Here’s something you don’t see every day. A new Mac Pro video card! AMD is showing off a Mac version of the Sapphire HD 7950 graphics card at the CeBit trade show in Hannover, Germany.
In November, we noted that support for the AMD 7000 series was discovered in a 10.8.3 beta. We speculated at the time that the added support was likely for future Mac Pro-level cards, and that’s exactly what Sapphire, a division of AMD, is showing off at CeBit.
The Sapphire HD 7950 Mac Edition is reportedly based on the original 7950 that has a 850MHz engine (up to 925MHz with Boost), 3GB GDDR5 memory, 240GB/s memory bandwidth, and a 1250MHz Memory Clock. PCGamesHardware reports that AMD plans to sell the Mac edition of the card for $450, and the two required 6-pin power adapters will run $25 per.
The report noted that the Mac Edition has been redesigned:
Quite new is the hood, which approximates by milky white the famous Apple design. The cooler is based ansich on the AMD reference design, provides a radial fan in the rear, a large Vapor Chamber on the GPU as well as plenty of vents for heat dissipation. On the slot panel both a dual-link DVI and one HDMI and two mini DisplayPort outputs can be reported. The well-known of the original HD 79×0 video cards BIOS switch on the top of the PCB is on board. The hardware of the Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 Mac Edition, the Windows version is similar ergo strong, we assume that the changes are mainly found in the BIOS. As a result of use in a Mac Pro is possible.
Below is a hands-on video of the Sapphire HD 7950 Mac Edition from CeBit:
