Share this story. A MacBook Pro-specific update to Mac OS X 10.6.7 for several 5000 and 6000 series AMD Radeon GPUs.

  1. Ati Radeon Hd 5770 1gb Not For Mac Pro A1289

Apple doesn't typically include support for GPUs that aren't in shipping products, so the inclusion has some important implications for Mac Pro users, future Sandy Bridge iMacs, and even for the 'hackintosh' scene. According to hackintosh site tonymacx86, contains native support for a range of Radeon HD 5xxx and HD 6xxx cards. The support brings full Quartz Extreme and CoreImage acceleration on these GPUs. Tonymacx86 notes that for those building hackintosh systems—PCs built to run Mac OS X—using one of these cards won't require hacks or special kernel extensions such as. GPU Device ID ATI Radeon HD 5630 0x68D8 ATI Radeon HD 5630 0x68D9 ATI Radeon HD 5670 0x68D8 ATI Radeon HD 5730 0x68D8 ATI Radeon HD 5770 0x68B8 ATI Radeon HD 5850 0x6899 ATI Radeon HD 5870 0x6898 AMD Radeon HD 6850 0x6739 AMD Radeon HD 6870 0x6738 AMD Radeon HD 6970 0x6718 The full list of supported Radeon GPUs Beyond making it easier to build a hackintosh, the new video card support has other ramifications. The Radeon HD 6xxx series cards in the list could very well be used in the next expected iMac revision with Sandy Bridge processors, rumored to arrive as soon as April. The support may also mean that Mac Pro users won't have to continue to buy special and often expensive 'Mac edition' Radeon GPUs; instead, such users could buy standard cards available for Windows PCs.

Developers experimenting with Lion have already determined some Radeon and series cards are supported without hacks as well. No new NVIDIA GPUs are covered by this native support. Mac Pros, iMacs, and now MacBook Pros all use AMD Radeon GPUs. The only NVIDIA GPUs still shipping from Apple are the ones integrated in the 320M controllers used in current MacBooks, MacBook Airs, and Mac minis.

These platforms are likely to rely on integrated Intel GPUs once some time later this year. I thought the cards also had to have special firmware to deal with the fact that Apple uses EFI EFI PCs have been in the wild for at least a year, and I have used two and three year old cards in them without issue, so that's not a barrier. Were they running in BIOS-compatibility mode or native UEFI? If it's native UEFI (and without support for older Option ROMs) then I could see you having trouble. The silly thing is how the UEFI spec indicates how to provide both UEFI and BIOS Option ROMs in the same ROM, but they split them up and charge a premium on the Mac-targeted devices. Expected this for a LONG time.

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ATI/AMD and nVidia have been using 'universal' drivers on PC for a long time. It was only a matter of waiting until a Mac OS X universal driver happened.

The cards in a series used to be quite different, and have lots of little optional features, but now, they're basically just differences in massive parrallelization. Well, the big difference is that ATI and NVidia update their universal drivers to add support for new devices. That doesn't happen on OS X. It'll be welcome to get updates in the future. I'd view this more as Apple recognizing that the cards they provide in the Mac Pro aren't adequate for high-end users and people may want other options. It's cheaper to just support retail cards than what they've done in the past. That and the average hackintosh can shame a Mac Pro in pretty muc any gaming benchmark.

While I'm not likely to buy a Mac desktop anytime soon (count me among those wanting an x-Mac that Apple isn't making), this is hopeful. If I could ever justify buying a Mac Pro (its gross overkill for what I want/need), that would make things a bit easier to swallow. They'll never make an xMac. It would necessarily cost less than the Mac Pro (or there would be no point) but it would likely take a lot of customers away from the Mac Pro without converting a significant number of PC users. Apple more or less tolerates the Hackintosh community for this reason; it lets a lot of people play with the platform and maybe buy a MBP for their next laptop, but it's not really a threat. Most potential xMac buyers who aren't already Mac Pro owners would be people who are both price sensitive and technical enough to build a Hackintosh, which is a combination Apple just isn't interested in. It's a small potential market with a lot of negative impact on the rest of their product portfolio.

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Apple got to where they are today by not releasing products that compete with each other and by focusing on the part of the market where they can make the most money. But not in a Mac Pro? Apple says no. They like to control their software with 'approved' hardware oversight. I keep saying (since OS X) that Apple has turned into a software company.with that software restricted to the devices they approve (which is only the ones they happen to sell). Obvious this is minus the consumer devices both PC and Apple make (phones, mp3 players etc) for functions to operate. Apple just thinks this model of consumer devices applies to the computer.

Last edited by on Thu Mar 24, 2011 1:59 pm. Expected this for a LONG time. ATI/AMD and nVidia have been using 'universal' drivers on PC for a long time. It was only a matter of waiting until a Mac OS X universal driver happened. The cards in a series used to be quite different, and have lots of little optional features, but now, they're basically just differences in massive parrallelization.

