What Desktop Hardware Do You Want Better Supported?

[MacMan]

Theoretical question: Why aren’t all the Apple.com Snow Leopard supported video cards recognized and fully function immediately during the OSX 10.6+ install on the PC platform? Thought the DSDT would not require modification for these specific OSX supported video cards. i.e. “12. ATI 5XXX and NVIDIA 4xx series cards currently are unsupported- beta drivers are available, but not standard.â€

Read somewhere that in the Power PC cpu days apparently ATI made both PC and Mac versions of a few video cards and you could also re-flash the PC card to work on a Mac.

Apple.com Snow Leopard tech requirements section:
OpenCL requires one of the following graphics cards or graphics processors:
* NVIDIA GeForce 320M, GeForce GT 330M, GeForce 9400M, GeForce 9600M GT, GeForce 8600M GT, GeForce GT 120, GeForce GT 130, GeForce GTX 285, GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GS, Quadro FX 4800, Quadro FX5600
* ATI Radeon HD 4670, ATI Radeon HD 4850, Radeon HD 4870, ATI Radeon HD 5670, ATI Radeon HD 5750, ATI Radeon HD 5770, ATI Radeon HD 5870

Great work Tony have ordered parts and OSX for a new TonyMac rig soon to be built.

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.

I think I will also repost this answer in OSx86 Basics.

 

[crisamadeus]

ASUS P55 motherboards!!! please!!!!

i really need a Custom Beast for my ASUS P7P55D-PRO motherboard....

my CPU bus speed its a joke!!! 533MHZ for i5 750 INTEL

really... ASUS P55 motherborad would be awesome....


CHEERS FROM CHILE

 

[chase-w]

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.

I think I will also repost this answer in OSx86 Basics.

So just so I understand this. Until the bold sentence above happens, it will be impossible to have support for the GTX 4xx on the iBoot + multibeast set-up, or it will just be a challenge that you guys haven't undertaken yet?

Just curious after reading this, because I have the GTX 460, that I would really like to install into my machine (instead of feeling like I wasted $200). lol

Thanks.

 

[MacMan]

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.

I think I will also repost this answer in OSx86 Basics.

So just so I understand this. Until the bold sentence above happens, it will be impossible to have support for the GTX 4xx on the iBoot + multibeast set-up, or it will just be a challenge that you guys haven't undertaken yet?

Just curious after reading this, because I have the GTX 460, that I would really like to install into my machine (instead of feeling like I wasted $200). lol

Thanks.

What the bold statement means is that we have tried our best to get the GTX 460 working and haven't been successful. So as of now it's impossible, but we are holding out hope for the Quadro 4000 drivers to help us turn this around.

 

[rakesh]

I Miss Only My Onboard Intel Graphic,Otherwise i have prefect working Mac....

 

[chase-w]

What the bold statement means is that we have tried our best to get the GTX 460 working and haven't been successful. So as of now it's impossible, but we are holding out hope for the Quadro 4000 drivers to help us turn this around.

Oh, ok...... I gotcha..
Well I hope it helps y'all turn it around too. haha

thanks for all your hard work as well.. my new setup is working great! (even if it is in low resolution)

 

[staticanime]

Not sure if they work fully atm, but are SATA3 ports supported at their full 6Gbps mode? Thinking of building a new machine and using a 64Gb Corsair RealSSD C300 for an osx boot drive on the SATA3 port, as I will be using all the SATA1/2 ports on a Gigabyte GA-X58-UD5 for a bunch of 2TB HDD's (storage), would be nice to have the full theoretical output of SATA3

 

[MacMan]

Not sure if they work fully atm, but are SATA3 ports supported at their full 6Gbps mode? Thinking of building a new machine and using a 64Gb Corsair RealSSD C300 for an osx boot drive on the SATA3 port, as I will be using all the SATA1/2 ports on a Gigabyte GA-X58-UD5 for a bunch of 2TB HDD's (storage), would be nice to have the full theoretical output of SATA3

There are no OS X drivers for SATA 3, the ports will work in SATA II mode only.

 

[staticanime]

Not sure if they work fully atm, but are SATA3 ports supported at their full 6Gbps mode? Thinking of building a new machine and using a 64Gb Corsair RealSSD C300 for an osx boot drive on the SATA3 port, as I will be using all the SATA1/2 ports on a Gigabyte GA-X58-UD5 for a bunch of 2TB HDD's (storage), would be nice to have the full theoretical output of SATA3

There are no OS X drivers for SATA 3, the ports will work in SATA II mode only.

So, I could still run OSX off an SSD attached to one of the SATA3 ports (I know this isn't recommended, and will probably give me headahces, but I love trouble ^_^), just at SATA2 speeds?

 

[immapc]

So you suggest SATA 6gb support, Half-Duplex of course... why not use USB-3 Full Duplex 5gb which is supported now, please start a new thread for other questions to keep this one on topic.