Sapphire's Radeon HD 7950 Mac Edition Unleashed

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This makes me want to look for potential Mac 7950 customers, buy enough 7950s for them for around $300, flash them to Mac, and sell them at a *discount* of $400 instead of $450. It should be easy money if there are enough Mac users looking for 7950s.
 

halcyon

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Despite the price it's good to see a contemporary offering for the Mac Pros. I do often miss my 2010 Mac Pro. Now, Apple needs to update the Pro's a bit and pull the pricing from out of their @$$.
 

A Bad Day

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EDIT: Interesting how on AMD's and Nividia's website, there are no drivers for a Mac OS.

It's most likely that both companies considered programming a GPU driver for the Mac OS wouldn't be worth it, since the Mac desktop market is puny.

It would make sense for AMD to charge more for a custom driver that wouldn't be used by many customers due to the small niche market.
 

A Bad Day

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[citation][nom]Estix[/nom]Why stop at comparing it to the 8800 GT?Why not show us how it fares against the TNT2, or the ATI Rage 3D?[/citation]

Because most 2010 pre-built desktops don't come with silly old GPUs like those.
 

downhill911

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Really niche market since 99% of mac users can not assemble or disassemble computer.
Man even windows is difficult for them.
And now you have this new breed of Windows METROsexuals.
 

A Bad Day

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[citation][nom]dramsey[/nom]If you think there are no Mac drivers on NVIDIA's web site, you must not have looked very hard. Or, more likely, were blinded by ideology.http://www.nvidia.com/object/macos [...] river.html[/citation]

You know that page where it ask for for the GPU generation, exact model, and the OS you're running? I didn't see a Mac OS as an option.
 

mynith

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99 % of mac users can't disassemble a computer because Macs are designed not to be user serviceable. I had enough trouble finding the Torx screwdrivers for an older model. Pentalobe screwdrivers will be even harder to find. At least in hardware stores anyway. People who own Mac Pros, however, probably have some idea about how to open them. They were meant to be opened. A little silly though how they price it so much higher just for the different firmware. But hey, things are worth what people are willing to pay for them, and Mac users tend to have deep pockets and some have short attention spans as well, so they might go for it.
 

hero1

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This is a joke for a price. Are you kidding me? It's time our mac owner friends stood up and demand better pricing or boycott them. Talk about a robbery.
 

rohitbaran

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[citation][nom]wanderer11[/nom]$450 for a 7950? Are we back in March 2012?[/citation]
Good. Companies make some money and iSheep burn some money they would do in a normal scenario on a Mac product. Everyone wins.
 
[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]You know that page where it ask for for the GPU generation, exact model, and the OS you're running? I didn't see a Mac OS as an option.[/citation]

He's just being an @$$ hat. Nividia only supports 6 cards according to his page. The newest one is a GTX 285 and Mac OS does show up in the drives search... If you select the 200 series. But who would do that?

6 beyond outdated cards for 3-5 herself machines is not "driver support"
 

Cryio

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I get the fact that thei wanted to present big performance jumps from one generation (8800 GT) to another (HD 7950), but really aren't other powerhouses on OSX than Portal 2 and Blops2?
 

larkspur

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The video driver updates are included in the OS updates. It's well-known that Apple owns its users in addition to its patents. You only get updates when Apple says so, it has very little to do with Nvidia/AMD. And btw - I'd bet that some of the additional price is due to Apple being forced to pay AMD/Nvidia to write the drivers for their ultra-minority OS. Honestly, with such a tiny marketshare in desktop performance machines, they likely have no choice.
 

bustapr

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someone just has to create/mod a bios on a regular 7950 to trick the macs into thinking its a sapphire 7950 mac edition card. they release it free on the web. and any mac user with half a brain would save themselves some $150(hopefully). its really blasphemy however, that apple is still selling a 5870 at $450...
 

egmccann

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Seeing any card for Macs is fairly nice... and given the miniscule market, I kind of get the higher price. (Remember, these aren't just updates "for macs," but specifically for the Mac Pro - the only one you can actually get into and change hardware on.)

Of course, the Mac Pro itself needs an update...

I know Apple wants to keep the product lines simple, and that works for most of their customers, but I do rather miss being able to get into the machines (through the "beige" G3s and the like) and add/remove/change hardware easily. (First toolless cases I dealt with? 68k Macs... had me wondering why PCs weren't doing it back then! Still like the Q700.)
 

A Bad Day

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[citation][nom]bustapr[/nom]someone just has to create/mod a bios on a regular 7950 to trick the macs into thinking its a sapphire 7950 mac edition card. they release it free on the web. and any mac user with half a brain would save themselves some $150(hopefully). its really blasphemy however, that apple is still selling a 5870 at $450...[/citation]

But then Apple would frown upon such heresy of not accepting everyone spoon-fed to you at a wallet-burning price.

And you know what Apple likes to do...
 
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