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Well, the big difference is that ATI and NVidia update their universal drivers to add support for new devices. That doesn't happen on OS X. It'll be welcome to get updates in the future. I'd view this more as Apple recognizing that the cards they provide in the Mac Pro aren't adequate for high-end users and people may want other options. It's cheaper to just support retail cards than what they've done in the past.

That and the average hackintosh can shame a Mac Pro in pretty muc any gaming benchmark.I don't really follow, the cards found in Mac's were no different performance wise, but they were essentially proprietary to Apple. They had different pin outs and such for the same model numbers from their PC counterparts. The result was you could not use them natively without some kind of driver injection. All this means is you can now drop in a PC card (that is supported in OSX of course i.e one of the cards listed above) and it will work out of the box, it has absolutely nothing to do with universal drivers. They are still writing device specific drivers, its just the supported radeon hardware is no longer exclusive to Apple.

There are already many integrated solutions that already work natively, my little ION hackintosh box for example has a 9400M that pretty much works OOB, no kernel extensions needed because its identical to what is already found in Apple machines. Yes; afaik Thunderbolt is just an external extension of the PCIe bus. These cards would likely need external power just like current video cards, but it could really be a game changer for mobile graphics if someone can figure it out. This has happened before. I remember seeing a number of big docking stations that had PCI/AGP cards that would turn on when docked (though you needed an external monitor). It could be done to this day using the docking connectors but it seems the market for these just didn't take off as expected.

I can cite one reason. Desktops are easier to upgrade in every category.including the graphics card (without having to buy a new docking station / laptop).

I see thunderbolt as a better switch uplink technology (or Server - SAN) instead of expensive fiber modules. It's been absurd that the manufacturers haven't provided Mac drivers for all their cards since Apple switched to PCI and even more absurd since Apple switched to Intel. Especially since a firmware flash would often render a 'PC' card Mac-compatible. No, it's not absurd.

If the xMac had come years ago and there was a much wider base of potential upgraders, that'd be a different story, but as it is the only possible market is those who own Mac Pros. Apple sold around 4.63 million desktops (vs over 9 million portables) in 2010. With an average selling price of $1279, we can conclude that Mac Pros were only a fraction of those sales. There may only be potential upgraders for graphics cards amounting to a few tens of thousands, total. That is a TINY market to devote much R&D to.

The only one to blame for lack of upgrades is Apple quite frankly. Most potential xMac buyers who aren't already Mac Pro owners would be people who are both price sensitive and technical enough to build a Hackintosh, which is a combination Apple just isn't interested in. It's a small potential market with a lot of negative impact on the rest of their product portfolio. Apple got to where they are today by not releasing products that compete with each other and by focusing on the part of the market where they can make the most money.

Ati Radeon Hd 5770 1gb Not For Mac Pro A1289

I disagree, in that I think the business market would be a LOT more receptive now then you might expect. I agree with you though that Apple won't do it, because they're both not interested in the business market anymore and I think they just aren't that interested in PCs anymore, period.

Anymore and I think they just aren't that interested in PCs anymore, period. I agree and think this is a HUGE mistake. It's okay to focus on such things as Software as Service (iTunes, rentals, books, etc) but relying on the consumer market hardware that only you sell (iphones, ipods, iTV, etc) to feed that service is a mistake. Devices like the iPhone, etc can be leaped easily in the consumer market as they are fickle and have jumped from brand loyalty to such devices like Sony, Panasonic, etc for just the 'cheaper' but similar device.

I don't think Apple's iPod is a solid sell say 2 years from now. One can identify the problem with devices of the past.say like the Zune. No clear cut service and DRM problems. Who's to say that a universal service like iTunes doesn't come out and work on say all android devices at half the price (simple mp3 player)? All it takes is someone with content other than Apple. There goes their consumer market. Would the Thunderbolt interface have enough throughput to allow external video cards for an iMac or Macbook Pros for example?

Or do you think this would just be an upgrade factor for the Mac Pro's and Hackintosh's? The current generation Thunderbolt has, I think, 10Gb/s of bandwidth in each direction, shared between DisplayPort and PCIe. Assuming you aren't using the DisplayPort for video, that gives you about the equivalent of a PCIe 2.0 two lane (x2) slot. So yes, you could probably do it, but there would be some performance loss. It would probably be adequate for anything other than gaming though (say if you just wanted to add more screens).

Reasons to consider Radeon HD 4650 AGP 147 watts lower power draw. This might be a strong point if your current power supply is not enough to handle the GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition. Based on an outdated architecture (ATI TeraScale), there are no performance optimizations for current games and applications. Reasons to consider GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition This is a much newer product, it might have better long term support. Higher theoretical gaming performance, based on specifications.

Supports PhysX. Supports G-Sync. Supports ShadowPlay (allows game streaming/recording with minimum performance penalty). Based on an outdated architecture (Nvidia Kepler), there are less performance optimizations for current games and applications.