Accelerate Your Mac! has posted some first impressions from the now-shipping Mac GeForce4 Titanium cards based on Nvidia's powerful chipset. While Apple doesn't name the version of the GeForce4 Ti chipset in its card, the 128 MB of DDR RAM and other specs released by Apple suggest that it is equivalent to the PC's high-end 4600 version.

While the Quake III benchmark at Accelerate Your Mac! doesn't compare the GeForce4 Ti directly with the ATI Radeon 8500, it is telling to see more than 200 frames per second. A number of 2D observations are also made. Here's an excerpt:

If you're ordering a new G4, I'd probably spring for the $250 extra for the GF4 Ti card, rather than the GF4 MX card or the 7500. You get 128 MB of RAM and I'm sure better performance with Quartz Extreme when OS X 10.2 ships. If running dual monitors, having 64 MB of VRAM for each is also a nice plus. (Some will think of Doom III as a reason to buy a GeForce4 Ti or Radeon 8500, but by the time that game ships Nvidia and ATI are likely to have even faster graphics cards available. Nvidia's next design is expected in August for instance.) And for those that ordered a G4 with the Ti card early this year and got it for free - hats off to Apple for that offer (what a bargain).

I wish the Nvidia GF 3 and GF4 Ti cards had Mac driver support for features like pixel/vertex shaders, FSAA, etc. as they do on the PC. (I hear rumors that shader support will be added in a future update to Mac OpenGL.) The Radeon cards now have drivers that support FSAA (in certain games that have that option, although the net effect is often overhyped I think). And the Radeon 8500 has support for Truform, which I've noted previously in the 8500 review has a lot more benefit (IMHO) than FSAA. But the retail 8500 card has no ADC port - requiring the $149 DVI->ADC adapter to use the Apple ADC displays.

Accelerate Your Mac: GeForce4 Ti First Impressions

GeForce4 (add to watch list)

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