UPDATED: Graphics Cards 101

[MacMan]

UPDATED: 2010-11-26 to reflect NVIDIA Shipping Quadro 4000 Drivers

The issue with graphics cards is that there are "Reference Design" which are based on what ATI/AMD or NVIDIA provides to manufactures for a baseline hardware design. Then there is what cards manufacturers ship, either a "Reference Design" or their own unique spin on that hardware. They do this unique spin to set their card part from the "Reference Design" cards. That is fine in Windows, but can create problems in OS X. Apple typically uses a "Reference Design" or very close to one in their graphics cards.

So where am I going with this. Apple ships and supports a limited set of ATI/AMD "Reference Design" cards in OS X, they do not provide support for all models or any major variations from the "Reference Design". The reason being that the ATI/AMD architecture requires specific model driver support. For example in 10.6 Apple only supports some 46xx and 48xx cards, there is no OOB support for the 45xx cards. So that is why you see patches and/or modifications for Apple's drivers to support some of these other cards.

NVIDIA cards use a different architecture and allows for a more generic driver than can support more models and variations. The new NVIDIA 4xx cards are based on a new architecture (Fermi) and require new drivers which Apple has not provided yet. This should change soon as they are going to be offering the NVIDIA Quadro 4000 for Mac soon which is a Fermi based card.

So until Apple ships support for more cards or allows AMD and NVIDIA to ship generic drivers, graphics card support is a challenge.

 

[rabbit74]

Re: Graphics Cards 101

Great post.

Thanks

rabbit.

 

[Walnut]

Re: Graphics Cards 101

"Quadro 4000" here we go!!!
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/16/nvid ... e-mac-pro/

 

[kigger012]

Re: Graphics Cards 101

"Quadro 4000" here we go!!!
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/16/nvid ... e-mac-pro/

so all the GTX/GTS 4XX video card is now supported new iboot??
or we have to wait for it.
on your computer spec ur using GTX 460 on os 10. how did you install the OS X?
thanks bunch!

 

[Jocelyn84]

Re: Graphics Cards 101

so all the GTX/GTS 4XX video card is now supported new iboot??
or we have to wait for it.
on your computer spec ur using GTX 460 on os 10. how did you install the OS X?
thanks bunch!

viewtopic.php?p=52562#p52562

 

[Stork]

...Apple ships and supports a limited set of ATI/AMD "Reference Design" cards in OS X, they do not provide support for all models or any major variations from the "Reference Design"...

OK. I'm in a learning mode here on "Reference Design". Is there a definition? A list of make/model? And/or a way to tell if a card is a "Reference Design"? :?

(Searching the forum on "Reference Design" yields up too many posts to go through.)

 

[MacMan]

...Apple ships and supports a limited set of ATI/AMD "Reference Design" cards in OS X, they do not provide support for all models or any major variations from the "Reference Design"...

OK. I'm in a learning mode here on "Reference Design". Is there a definition? A list of make/model? And/or a way to tell if a card is a "Reference Design"? :?

(Searching the forum on "Reference Design" yields up too many posts to go through.)

The best way to find out is to look for reviews on PC hardware sites. In most cases they will mention if a card is a reference design or not.

 

[Stork]

...The best way to find out is to look for reviews on PC hardware sites. In most cases they will mention if a card is a reference design or not.

I didn't know that. However, I'd recommend that a RD card needs to be designated so in the Wiki Graphics Card section. Then, us newcomers to Hackintoshs can quickly make decisions. Does OOB imply RD? I'm just overwhelmed when I try to figure out whether such-and-us card will work.

 

[uTOM]

is nvidia 8400 gs igb compatible?

 

[Mondoman]

A "reference design" is just a working example of a board design using a given chip, designed by the chip's maker to give its customers a working model design. For example, when AMD comes out with the chip for an HD 6950 graphics card, they first design and build their own sample graphics board using that chip, and license that "reference design" to the graphics card makers who buy their GPU chips. Thus, especially when a new chip is introduced, most of the graphics cards using that chip will look pretty much the same, since it's easiest to just use the design that's been handed you by the GPU chip maker.

Later, some graphics card makers (especially the bigger ones) will invest their own time and money into developing new board designs that will allow them to overclock the GPU more, or run it cooler, or hold more RAM, or even just cut the costs. These are non-reference-design boards.

OOB just means out-of-box, meaning you don't have to make any special adjustments of OS/X; it doesn't have any direct connection with reference design status.
However, my understanding is that Apple often used the GPU chip maker's reference design in its computes, and thus a reference design board would be more likely to work out-of-box in OS X.