Netkas is pretty certain that the HD 4890 will work on the Mac Pro. For some reason he seems to waiting on 10.5.7.
I looked at 8 OpenGL benchtests with the HD 4890 and the HD 4870. At the best, the 4890 beat the 4870 by 14.8 percent. At the worst, the 4890 beat the 4870 by 10.7 percent. The HD 4890 beat the HD 4870 by an average of 13.5 percent.
It was released on April 2nd. It is showing very nice benchmarks.
Some people think the HD 4890 is a version of the HD 4870. It is not. The HD 4890 has 1GB of vram. There is a HD 4870 1GB video card also. The HD 4890 will take the 4870 1GB card to the cleaners.
Because the 4890 and 4870 are different gpus, I am very surprised that they could find drivers to flash the PC HD 4890 card. I don't know how in the heck they do it.
I can understand the The 4870 X2 and the 4870 1GB cards being able to be flashed because they are in the same family as the 4870 512MB card.
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Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
The 4870 X2 is two GPUs on one card. If I am understanding correctly, you can only flash one of those GPUs, therefore it becomes just a single 4870 card.
My 4870 (512MB) card is being shipped to me as we speak.
They are still talking like 10.5.7 will be a savior with drivers for video cards like the 4890 and some NVIDIA GTX cards.
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Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
I think this is a bad time to buy a card right now. I regret I did so. I think there is some nice stuff coming down the pike. Unfortunately patience has never been a virtue of mine.
So, hold off and hang in there and you'll do well
_________________________
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.