Mac OS X 10.6.7 Includes New AMD Video Card Support

Apple has reportedly added support for new AMD video cards in the Mac OS X 10.6.7 update for early 2011 MacBook Pros, according to a 9to5Mac report.

The site was notified by Tony of TonyMacx86 that native graphics acceleration for some AMD/ATI Radeon HD 5xxx and 6xxx cards was found in the update. Tony wonders if Apple could finally be opening up the platform to non-Mac graphics cards.

"This means full QE/CI without Chameleon's GraphicsEnabler or any enabler kexts such as ATY_init." Could this mean the end of the Mac-only graphics card? Could Apple be opening up the platform more? What happens to NVIDIA? Why support for cards that aren’t in Macs yet?

These are the cards that appear to be supported:
● 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 0×6899
● ATI Radeon HD 5870 Device ID 0×6898

● AMD Radeon HD 6850 Device ID 0×6739
● AMD Radeon HD 6870 Device ID 0×6738
● AMD Radeon HD 6970 Device ID 0×6718

It's also suggested that Apple could be using some of these new cards in the next iMac update.

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