I've been working feverishly on this HL2 CPU Scaling article, I was hoping to have it done by the end of this week but it will be done (for sure) for publication next week. I've done CPU scaling charts for about half of the cards now, I've only got 1 more PCI Express card and then I move onto the AGP cards. Depending on how much time I have (and/or how sick of Half Life 2 benchmarking I am), I may do some GPU/memory bandwidth scaling on a card per card basis as well to find out where the limitations with the various GPUs lie.
It looks like there finally may be some resolution to the NVIDIA's Video Processor fiasco, I'm hoping for a public release of the driver by the end of this year but that's pure speculation on my part.
Next week I'll be making a trip up to ATI's Mac offices in Massachusetts, which will mark the first Mac related AT trip I will have ever made. Let me know if there are any questions the Mac community would like to have answered by ATI and I'll do my best to get them answered for you all. I do have two Mac articles in the works, I'm just at a loss for time right now but one of them will be published this month.
That's about all for now, for some reason it feels like a Friday but it's only a Wednesday. If I were still in school I would've hated that feeling and even now I still long for the weekends, it's just a different type of longing. Very difficult to explain, I'll try to do so later.
Take care...
It looks like there finally may be some resolution to the NVIDIA's Video Processor fiasco, I'm hoping for a public release of the driver by the end of this year but that's pure speculation on my part.
Next week I'll be making a trip up to ATI's Mac offices in Massachusetts, which will mark the first Mac related AT trip I will have ever made. Let me know if there are any questions the Mac community would like to have answered by ATI and I'll do my best to get them answered for you all. I do have two Mac articles in the works, I'm just at a loss for time right now but one of them will be published this month.
That's about all for now, for some reason it feels like a Friday but it's only a Wednesday. If I were still in school I would've hated that feeling and even now I still long for the weekends, it's just a different type of longing. Very difficult to explain, I'll try to do so later.
Take care...
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Ed - Thursday, December 9, 2004 - link
I know the feeling about friday. The last day of class was tuesday, and it feels like the weekend now.Caveman - Thursday, December 9, 2004 - link
Uhm... Where's the ASUS A8N Review??? I'd think this is the "hottest" story right now....The_Necromancer - Thursday, December 9, 2004 - link
Hey Dee, which do you prefer Intel or Amd, Radeon or nvidia, Mac or PcRamius - Thursday, December 9, 2004 - link
Questions, questions:I heard a rumor that ATI is going to completely rewrite their OS X OpenGL implementation, is that true?
ATI has shown off (http://www.macworld.com/news/2004/10/14/ati/index.... a Mac X800 card, although they haven't made any announcements. What's the timetable for this?
PCIe is definitely a "when, not if" thing. (just read about Core Image, you'll see what I mean: http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/core.html) If you could find out when, that would be nice.
Oh, Anand, are you going to "re-review" your G5 when Tiger comes out? There's enough new stuff (Spotlight, Core Image, etc.) that it should make it interesting.
wbwither - Thursday, December 9, 2004 - link
#10, maybe I'm misinterpreting #1 here, but I read "will ATI ever produce a Mac-specific card?" to mean "will there ever be an ATI card available for the Mac that is NOT available for the PC?". In this light, I think my questions make sense. I take "Mac-specific" to mean "Mac-exclusive", since *every* Mac video card has to be "Mac-specific" in some sense, because you can't just buy a PC Radeon or GeForce and put it in a Mac.In the past (well, since Macs have had a PCI/AGP bus at least), all ATI/NVIDIA video cards for the Mac have simply been PC video cards with a different BIOS and other very slight changes. Many times it has been possible to flash update a Mac video card to a PC video card (not very smart since the Mac cards are always much more rare and expensive). I really wouldn't expect that situation to change since the Mac market is so much smaller compared to the PC market. ATI and NVIDIA will always make their cards for the PC first, and then adapt them to the Mac.
Of course Apple also buys GPU chips and integrates them into their iMacs/eMacs/Powerbooks/etc (i.e. non-discrete video solutions). I don't see this as anything different from how other integrated systems vendors operate, so I'm not really discussing this here. I'm talking about the discrete graphics card market.
I asked about the Xbox2 chip in particular since the Xbox will be using an IBM chip for its CPU, much like the PowerPC (Xbox2 dev kits are G5's with 9800's).
afcombatcrayola - Thursday, December 9, 2004 - link
I'm a PC user (3ds max, not available on mac), but am definately a Mac fanatic. My workflow depends heavily on the graphics card. The harder working the card, the more it seems like I'm sculpting art, and less like "modeling polygons". If it's not art, it's not fun. Which is why I use 3ds Max and PC's with big ol' FireGL workstation cards. My questions for ATI1) Is a honkin FireGL card in the pipeline for Macs? I'll switch to Cinema 4D and OS X, but I need a card that going to effortlessly refresh my 3D scenes.
2) Apple and PCIe. Not if, but when? I'm sure they can't answer that and not get in trouble by Apple, but push a little, eh?
3) FireGL with more than 256mb of RAM. Is it ever going to happen? Has it already happened?
-Scottie
Big_Ed_Mustafa - Thursday, December 9, 2004 - link
One of the things I'd like to know more about is how exactly are 3D graphics rendered on the Mac platform compared to Windows PCs? Macs seem to get more out of video cards, at least based on minimum/recommended video setups for new games. Is there a significant difference in APIs? Does OS X have an equivelent to GL and Direct 3D? Are the graphics requirements for Macs less than the PC simply because Macs lack the API functionality for advanced graphic features for games?I'm not a Mac user, more of a curious PC user. Hopefully I'm not alone in regard to my pondering.
Filibuster - Thursday, December 9, 2004 - link
The cpu scaling article sounds like it may make or break my decision on the video card for my new pc.I'm looking forward to it.
Have fun at Ati.
crtfanboy - Thursday, December 9, 2004 - link
hey, congrats on the mac office trip. It's good to see you getting more well-rounded.how about some video card overclocking? I'd love to see how much head room these things have.... no rush though, I won't be able to afford one of these new fangled cards for a couple years
GX - Thursday, December 9, 2004 - link
Um, wbwither:You wrote: "#1 missed a couple of ATI questions:
1) Will the Mac ever see an All-In-Wonder product?"
>>> #1 asked if ATI would ever produce a Mac-specific card - and an All-in-Wonder falls under that possible category. His question already covers your question.
You wrote: "2) Will the next-gen ATI chip that powers the Xbox2 be available for the Mac?"
>>> Again, redundant question.
You wrote: "As for #1's #4: Why would ATI ever produce a Mac-specific card? They certainly wouldn't produce a Mac-specific GPU at any rate."
>>> You seem to ask the very question that you try to answer - you indicate you think it's not something ATI would do but you ask if they will make very specific products.
I'm not sure I'm getting what you're trying to say here.
GX