A plea for nVidia

Here’s something I’d like to see nVidia do in the near future. Please work with Apple so that we can at least have the OPTION of using the latest nVidia components on OS X.

I know you can neither confirm nor deny anything, but the rumor mill says the G300 far exceeds the current technology in compute power. I’m betting it also far exceeds the power consumption of a GTX 285 and adding two of them, without rigging a second power supply, will certainly be impossible.

I’m also rather certain that we won’t see adapters with an EFI BIOS for a considerably long time after non-EFI adapters are available. Some people, like myself, refuse to hack firmware images to coerce an unsupported platform to work.

If there’s going to be a 395 x2, I’m willing to preorder at least two of them if they’ll run with OS X on a Mac Pro. Please do something to keep OS X from being a second-tier platform. Maybe stick a 14-pin PSU<–>motherboard power connector next to the DVI port or something.

I would like to add my name to this plea. Very well put.

For power I now have my case open, with an external ToughPower PSU feeding a second 285. The fit is very tight and the PC card (the only way of getting 2G) is hacked in with 3rd party tool. Maybe that is really plea to Apple.

Nvidia might well consider doing volume production of cards with dual OS ROM (EFI+BIOS) as a matter of course. How much does it really cost to fit 256k rather than 128k chip and load both bits now you have done dev?

This plea needs to be answered if OpenCL is to have chance of lift-off across the range to power user.

We do of course want Apple users to be able to use the latest NVIDIA cards and work closely with them on new products. I would encourage you to contact Apple and make your feelings known!

It would, of course, be quite useful if there was anyone you know in the organization called “Apple” we could contact to make our feelings known. I have the sneaking suspicion my sales rep won’t be able to send the word high up enough.

I whine to Apple about this often enough that they no longer care about my hurt feelings… :">

As mmag said, give us a contact (preferably someone you don’t like) and I’ll start carpet bombing them with e-mails.

Alternately, it would be great if nVidia would consider something like a “PCI-E bracket power connector” for its adapters that would make it convenient to just plug a power connector into the adapter, with a wall-wart (power adapter) on the other side. The more I think about this, the more it seems like the best solution. Then you (and more importantly, we consumers) wouldn’t be beholden to Apple or any other motherboard manufacturer.

Of course, separating the power planes would be a bit of a challenge, but I’m betting nVidia has the know-how to put this together. Then, you can make a graphics adapter with enough draw to make the lights go dim (and I’d still buy at least two of them).

Voodoo 5 6000!

And while I would certainly like complete parity between OS X and other platforms at all times, I can’t tell you to bug someone at Apple (also because they would come and punch me in the face if I singled anyone out). As cliched as it sounds, the best way to do it is to write really good CUDA apps (both for OS X and other platforms) that help us make a really strong case that this is an important thing to do.

Ouch! :blink: Yeah, that’s enough of an epic fail to scare people away.

As for the great apps, we’re workin’ on it!

Now, do you really think the Apple guys would come punch you in the face? I mean, they’re geeks, right? It’s not as if it would actually hurt… :rolleyes: