Native Graphics Acceleration for Radeon HD 5xxx and 6xxx in 10.6.7

We have confirmed that Apple has included native graphics acceleration for some Radeon HD 5xxx and 6xxx cards in the Mac OS X 10.6.7 Update for early 2011 MacBook Pro (Sandy Bridge).  This means full QE/CI without Chameleon's GraphicsEnabler or any enabler kexts such as ATY_init.

The following graphics cards appear to be natively 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 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 (not working yet)

This development raises some interesting questions. 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? Will the 2011 Sandy Bridge iMacs contain one or more of these new 6xxx cards?

-tonymacx86 & MacMan

Related Posts: 10.6.7 Update, Mac OS X 10.6.7 Update for early 2011 MacBook Pro (Sandy Bridge)

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