Tag Archives: ATi

By Staff | Published: October 19, 2010

October 20th Apple Event preview

Steve Jobs will once again take to the stage tomorrow, Wednesday October 20th at the “Town Hall” on Apple’s Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino, California to unveil a new round of products and technology previews with his infamous headline-grabbing presentation style. What will be announced? Grapevine consensus appears to have a firm grasp of the big picture, but as to the details….

With a few notable exceptions (the small number of people working on certain projects within Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion,” internal code name ‘Barolo,’ force us to sit on details of those projects until after the Event when even if those projects aren’t mentioned during the Event, they will be known to a wider group within Infinite Loop and leaks can no longer be tied so easily to our sources), what we’ve been told by some of our oldest and most reliable contacts in Cupertino comports very closely with the grapevine’s consensus of what to expect tomorrow:

*Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” as hinted by Apple’s logo for the Event:

Apple's Back to the Mac October 20th Apple Event logo

….Lion is a collection of long-standing projects, many of them held back from the Leopard and Snow Leopard development cycles because they were too ambitious and too out of sync with Apple’s priorities at the time to make the cut for those releases. Read more

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Posted in Apple Events, Apple Hardware, Apple Inc., Apple Software | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Responses
By Staff | Published: April 1, 2010

Roadmap 2010: Macbook Pro

UPDATE 4/3/10 2:30PM Eastern: Added mention of IPS display panels to specs page.

For about 3 months now, Intel’s new “Arrandale” mobile Core i3/i5/i7 processors have been on the market — offered by many of the major PC makers in their latest laptops — but have not yet been integrated into Apple’s products. These CPUs are part of Intel’s “Nehalem” family, a major generational leap from previous Core 2 technology. Nehalem-class chips have been at the heart of the Mac Pro and quad-core iMacs for some time, and offer numerous advantages.

Arrandale, though only a two-core design versus the quads in current Core i5/i7 desktops, is ahead of those desktop chips in a few areas. Notably, it is one of Intel’s first Nehalem chips built on a 32-nanometer manufacturing process; each step in shrinking silicon chip manufacturing processes brings about greater energy efficiency, better price/performance, and allows more transistors to be packed onto a smaller chip footprint. Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Responses
By Staff | Published: March 29, 2010

Roadmap 2010: Mac Pro

Although supplies of some components Apple wants to use in the 2010 Mac Pro may cause further delays that cannot yet be precisely anticipated even by senior executives at Infinite Loop itself, a considerable leap forward for Cupertino’s high-end workstation is widely anticipated in the next few weeks.

As is typical among seasoned rumor-mongers, we are hesitant to try to predict in anything but general terms when to expect this update; Apple has extremely high standards for predictable supplies of components (brought about by snafus like the major delay in availability of PowerPC G4 processors when they were first introduced), and is quite willing to push back its own planned announcement dates if there is the slightest question of availability or quality-control problems. Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Responses
By Staff | Published: March 17, 2010

Major updates to Mac Pro and Macbook/Air/Pro lineups imminent

As Rumors has previously reported, a new generation of 32-nanometer Intel chips (Arrandale for mobile, Gulftown/Westmere-EP on the desktop) are ready for Apple to build several new Macs around. Several factors have kept Apple from being the first to adopt these chips, but sources now report that the time for their announcement is approaching.

Some widely published reports about the 2010 Mac Pro were based on information deliberately falsified by a single source, but other than the specific date given, much of the information that has been reported is essentially accurate: a new lineup of Mac Pros with a high-end 12-core (dual sockets, 6 physical/12 logical cores per chip) model have been under development in Cupertino for some time and are now close to being ready to ship. Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 16 Responses
By Staff | Published: March 3, 2009

Apple updates iMac, Mini today with nVIDIA chipsets instead of Intel

In a move that surprised even some of our sources and was in several key ways quite (but not entirely) contrary to our published projections as to the iMac’s specs, Apple announced new iMacs and Mac Minis today.

Although we are quite confident that Core i7 (“Nehalem” and “Gainestown” for desktop and Xeon products respectively) will indeed make its way into the Mac platform over the rest of the year, clearly the issues we’ve previously reported with Intel’s chipsets and the outstanding issues with some of the prototypes we’ve had the chance to examine (bugs, largely — though supply and timing were also reportedly issues; we had some internal debates over whether March 24th was really a remotely realistic announcement date, no less ship date) convinced the company’s decision makers to go with a Core 2 Duo based lineup using basically identical processors to previous models….merely adding more powerful memory, graphics, and nVIDIA chipsets. Read more

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Posted in Apple Events, Apple Hardware, Apple Software | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Responses
By Staff | Published: March 2, 2009

iMac and possibly Mini to be updated at March 24th Apple Event

The grapevine has been set on fire this weekend by a breaking rumor, strongly suggesting from multiple quarters/sources that the much awaited “Nehalem” Core i7 iMac, and perhaps also a revamped Mac Mini, will be announced at an Apple Event on the 24th of this month.

