The Apple - AMD deal just got even better, at least for ATI. Despite the fact that Steve Jobs only likes and uses Intel CPUs, it didn't stop this great „don't hold it that way“ leader to go after ATI's graphics. Again we beleive that Apple made a great deal with ATI, and it doesn’t look like Apple guys wanted Fermi cards in their Mac Pro machines.
The choice of ATI only is even more surprising as with these Mac Pro machines Geforce GTX 460 could be a nice option, but Apple only chose to use Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB of GDDR5 or Radeon HD 5870 with 1GB of GDDR5.
One of the interesting things for video editing guys might be the fact that ATI Radeon 5000 cards do support up to six displays.
This machine will have a choice of a single quad core Xeon, two of them, or even two six-core Xeons resulting with a 12-core beast that should be great in rendering and similar tasks. The twelve-core version should arrive in a month's time, but this is most likely the time of availability for all new Mac Pro models.
ATI guys can only be happy about it, and we wonder if Bob Drebin, the previous Chief Technology Officer of AMD that now works in Apple's chip group had something to do with this decision. You never know.
You can find more details here.
Twelve core Xeon and 5870 for the best
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