As noted by hacker Tony of tonymacx86, the latest OS X 10.6.7 update for the 2011 MacBook Pro comes with support for AMD/ATI video cards not currently included on Mac machines. Tony speculates that this may indicate an opening up of the platform and that Apple’s reliance on Mac-only graphics cards may be coming to an end. The end result, potentially, is that Mac users will be able to swap out video cards more freely. As it stands now, only Apple’s line of Mac Pros come with user-replaceable video cards to begin with and users interested in replacing those are limited to a small number of Mac-only options.
The updated list of supported graphics cards include:
ATI Radeon HD 5630 Device ID 0x68D8
ATI Radeon HD 5630 Device ID 0x68D9
ATI Radeon HD 5670 Device ID 0x68D8
ATI Radeon HD 5730 Device ID 0x68D8
ATI Radeon HD 5770 Device ID 0x68B8
ATI Radeon HD 5850 Device ID 0x6899
ATI Radeon HD 5870 Device ID 0x6898
AMD Radeon HD 6850 Device ID 0x6739
AMD Radeon HD 6870 Device ID 0x6738
AMD Radeon HD 6970 Device ID 0x6718
Mon, Mar 28, 2011
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