10.01.2008 12:50 Uhr, Quelle: Hardmac.com

A Cheaper Quadro FX from NVidia

With the new Mac Pro, Apple offers the Quadro FX 5600 as the high-end graphic card, an option costing 2700€ on the EU Apple Store. When looking at NVidia catalog for Quadro FX, one can easily notice that Apple decided to go only with the most expensive model. Indeed, NVidia just introduced the Quadro FX 3700, sporting "only" 512MB of VRAM, and based on the same GPU than the GF 8800 GT, it costs "only" US$1700 When purchasing such high-end graphic card, users will mostly invest in optimized drivers coming with the Quadro than in the hardware, as it might be on paper as powerful as the fastest consumer-dedicated model. In other words, those Pro-oriented drivers make the difference and justify the price of such cards, so Apple should definitely invest in developing optimized drivers for the GPUs associated with its hardware; as it would boost significantly performance, not only for entry levels, but also for users of the Quadro FX-enabled Mac Pro, considering that Apple has so far only used generic drivers

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