Home page » Graphics

Search:

Call it part of the price paid for having an arguably much better, and almost always more stable, computing environment, but Mac users generally have to put up with lagging bit behind when it comes to hardware, especially graphics. AMD isn't sitting idly by and letting Mac owners suffer, to which end the company has announced a Radeon HD 3870 for Macs.

Currently the next best option is the AMD Radeon HD 2900 XT, not a bad card for its time if a little long in the tooth. The 3870, AMD claims, offers twice the performance-per-watt and our testing shows it isn't exactly a sluggish card. The usual 320 stream processors, DirectX 10.1 (in Windows, via Boot Camp) and OpenGL 2.0 (in OSX) support are featured.

With the imminent release of Spore on the Mac this possible upgrade couldn't come at a better time. Granted, AMD is expected to launch RV770 (the 4000-series) within the next few weeks, but it will be a while before Macs sporting those cards are available.

The one caveat of the card is that you'll need a system able to be upgraded, such as a Mac Pro, but other than that there are no restrictions. Available from later this month in America, the card should cost around $219 (~£110) from various Apple resellers. Hopefully for interested Brits it will be on sale in the UK too.

Link:
AMD.

Add your comment

© 2003-2009 TrustedReviews & IPC Media
About Us | Contact Us | Legal | Privacy | RSS