

[PeopleLikeFrank]

calroth, on March 13th 2006, 04:07 PM, said:

Uh, the article said that the cards are going to be for the G4. Nothing in it implied that it could be used for G5 or Intel PowerMacs.

And given that it's for the G4, what's the point? Even the highest-end G4 PowerMac is CPU-bound with the Radeon 9800 Pro.

It's still the first time that nVidia cards have been available from a 3rd party for the Mac, opening up the possibility of cards being produced for the G5s and eventually the intel towers.

[nagromme]

G4-only is a little odd, but extending the life of an old Mac is no bad thing!

[calroth]

nobody, on March 14th 2006, 08:11 AM, said:

It's still the first time that nVidia cards have been available from a 3rd party for the Mac, opening up the possibility of cards being produced for the G5s and eventually the intel towers.

I think it's more likely that only a few people still using G4s will buy a card, only a few of those will find any appreciable difference over their stock video card, and XFX will look at the whole venture, count the number of cards they sold on one hand, and scrap any further plans.

That, and some bright spark will hack standard PC cards to work with EFI and the Mac driver model, so you can use them on Intel Macs with no modification. Sort of like cross-flashing without the flashing. Making this whole G4 exercise futile.

[iEvan]

calroth, on March 14th 2006, 02:30 AM, said:

I think it's more likely that only a few people still using G4s will buy a card

You could very well be right, but try not to be so pessimistic. This is a very exciting thing, especially if they expand the product line to enclude PCI-E.