Your new iMac was a topic of interesting speculation and rumor before it was announced and the rumors haven’t stopped flowing. Apparently, some new iMac owners are reporting their video card is not what was advertised on the box and on Apple’s site.

The discussion is going on at MacRumors forum and it’s implying that Apple may be lying to you! Take a look at the picture one user posted below (you may need to full screen your browser to see it all, the borders of the site may cut it off):

That is a screen shot of the system summary of an iMac running Windows XP. The video card listed is a Radeon HD 2600 XT not the advertised and much less powerful Radeon HD 2600 pro.

This is great news for people who wanted to game on this machine if it turns out to be true, but Mac OSX isn’t showing the same name for the video card.

Some are speculating that Apple didn’t advertise the 2600 Pro because it couldn’t get a sufficient supply of XT cards and had to resort to Pro cards for the time being. It advertised the pro because it was the lowest card at the time and plans to eventually "upgrade" all machines to the XT, making a big deal out of it once announced.

Others believe Apple will release a firmware upgrade for a price to "unlock" the full power of their video card. Apple did something similar to this when it began equipping 802.11n wireless cards in its machines but only advertised the machines as having 802.11g cards. They later released a firmware upgrade for $1.99 to "unlock" the better capabilities of their Macs.

One user went so far as to contact Apple support, which told him that the card was technically a custom built model from ATI, which lead some to believe that it was an underclocked HD 2600 XT since there is no 2600 Pro mobile model on ATI’s site. Many believe this is true as they compare the known stats of the 2600 XT, the Pro, and the card in their computer.

A pessimistic few are shrugging it off as a mistake somewhere in the card’s driver or device ID. That may very well be true, and everyone would have gotten their hopes up for nothing.

Either way, mine has the HD 2400, so I have no reason to get my hopes up… or do I have the 2400? With Apple’s track record, there’s really no telling exactly what’s in our machines nowadays. 

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 at 5:43 pm under Apple.

Read more entries by Danny Mendez.
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