I was referring to the 8500 and the 9000 only (the subject of my post). The 8500 requires ATI's drivers to work (ie with all features enabled) in OSX.
" ... Just to make it clear - all video cards from NIVIDA are officially supported in OS X ..."
nVidea (unlike ATI) doesn't make video cards; they are a chip company only (like AMD). All nVidia cards themselves are made by 3rd party manufacturers; they're all built using the nVidia reference design and chipset, but they're certainly not identical from one manufacturer to another.
"nVidia" card is a bit of a misnomer; actually we should probably say things like "ASUS card with nVidia chipset", etc.
So, although it's probably true that the cards with an nVidia chipset, and sold via Apple for Macs, are supported (because they're manufactured for Apple by some unknown assembler) I wouldn't go as far as saying any nVidia chipset card would be supported.
It's just that no-one else besides Apple makes them at this point * , so naturally those cards we have available to us right now should be supported.
By supported, I mean the drivers are part of your OS installation and have been tested to work in OSX. If you upgrade the OS, the drivers will be included in the upgrade.
Installing a supported card should only require plugging it in (although in some hardware the drivers aren't installed by the OS installer, so you still might have to do it manually).
With an unsupported card, you should install the manufacturer's drivers before you install the card itself, and may find you need to install upgraded drivers from the card manufacturer with a new OS upgrade.
*- That I know of. Do you know of an nVidia chipset card that wasn't sold through the AppleStore that's Mac compatible, Lars? I was under the impression there wern't any.
[ January 04, 2004, 09:39 AM: Message edited by: gordguide ]