Apple picks AMD Radeon HD GPUs for iMac

Wednesday 08th August 2007, 03:03:00 AM, written by Tim

After using NVIDIA's G84 chips in its MacBook Pro, Apple announced a new version of its iMac today, which will be powered by AMD Radeon HD 2400 and 2600 GPUs. The new iMac sports a 20" or 24" glossy widescreen display at 1680x1050 or 1920x1200, respectively. The 2.0GHz 20" iMac uses a AMD Radeon HD 2400 XT with 128MiB of GDDR3, while the faster 2.4GHz 20" and 24" models contain the Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MiB of GDDR3.

One thing of note is that these are not the traditional desktop RV610 and RV630. Instead, the new iMac is built upon Intel's Santa Rosa platform and as a result, all chips used are their mobile variants. The Core 2 Duo is one of the mobile T-series chips, and the Radeon 2400 is M72 while the 2600 is M76.

The new iMac is available now, with prices ranging from $1199 for the 2.0 Ghz 20" model to $2299 for the 2.8GHz Core 2 Extreme-powered 24" model.



Discuss on the forums

Tagging

apple ± imac, 2400, 2600


Latest Thread Comments (9 total)
Posted by iwod on Wednesday, 08-Aug-07 17:09:03 UTC
Why oh Why?

They use Nvidia on MacBook, So why not Nvidia on iMac? The only reason i could think off is AMD give a lot of discount to Apple to using ATI gfx.

Nvidia is much more power efficient, it is also faster. And properly have better OpenGL driver then ATI. Why on earth would they go for ATI?

Posted by Sound_Card on Wednesday, 08-Aug-07 19:03:44 UTC
Quoting iwod
Why oh Why?

They use Nvidia on MacBook, So why not Nvidia on iMac? The only reason i could think off is AMD give a lot of discount to Apple to using ATI gfx.

Nvidia is much more power efficient, it is also faster. And properly have better OpenGL driver then ATI. Why on earth would they go for ATI?
:roll:

The RV630 and RV610 are very power efficient. Consume less than 50w. ATi's OGL driver is also pretty dang stable and fast.

- RV630/RV610 consume less power than G84/86
- Better movie play back thanks to UVD(lower CPU untilization)
- The former 24inch iMac modal featured a Geforce 7300 128mb with a 64bit bus. The new 24inch iMac modal is stocked with a HD 2600pro 256mb 128bit bus. By no way is the Geforce faster than the Radeon in anything.

Posted by NocturnDragon on Wednesday, 08-Aug-07 21:01:10 UTC
This is total and pure speculation, but I think it also has to do with driver developing.If they didn't sell any ATI graphic products for this generation, AMD might feel less obligate to keep their part of OS X drivers bleeding edge.Using Intel, ATI and nVidia GPU in their lineup, they keep open the door to more possibilities if something bad happened to one of them down the road.

Posted by INKster on Thursday, 09-Aug-07 05:32:07 UTC
Quoting Sound_Card
:roll: The RV630 and RV610 are very power efficient. Consume less than 50w. ATi's OGL driver is also pretty dang stable and fast. - RV630/RV610 consume less power than G84/86- Better movie play back thanks to UVD(lower CPU untilization)- The former 24inch iMac modal featured a Geforce 7300 128mb with a 64bit bus. The new 24inch iMac modal is stocked with a HD 2600pro 256mb 128bit bus. By no way is the Geforce faster than the Radeon in anything.
The Apple TV uses a Geforce 7300 GS (the mobile variant, i believe) with 64MB of dedicated DDR2.That's the smallest casing for any Apple "computer" today (besides the iPhone of course, but then again, the iPhone doesn't run x86 software natively ;)).

Posted by Dave Baumann on Thursday, 09-Aug-07 07:02:38 UTC
That was also shipping long before HD 2400/2600 was available.

Posted by iwod on Thursday, 09-Aug-07 13:42:58 UTC
Quoting Sound_Card
:roll:

The RV630 and RV610 are very power efficient. Consume less than 50w. ATi's OGL driver is also pretty dang stable and fast.

- RV630/RV610 consume less power than G84/86
- Better movie play back thanks to UVD(lower CPU untilization)
- The former 24inch iMac modal featured a Geforce 7300 128mb with a 64bit bus. The new 24inch iMac modal is stocked with a HD 2600pro 256mb 128bit bus. By no way is the Geforce faster than the Radeon in anything.
According to a few review site, Nvidia PowerVideo offer better Video Decoding Quality then ATI UVD. At the expense of a little more decoding power. ( Less then 5% )

Unless ATI Catalyst improve the situation a lot. On Wondows Nvidia offer better performance per watt then ATI.

Must be the long history between ATI and Apple make that decision. As some one have pointed out Driver development was Key to it as well.

Posted by Dave Baumann on Thursday, 09-Aug-07 16:18:47 UTC
Quoting iwod
According to a few review site, Nvidia PowerVideo offer better Video Decoding Quality then ATI UVD. At the expense of a little more decoding power. ( Less then 5% )
As a note, UVD has nothing to do with "quality" per-se, it has to do with decoding performance - quality comes in another step. As it happens, though, I can point you to other reviews where the opposite is the case and the HD 2000's come out with better quality.

Posted by fellix on Friday, 10-Aug-07 00:18:54 UTC
Speaking of video quality, the HQV test suite shows quite the opposite for UVD and PV.

Posted by Sound_Card on Friday, 10-Aug-07 13:48:57 UTC
Quoting fellix
Speaking of video quality, the HQV test suite shows quite the opposite for UVD and PV.
Do you not mean AVIVO and PV?


Add your comment in the forums

Related apple News

3G iPhone using same 90nm Application Processor as 2G iPhone?
iPhone 3.5G to support 1080p H.264 High-Profile Dual-Stream Decoding?
Apple acquires PA Semi; Press proves lack of understanding. [UPDATED]
EA games for Mac announced at WWDC not native
NVIDIA and Intel power the Apple TV