Although there is less certainty about whether or not the Mini, despite being quite long in the tooth, will be updated at the event….a consensus is rapidly forming across the entire Grapevine to the effect that this event is confirmed (though not yet officially announced; that will most likely take place later this week or early in the next) and that the new iMacs as we have envisioned them here on Rumors will indeed be introduced there. Read more

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Posted in Apple Events, Apple Hardware | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Responses
By Staff | Published: February 11, 2009

Will my GPU be fully supported by Snow Leopard’s OpenCL?

According to reliable sources, if you own an Intel Mac other than the Mini or an original Macbook — either of which shipped with Intel’s GMA950 integrated GPU — then you are already good to go for support of the full range of OpenCL acceleration features.

If you have a Mac with the Intel GMA950, then you will get most of the benefits of OpenCL though the performance level of those functions will be significantly lessened due to the lack of dedicated graphics RAM and absence of support for many programmable GPU features that exist in other chips/cards going back to the ATi X1000 series.

To get that full support, GPUs as “old” as the ATi X1600, X1800 and X1900 (the latter of which was available for PowerMac G5s with PCI Express slots, based on the PowerPC 970MP dual-core processor while the former shipped in early Intel iMacs and its X1600M cousins in Macbook Pros) will do the job….but certain nVIDIA cards from the GeForce 7000 series, which shipped in iMacs and PowerMacs during the G5 era, most likely will not. Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware, Apple Software | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Responses
By Staff | Published: January 30, 2009

Upcoming new iMacs to go quad-core; what else will be new?

In recent weeks, the grapevine has moved from speculating about new iMacs based on quad-core “Nehalem” Intel Core i7 processors to having near-total confidence in the broad strokes of the rumor, merely seeking confirmation of the details. Well, some of the finer details are still embargoed….but we have been able to confirm once & for all that the new iMacs will indeed have four-core Nehalem processors with the associated improved motherboards.

At this point our sources have asked us to withhold precise benchmark numbers (we don’t like reporting third party numbers anyway unless they’re ballpark; it stakes our reputation on too many variables that are out of our hands — even with well-established sources)…but we should be able to report those in the near future once team members are able to put their hands directly on a prototype — and there can be little doubt that these new iMacs will be amazing, incredibly fast performers. Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | 12 Responses
By Staff | Published: January 28, 2009

Impressive new details of next-gen Mac Pro emerge

As we reported previously, the forthcoming 2009 Mac Pro lineup will be based around powerful new technology from Intel code-named Nehalem; better known through great public anticipation in the lead-up to its release as “Core i7.”

We reported on a mid-stream prototype, placed inside an existing-generation “cheesegrater” tower enclosure, in that article which was built on early desktop Nehalem reference board chips including a pair of quad-core, 2.93GHz Core i7 desktop CPUs.

Since then, we’ve had the opportunity to look under the hood of far more recent prototypes and a much clearer picture of the final Mac Pro has begun to emerge.

One of the first questions readers asked after the initial article was posted was whether the Nehalem Mac Pro will employ those standard desktop CPUs which currently tap out just below 3GHz and have been on the market for a few weeks now….or if it will sport Xeon-class i7 chips that offer higher clock rates, more cores, and numerous other advantages over their standard desktop cousins. Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , | 9 Responses
By Staff | Published: January 27, 2009

Apple releases nVIDIA Graphics Update 2009

Late this afternoon, Apple released a much anticipated set of updates to drivers and related system elements for nVIDIA graphics hardware. Originally targeted only at current-model Macbook, Macbook Air & Macbook Pros which have experienced significant bugs with cursors, crashes and rendering errors, the final version of the update also includes drivers for older nVIDIA GPUs in desktop Macs.

From http://support.apple.com/downloads/NVIDIA_Graphics_Update_2009:

About NVIDIA Graphics Update 2009

This update improves cursor movement when using the Apple Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI adapter with the Mini DisplayPort enabled MacBook Air, MacBook and MacBook Pro.

It also improves playback of HD video running on systems with NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT or GeForce 9600M graphics.

According to early reader reports via email (rumors@macosrumors.com), IM (AIM: MacOSRumors) and Twitter (@MacOSRumors), the performance benefits on all of the GPUs/Macs listed above — and interestingly enough, also some others — are significant. Read more

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Posted in Apple Software | Also tagged , , , , | 2 Responses