Apple Adds Super Fast GeForce4 Titanium As BTO option For PowerMac G4s

by , 4:10 PM EST, February 5th, 2002

Apple has added a new BTO option to the PowerMac G4 product line, the GeForce4 Titanium. The models were introduced last month with the GEForce4 MX video card as standard options on the mid-range and high-end models; the GeForce4 Titanium is a much better and faster video card than its MX cousin. Many Mac users were critical of the GeForce4 MX as some benchmarks showed that it was actually slower than the previous generation GeForce3 cards. Today's announcement from Apple will likely silence those critics. The card also supports dual-monitors from the single card and has 128 MB of DDR SDRAM on board. As of this writing, the company has not added information on the new card to its Web site or to the Apple Store, but this press release has hit the wire services from Apple:

Apple(R) today announced that the world's fastest graphics processor, NVIDIA's new GeForce4 Titanium, will be available in the world's fastest personal computer, the Pentium-crushing Power Mac(TM) G4, starting next month. Delivered on a AGP 4X card containing 128MB of double data rate (DDR) SDRAM, the GeForce4 Titanium processor renders incredibly lifelike content and special effects such as real-time character animation and amazing surface details never before seen on a personal computer.

"The Power Mac G4 with Mac OS X and NVIDIA's new GeForce4 Titanium combine to provide an incredible visual workstation," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Creative professionals and gamers alike are going to enjoy the amazing leap in 3D realism." The GeForce4 Titanium delivers incredible performance, processing 87 million triangles per second and 4.9 billion textured pixels per second to perform over 1.23 trillion operations per second. The GeForce4 Titanium delivers another first -- the connection of two Apple flat-panel displays simultaneously in a single slot by providing both Apple Display Connector (ADC) and Digital Visual Interface (DVI) connectors (requires DVI to ADC adapter). The card provides both extended desktop as well as video mirroring, and it enables standard VGA devices to attach via the included DVI to VGA adapter.

The ultimate digital powerhouse for creative professionals, the new Power Mac G4 line features systems with dual 1-GHz, 933-MHz and 800-MHz PowerPC G4 processors with Velocity Engine(TM). The 933-MHz and dual 1-GHz models include the NVIDIA GeForce4 MX with 64MB of DDR SDRAM. Providing incredible performance, the dual 1-GHz Power Mac G4 delivers an amazing 15 gigaflops (15 billion floating point operations per second), running professional applications like Adobe Photoshop up to 72 percent faster and encoding DVD Video over 300 percent faster than a 2.0 GHz Pentium 4-based PC*. The line offers both Mac(R) OS X as the startup operating system and Mac OS 9, in addition to Apple's award-winning suite of applications for digital music (iTunes(TM) 2), digital video (iMovie(TM) 2 and iDVD 2) and digital photography (iPhoto).

* Based on commonly used operations in Adobe Photoshop 6.0.

The GeForce4 Titanium is priced at US$250 (above and beyond the existing card) when added to a BTO PowerMacG4 933 MHz or Dual 1 GHz, US$350 when added to a 800 MHz unit. The 800 MHz PowerMac G4s currently ship with the less expensive ATI Radeon 7500 card. Apple says that this "the NVIDIA GeForce4 Titanium graphics processor for the Power Mac G4 is available as a build-to-order option through The Apple Store with systems shipping next month."

There is currently a discussion on this announcement going on in the TMO forums.

The Mac Observer Spin:

Wowza, this is a fine video card. Feel free to find some complaint about this announcement, like the cards should be free or somesuch, but we think this makes a great BTO option. It also makes the PowerMac G4 a fine gaming machine that should attract gamers and game developers alike.