EVGA rolls out GeForce GTX 285 graphics card for Mac Pros
By Donald Melanson 
posted Jun 10th 2009 7:24PM
posted Jun 10th 2009 7:24PM
We got plenty of advance word about this one, but EVGA has finally gotten fully official with its Mac Pro-friendly version of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 285 graphics card, which is now available to order from the Apple Store for the not so low price of $450. That'll of course get you a card that's mostly identical to its less-than-new PC counterpart, including 1GB of DDR3 memory, a whopping 240 processing cores, a memory clock speed a 2,584MHz, memory bandwidth of 159GB/sec, and a pair of dual-link DVI ports that can each drive a 30-inch monitor at 2,560 x 1,600 with ease -- assuming you can still afford a pair of 30-inch monitors after you shell out for one of these, that is.
[Via PC World]
[Via PC World]
no asus mars? :(
Do Macs actually run games!?
@Aguiluz
Yeah, check out my Flickr page. I running Call of Duty 4, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source and a bunch of other games, basically everything I was playing when I was strictly PC. I have a bunch of Mario games for my niece when she comes over.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pacman3000/sets/72157618624214222/
Yup. Puzzle games. Er, and Ciderized Windows games.
Nah, none of the games I have are running using Cider. I'm using Crossover Games for the Steam Games.
@ paul
i NEED your background
Dude, I wish I could tell you where to find it, but I don't remember.
You can game on Macs. What Paul's shown you is just about the entire catalague though. Personally, having used a PC and a Mac I would take the PC anytime for reasons of optimisation, content and variety. However, you can game on a Mac so let's stop that old stereotype please (along with the Windows BSOD, virus spreading, etc).
Anyway, this isn't the latest card but it's still a beast. Well better than previous offerings.
@Mark
Stereotype? What stereotype? I see you are still adding nothing to the bloggingsphere. Still claiming to be nothing are you? Don't be fooled, Mark is on the PR damage control payroll for Microsoft! LOL.
People flashing firmware on any of these high-end cards? I don't have a need for it, just curious. I'm guessing without an equivalent card having EFI support already, it's not possible to find a ROM.
EVGA forums says there's a hardware difference, but I'm not sure if the bios is all or if they're alluding to something more.
So it's about $110 more expensive than the "non-mac" version...didn't realize it was that difficult to create a graphics card that works for macs.
Yeah, and I fail to see the point of even offering it since most games ported to mac can't even utilize the full potential of this card, unless you run at an obscenely high resolution.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=50001402&Description=gtx%20285%201gb&name=EVGA
They are the exact same specs, just a nice price difference. Still a nice card.
You know some people use graphics cards like this to get work done too. Graphics design, video editing, etc..... With open CL they will also be doing a whole lot more. Still does not make much sense that it would cost so much more then the PC counterpart, unless the extra hundred is to pay for the packaging.
Why would anyone be surprised that it's more expensive for Macs... I thought everything for macs was supposed to be more expensive, that's what makes it mac compatible...
if people wanted to take full advantage of openCL, openGL, or CUDA they would be better off with a workstation card that has firmware tailored to fit those roles. even a lower end workstation card should outperform a standard graphics card when doing that kind of professional work.
then again, most people that own mac pros and dont use them as workstations would be happy to shell out ridiculous amounts of cash for this just to say they have one.
Its not the same card! It has a lower core clock 576MHz I believe, as opposed to 648MHz on the real one. I see you're still not mentioning the negatives of apple products TUAW!!!.. I mean ENGADGET!
it isnt hard, it's just if apple is gunna allow ppl to buy a new gpu without having to buy a whole new computer( like they want you too) Apple wants some kind of cut of gpu's being sold for their platform...thats why you dont see many graphic cards, hardware, applications..ect. for mac because they charge up the ass to create anything for their platform...a big reason why MS and PCs dominated Apple from the very begining..even apple had to switch to PC hardware evenually..so there's no agrument against what I'm saying..sorry fan girls
Actually, it makes sense if you take a moment to educate yourself.
The Mac card is NOT the "PC card + drivers". Mac's don't use the normal BIOS system, the cards have to be compatible with EFI-64 and have completely different firmware, and new drivers made for OSX.
If you look at the small volume of sales of these things, particularly since it can ONLY be used in the low-volume Mac Pro, the price isn't that bad. I'm surprised they even bother.
Macs have a certain Q&A and intellectual property most PC hackers can't justify paying for or respecting, hence the increase in price. Its not like you aren't paying for nothing. What does work, works really really well as opposed to 'ok'.
Granted, you would still be paying more with Microsoft's un-operating system to get the full potential, like a DVD playback driver... although the higher priced versions of Vista now come with one (isn't that a joke), other copies require that you still fork over $49.95 for some shitty copy of Cyberlink PowerDVD or the likes.
When will Microsoft learn?
!!! Its about the software, stupid !!!
@Steve
Still making ridiculous posts I see. Are you also still claiming to be a developer? LOL!
@Game_playa - You are mistaken. NVIDIA specifically stated this card is the same speed as the PC version. If you read the specs, you'll see the processor speed is indeed 648 Mhz. And the tests so far bear this out. It's a monster of a card and handily beats the $1,700 Quadro in most benchmarks.
