According to tonymacx86, the recently released 10.6.7 brings in native graphics acceleration to AMD cards the aren’t currently equipped in most of Apple’s computers. They consist of video cards in the 5000 and 6000 series.
Here’s the list of natively supported cards:
- ATI Radeon HD 5630 Device ID 0x68D8
- ATI Radeon HD 5630 Device ID 0x68D9
- ATI Radeon HD 5670 Device ID 0x68D8
- ATI Radeon HD 5730 Device ID 0x68D8
- ATI Radeon HD 5770 Device ID 0x68B8
- ATI Radeon HD 5850 Device ID 0×6899
- ATI Radeon HD 5870 Device ID 0×6898
- AMD Radeon HD 6850 Device ID 0×6739
- AMD Radeon HD 6870 Device ID 0×6738
- AMD Radeon HD 6970 Device ID 0×6718
What does this mean for you? To the average person it means don’t expect Nvidia cards in your Macs for a generation or two. Also, this may indicate that Apple may be opening up (to AMD at least) in letting people buy 3rd party cards for their machines. Now unfortunately, at the moment the only machine you can do this on is Apple’s most powerful and expensive product, the Mac Pro.
For the hackintoshers out there, you will be able to add certain video cards without getting custom kernels and hacks to get graphic acceleration.
It’s really a win-win for everyone but Nvidia and who knows, maybe with Thunderbolt we’ll be able to run graphics cards external some day. One can wish.
(via tonymacx86)
