After the higher than normal fail rate of Nvidia 9400 GPU’s in Macbooks, Apple has decided to give AMD graphic cards a larger presence in their iMac and Mac Pro systems.

AMD has announced that their Radeon HD 4000 series of graphic cards will now be the main GPU used in place of the failing Nvidia cards. They’ve also announced that the cards are able to support Snow Leopards new OpenCL system which allows designers to create software that’s more evenly distributed between the users CPU and GPU.

The ATI HD 4870 video card can be spotted in Mac Pro systems, while the ATI HD 4850 cards are offered in iMac systems. [via SlashGear]

AMD Radeon 4000 Series Graphic Cards Get Mac Treatment is a post from: The Inquisitr

According to Liberation.fr (english translation), as reported on ZDNet, the odor being emitted from Mac Pros manufactured before 2008 includes a number of chemicals including Benzene, a known carcinogen that in high doses is leathal.

I’ll let Wikipedia explain the risk:

The short term breathing of high levels of benzene can result in death, while low levels can cause drowsiness, dizziness, rapid heart rate, headaches, tremors, confusion, and unconsciousness. Eating or drinking foods containing high levels of benzene can cause vomiting, irritation of the stomach, dizziness, sleepiness, convulsions, and death.

The major effects of benzene are chronic (long-term) exposure through the blood. Benzene damages the bone marrow and can cause a decrease in red blood cells, leading to anemia. It can also cause excessive bleeding and depress the immune system, increasing the chance of infection. Benzene causes leukemia and is associated with other blood cancers and pre-cancers of the blood.

Human exposure to benzene is a global health problem. Benzene targets liver, kidney, lung, heart and the brain and can cause DNA strand breaks, chromosomal damage etc. Benzene causes cancer in both animals and humans. Benzene was first reported to induce cancer in humans in the 1920s. The chemical industry claims it wasn’t until 1979 that the cancer inducing properties were determined “conclusively” in humans, despite many references to this fact in the medical literarure. Industry exploited this “discrepancy” and tried to discredit animal studies which showed benzene caused cancer saying that they weren’t relevant to humans. Benzene has been shown to cause cancer in both sexes of multiple species of laboratory animals exposed via various routes.

…and that’s just part of the entry.

According to the report, Apple France wouldn’t go on the record, but if there is even the slightest chance that this story is true, Apple needs to act NOW.

The bad news: my $4000 Mac Pro may be killing me. The good news: if true, Apple will put the next 10 generations of my family through private school is a post from: The Inquisitr