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ATI announces Radeon HD 3870 Mac and PC Edition

ATI announced the availability of the Radeon HD 3870 Mac and PC Edition a couple of days ago, shipping in late June for a recommended price of $219.



This must be welcome news for Mac Pro owners, as the current alternative, the NVIDIA 8800 GT suffers from underwhelming ProApp performance, despite the recent improvements in the 10.5.3 update.

Here is a specification comparison:

	Radeon HD 3870	8800 GT
Stream processors	320	112
Core clock	775 MHz	600 MHz
Memory	512 MB	512 MB
Memory interface	256-bit	256-bit
Memory bandwidth	70 GB/sec	57.6 GB/sec
Price	$219	$279

ATI also claims a performance boost in Motion of 30-180%. Barefeats found a 21-41% performance increase over the 8800 GT - for $60 less. It is also compatible with ALL Mac Pros and available from most ATI resellers (the 8800 GT Mac Edition is only available from the Apple Store). This looks to be well worth buying.