14 DAY TRIAL // The people over at Engadget claim to have received a picture of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 Mac Edition. The tipster has pinpointed that the release date is June. The pro-level graphics card is aimed at (what else?) Mac Pros.
Skimming through the GeForce 200 Series Family over at NVIDIA, we found the following specs for the company's GeForce GTX 285 (PC version):
Performance
– NVIDIA GTX 285; – 648 MHz GPU; – 240 Processing Cores; – 400 MHz RAMDAC.
Memory
– 1024 MB, 512 bit DDR3; – 2484 MHz (effective); – 159 GB/s Memory Bandwidth.
Interface
– PCI-E 2.0 x16; – DVI-I, DVI-I, HDTV-7; – SLI Capable. Resolution & Refresh – 240Hz Max Refresh Rate; – 2048x1536 Max Analog; – 2560x1600 Max Digital.
It is yet unknown whether the Mac version of the GTX 285 will ship with a factory-overclocked GPU, or with the reference clocks.
NVIDIA has recently introduced what the company calls the most advanced professional graphics solution for Mac at the moment – the Quadro FX 4800. The Quadro FX 4800 GPU for Mac includes a massive 1.5GB frame buffer and a memory bandwidth up to 76.8 GB/sec that delivers a high throughput for an interactive visualization of large models. To do this (when it's released in May), the graphics card will need drivers present in the Mac OS X 10.5.7 maintenance update from Apple. Like the FX 4800, the GTX 285 is likely to require 10.5.7 as well.
NVIDIA's Quadro FX 4800 is actually not the only card requiring 10.5.7. The “ATI Radeon HD 4870 Graphics Upgrade Kit for Mac Pro (Early 2009 or Early 2008)” is also said to be dependent on the Mac OS X 10.5.7 software update, according to an ITWire report stating the following:
“The 'ATI Radeon HD 4870 Graphics Upgrade Kit for Mac Pro (Early 2009 or Early 2008)' is scheduled to ship in 5-7 weeks. Although the product description says the card requires 'Mac OS X v10.5.6 or later,' it is known that the drivers for this family of graphics chips are part of 10.5.7.”
All this being said, Mac Pro users will gain quite some momentum this summer. All they need to be motivated to buy the card is confirmation that some of the graphically advanced PC games today will shortly make it to the Mac.