Cupertino has spoken, and NVIDIA is no longer the preferred GPU supplier of One Infinite Loop’s polished white and aluminum desktops. Apple’s newly introduced 21.5” and 27” iMacs based on the Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors will be the exclusive realm of ATI’s Radeon family. This not only ends the latest run of NVIDIA as the default GPU for the iMac, but is the first time since early 2008 that ATI will be the sole option for graphics on the iMac.
But it doesn’t stop with ATI winning the iMac. Apple also announced the new Mac Pro systems based on the Xeon W3500 and E5600 family processors, which will begin shipping in August. For the new Mac Pro, customers will start with a single ATI Radeon HD5770 and can upgrade to a maximum of dual Radeon HD5870’s offering a total of six displays. NVIDIA will not even be available as an option on the new Mac Pro.
The first appearance of ATI parts in the iMac dates back to the original blueberry iMac G3 in 1999, which featured the ATI Rage IIc. The first use of NVIDIA at Apple came nearly three years later, in January 2002 when they released the first LCD G4 iMac with the GeForce 2 MX. Since then, Apple has selected whomever fit their needs at the time—and for most of its life, the Intel-based iMac has offered the option of ATI or NVIDIA. The Mac Pro has, since introduction, always offered the choice between ATI and NVIDIA, with the two alternating between default graphics role. This will be the first time since introduction that the Mac Pro will be exclusively ATI.
The reasons for the iMac are obvious; the iMac has anywhere from a 6 to 12 month design cycle, and requires low power and low heat GPUs. NVIDIA’s only offering is the GT240, which lacks the features and is slower than the HD4670 in low-power DDR3 configurations. For desktops, they are only just now beginning to ship the GTX460, and are still struggling to deliver GTX470 and GTX480 in the volumes Apple would require. Those who pay attention to details probably have noticed that since late 2009, Apple has been going in the direction of ATI’s OpenCL acceleration architecture, the competitor to NVIDIA’s CUDA.
Going forward, the soonest you can expect to see NVIDIA returning to Apple’s desktop line would be 2012. Apple likes to maintain fairly long product cycles—about two years for the iMac, and about 18 months for Mac Pros based on history. And with Apple’s continually increasing market share, NVIDIA just might feel the pain from this one.
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