If you can buy a LED cinema display, you can FOR SURE afford one of these....
Not if you just bought the Cinema Display.
"assuming you can still afford a pair of 30-inch monitors after you shell out for one of these, that is."
I couldn't afford the pair of 30-inch monitors before spending $450 on this. Especially after spending a good few thousand on a Mac Pro.
Anyone know if this card will be compatible with OpenCL in Snow Leopard?
Yes, nVidia, along with others, are definitely on board. CUDA is bound to work with OpenCL.
Correct. However, Snow Leopard has yet to reveal if these optimizations will show themselves with your existing programs running against the new OS. I suspect still that applications would have to be recompiled with the latest Cocoa frameworks to really leverage GPU program optimizations but its built into Snow Leopard, well then that is just icing on the cake.
So why can't you use a standard PCIe video card in a mac? Isn't just a matter Nvidia writing drivers?
Macs use EFI, PCs don't for the most part.
@Zak: So what exactly is the difference between the cards, then? Obviously not hardware, so is it just a different firmware? (If so, wouldn't it be possible to reflash a PC card with the Mac FW, assuming it was either released for download or ripped by a clever user?)
Flashing firmware is a fairly common practice when the cards are physically the same. Obviously the mfgr would rather you buy the Mac version they paid someone to do the firmware for. I've never seen any indication that Apple didn't want a large video card aftermarket.
It all depends on the card. ATI makes room in their firmware for multiple Firmware sets. So their 4870 card has EFI firmware for both the older Mac Pros (2006/7) that are 32 bit, and the 64 bit Mac Pros from 2008 and on. But NVidia in the past has not made the room available for such a thing.
But there's also economies of scale. The Mac Pro is far from the biggest seller from Apple, so the numbers of people they can target is small. So simply going to through the process of making this card Mac compatible, creating the drivers (which is a very expensive process) and getting the right Firmware into it makes the price higher.
Is EVGA a part of NVIDIA?
evga IS nvidia
How so? They're not owned by some parent company and I checked to see if they had used to be the same company, but they didn't.
NVIDIA is a company that creates and patents GPUs, graphic processing units, and the reference boards on which they lie.
EVGA is another company, wholly distinct from NVIDIA (d889, what?), that repackages the card, perhaps supplying more or less of the same or different RAM, changing the factory clock on the card and/or memory, and attaching a proper heatsink. EVGA then addends the firmware NVIDIA composed for the reference card to cater the change in hardware.
ENGADGET is slow to this. Got this email yesterday.
Nice one!
funny how it's not available as an option when configuring a new Mac Pro
Now all you need are some games. Oh wait, it's a Mac.
Here's some gaming on my iMac.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pacman3000/sets/72157618624214222/
Guess you never heard of cider, huh troll?
QFT Greg. Sold my Mac cause there were no game & no good graphics cards at the time. I mean my 8800 was alright, but with the measly 2.0GHz xeons & no games I was all :(
@Miles
Have you? Because last time I checked, you were either a major fanboi or a troll.
@Paul
Play them in a native environment. all of those you showed. No crossover, just open the game and play it.
Btw, didn't mac users say awhile ago that gaming isn't needed unless you're a child? If so, then why do you seem to
care so much about it?
I was a PC user until very recently and often mocked my best friend about his Mac and lack of games (until I got one), but that situation has mostly been resolved. I tried boot camp for a while, but got tired of restarting my Mac to play just a couple games, mostly Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Source. My friend gave me a copy of Crossover Games and I haven't looked back since. I bought Call of Duty 4, which comes native on the Mac, but they made that game with way too much realism and not enough fun. Maybe I'll try it again later.
The PC fanboys who annoy me are the ones that say "Macs are toys," but as soon as you ask them why they love their PC so much, they immediately say, "Games!"
WTF?
Paul you would be a mac user...people who say they use pcs for games are talking about real games, not the one's you shown here. Go back to Apple HQ and let Steve pay you by giving it to you up the butt. You're on every mac post just trying to talk up macs and you suck at it. give it up.
Whatever.
How the heck would I know about Steam and a bunch of PC only games if I had never been a PC user? I remember when they added the FAMAS and the Galil to Counter-Strike and when people actually still played de_dust instead of de_dust 2. I remember when Valve fixed it so you could no longer bunny hop in Counter-Strike. In fact, I was playing Counter-Strike when Source came out and they had only two models for both teams and most servers banned the SG552 Commando sniper rifle because it was too powerful.
But oh no, you deny I'm a Windows user.
I remember when Battlefield 1942 was released and Desert Combat was the hot mod, which turned into Battlefield 2 (after EA bought DICE) and EA gimped it by separating all the good stuff into expansion packs (Bastards!).
I remember when Half-Life 2 was delayed because a hacker stole the source code from Valve. I remember when there was a rivalry between RTCW and Medal of Honor players about whose multi-player was better (it was Wolf hands down). I remember when the cake was a lie and GlaDOS was still alive...
But no, according to you I was never a Windows user.
You and others like you deny I'm a Windows user because it's too much for your little brain to wrap around the fact that someone once used the same thing you enjoyed and didn't like it.
I never said you never used Windows. I'm saying you fit the perfect stereotype of a current Mac user. That Apple can do no wrong and everything they do is justified.