Filed under: Accessories, Gaming, Apple Professional, Mac Pro, Graphic Design
Graphics Powerhouse: ATI Radeon HD 3870 Mac & PC edition
Mac Pro users -- it's time to power up the graphics capability of your machine! ATI has announced the new Radeon HD 3870 Mac & PC Edition. Whether you're a serious gamer or a graphics designer, this new card features 256-bit 512MB GDDR4 frame buffer memory, 320 stream processors, twin dual-link DVI ports to run two 30" Apple Cinema HD displays, PCI Express 2.0 support, and more.
One of our readers pointed out that you can even use the HD 3870 in Windows running in Boot Camp on a Mac Pro. The Radeon HD 3870 runs in any Mac Pro and will be available in late June for a MSRP of $219.
Thanks to TJ & Seth for the tip!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
JedixJarf said 12:13PM on 6-15-2008
The 8800GT will still beat the crap out of this card. The bench marks and performance of the 3870 are still very comparable to the 2900XT.
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André said 12:54PM on 6-15-2008
This is not the case with Mac OS X. ATI have a history of delivering better performance in professional applications and this is exactly what the Radeon HD 3870 Mac edition does, while being cheaper than the Geforce 8800 GT.
And the Radeon HD 3870 is clearly faster than the Radeon HD 2900 XT even though they architectually share much.
Nate said 1:04PM on 6-15-2008
Are you guys seriously just hearing about this now? Wow. I'm really glad I only occasionally glance over this blog and get my actual Mac news elsewhere; you guys talk about random programs that nobody uses more than things that are actually substantial, such as a relatively cheap & powerful graphics card capable of running on both Mac OSX & Windows on Mac.
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yakov chodosh said 7:08PM on 6-15-2008
where do you get your news?
mabhatter said 7:28PM on 6-15-2008
doesn't the NEXT ATI card, the 4850 for PC also come out in late June.... and the 4870 a few months later. Why are we excited about the Mac Pro (one of the fastest "home" computers on the block) getting a graphics card about to be obsolete next month?
News would be a 4850/4870 for Mac actually coming out on the same release date as the PC card!!!
Nate said 7:33PM on 6-15-2008
@yakov
appleinsider.com
macworld.com
arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars
macrumors.com
Apple Insider is the one I frequent the most; I find that they provide the most consistent news. TUAW is typically good for the more incidental-type of news, as well as reports on software. If you have time, you'd do well to peruse all of them every so often, as there's usually something on one that isn't on the other.
This news, however, was all over the tech blogs on Thursday. That's why I find it rather disconcerting that TUAW is just now finding out about this.
Fredster said 1:15PM on 6-15-2008
Cool, this is really a nice thing! I hope they will do the same with the 4000 and 4000X2-series! Now that would be interesting to have!!:-)
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Navarro Parker said 8:31PM on 6-15-2008
The 8800 has massive gliches with After Effects CS3 and the ATI 2900 has trouble with Cinema 4D's enhanced OpenGL mode. I look forward to this card, but I wish Apple/ATI/Nvidia would write some better Mac drivers.
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Ian said 4:30AM on 6-17-2008
Hi, note the small print:
2 While the ATI Radeon™ HD 3870 Mac & PC edition does support 30-bit digital display under the Mac OS, display output is limited to 24-bit and below.
Anyone know why this limitation (OS or ATI)? Means Apple users can't use that gorgeous new 30bit LCD for HP with this... ;-)
http://www.slashgear.com/hp-dreamcolor-lcd-hands-on-event-1bn-colors-crt-class-images-1111999.php
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