Driver Support for GeForce 7600 GT

As far as I can remember, there have never been just driver updates on Macs' graphic cards; any updates would have been incorporated into software/firmware updates which will appear in Software update when they're available. So, if you want to make some noise, I'd say contact Nvidia to make something available and good luck.

I agree, especially since I seem to have the same iMac with the same graphics card; however, in electronic "speak", 3 years probably equals 1000 human years... 🙂

The 7x00 generation is the last of the old style graphics cards, with a fixed function pipeline and dedicated shaders. Newer graphics cards have a different design with universal shader processors and begins with the 8x00 generation (and the HD 2x00 generation on the ATi side). If you look closely, any new drivers being pushed out covers everything from the 8x00 graphics cards and on. Most likely noone is working on drivers for the old design anymore.

ebpoll wrote:
Thats crap though. Its not that old. Thats not taking care of your customers.

While I feel your pain (and am in the exact same position), the passing of time in conjunction with a major architecture switch (I had no idea, must do some reading!) is reasonable for me. Considering how quickly the consumer graphics business moves, I don't blame them. If this were a professional graphics solution, I would be irate since the premium cost of the card most likely covers the ongoing support, maintenance, and higher expectations (i.e., longer product life cycles) that professional users demand.

What is hurting us is the fact that we're locked in to the graphics solution that shipped with our computer back in 2006 with no path to upgrade. The target audience for Starcraft II and countless other games can walk into a local computer store and upgrade to current generation card for a few hundred bucks and call it a day; we have to invest thousands.

Believe me, I'm as frustrated as you are, but this inability to upgrade easily was the exact reason why I purchased my iMac. It not only simplified my computing life, but also cured me of my build-and-upgrade habits from my PC days which was a constant drain on my bank account thanks to impulse upgrades on a quarterly basis. I stretched my dollar further by investing in a console gaming system for those moments of weakness, though I yearn for some classic strategy with a mouse and keyboard.

This approach seems to have worked for nearly four years, though truth be told, as soon as I see some benchmarks on the first party SSD Apple is using I'm pulling the trigger on a new one and will be Starcrafting like the rest of them! 🙂

Something dawned on my once I hit "Post"; your alternative could be Bootcamping and running a Windows version of Starcraft II. See this post here on another forum, but I'm not sure if the poster is correct as I haven't tried it.

Still, Starcraft II on a 3.5 year old computer may not be quite the experience we have been hoping for, though it may be better than nothing I suppose.

Good luck!

Hopefully the latest update coming our way in the near future as mentioned over at here will not leave us owners of older iMacs out in the cold. Fingers crossed.

I originally purchased my iMac (with the GeForce 7600 GT option) from Apple on June 6th, 2007. The machine ran brilliantly under OS X Leopard (10.5), but began to suffer with OS X Snow Leopard (10.6), released August 28th, 2009. It just doesn't seem right that I wouldn't see a proper graphics driver update on a machine that still had a year left on its Apple Care coverage.

In my case, while I understand that I still might not be able to play things like Portal or Half-Life 2 under OS X (I can always boot into Windows for those), I'd still like to see the fluidity of my graphics return that I once had under Leopard (10.5). An easy example I can give is loading up iTunes 10.0.1, and seeing everything stutter as it scrolls (even the credits in the "About iTunes" screen).

It's been over a year since the release of Snow Leopard - is there a shred of hope for any graphical performance update at all?

Valve won't support the 7600GT without support from Apple/nVidia ( http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=17854516&postcount=57), if they get support they don't have an issue with it however. Is it asking too much that we get proper support for a system that's only three years old?

I mean, it's not like i'm talking about an iMac G3 here. It's an iMac 24" 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with a 7600GT..

Ya this is horrible driver support. I hate this iMac for numerous reasons.
-Overheated GPU, a month of AppleCare solved that.
-Sad game performance in Mac OS X versus Windows
-The slot drive broke ($300 repair) and this model doesn't supporting booting from a CD with an external disc drive (Snow Leopard disc lives in there now just in case), so no bootcamp unless I pay $300.
-And on top of that there's no driver support, come on Apple! Linux has proper drivers!

It's a really quick mac still but these drivers makes it pretty much garbage when doing anything my netbook can't do.

Well, it seems I have the same problem, with a slightly different perspective.
I have installed osx 10.6 (now 10.6.6), for the moment my problem is that online video once it is on full screen it drops a lot of frames.
I Still can't imagine how apple cand neglect a lot of customers?!
And it would not a big problem to downgrade to 10.5, if I would have the disk. And I also lost disk 1 (tiger).
Other than trying to get a copy of 10.5 from torrents, how would I be able to have a legal copy of Leopard?