Architosh Staff (info@architosh.com)

28 June 2001

Mac3D market needs new Wildcat II graphics card

Yesterday, in a press release, 3DLabs made a lot of noise about its new Wildcat II 5110 graphics card. According to the announcement leading professional graphics publications are in agreement over the new Wildcat II 5110 card as the "fastest graphics on the planet" for CAD and DCC.

Macintosh version high on list for serious 3D Pros

While the Mac market has received the arrival of nVidia graphics cards for the platform with much fanfare and excitement—especially the arrival of the new nVidia GeForce3 card—there still remains to be filled some serious "workstation class" graphics card solutions for 3D and CAD professionals doing 3D solid modeling and rendering on the Mac.

While serious Mac 3D professionals get by with highend gaming-oriented cards (as you will learn more about in a future feature) what Apple really needs to do is concentrate on support for workstation class graphics cards at the higher levels. With all of the attention on obtaining Maya support on OS X, one would think Apple would see this as more of a priority so that OS X is indeed the best platform for serious 3D work.

The Wildcat II can support a number of cross-platform, Macintosh friendly products that are officially tuned for Wildcat II acceleration, such as products from Adobe, Alias/Wavefront, Avid, Discreet, and NewTek. However, without Macintosh driver support the Wildcat II cards will remain in the hands of only PC users.

The Wildcat II 5110 card is currently available exclusively through workstation CPU partners such as Compaq, Dell, IBM, SGI and Sun.

Petition Wanted?

Architosh is willing to put together a petition on this subject. If you are interested in supporting Wildcat II on Macintosh please drop us a line.