What is best G5 graphics card?

[ijimk]

What i am really asking is what card gives you the most for your money? I recently picked up a G5 (now shipping) and i got an ATI 9600 128 mb graphics card. I enjoy games but was waiting for nvidias 6800 to come down in price. Will this card last me 2-3 years or will i have to upgrade before then? I would like to play Doom 3 and most importantly World of Warcraft.

[Gymnut]

Isn't the 6800 in the neighborhood of $600? I remember when my Geforce4Ti was the top o' line amongst graphics cards for the Macintosh.

[Dr. Dastardly]

Right now the 6800 is the top graphics card out for the Mac and blows away the Radeons. But it also costs $600 plus you won't get it till around the mid or end of August. For WoW and Doom 3 you will be in great shape with the 9800XT. Or if money is an issue at the moment the 9600XT has massive bang for your buck IMHO.

[zakee00]

:/ ur ati 9600 will diffanately run WOW great, but i dunno about D3. it will probably run fine, but with the graphics lowered. im pretty sure the 9800xt would run d3 fine, and the 6800 best :D

[Jalexster]

The 6800 will be crap once Mac-compatible X800s arrive. Do not ask me what an X800 is.

[yamabushi]

The 6800 will be crap once Mac-compatible X800s arrive. Do not ask me what an X800 is.
I don't think the X800 will make the 6800 obsolete. The 6800 seems to be at least as good at keeping high frame rates using OpenGL. I usually like Ati cards better but the 6800 seems to be very well suited to Macs in this case. Anyways, these would be the two top end cards to make comparisons with in the future. For now, one of the Ati 9800 cards is probably good enough unless you play at huge resolutions.

[ijimk]

Thank you all for your in put. I think this 9600 will do me good for at least 1-2 years. I plan on playing WoW the most.

[msharp]

Thank you all for your in put. I think this 9600 will do me good for at least 1-2 years. I plan on playing WoW the most.


yeah, i get a 9600xt on my g5 too :)
i thought that was too expensive to choose 9800xt from apple. and i'll buy me some ram (maybe 2g) to my g5 myself, not from apple too. Also, another Seagate 160G sata to setup a Raid 0 is a good idea.

[wrldwzrd89]

I don't think the X800 will make the 6800 obsolete. The 6800 seems to be at least as good at keeping high frame rates using OpenGL. I usually like Ati cards better but the 6800 seems to be very well suited to Macs in this case. Anyways, these would be the two top end cards to make comparisons with in the future. For now, one of the Ati 9800 cards is probably good enough unless you play at huge resolutions.
The nice thing about the X800, which IMO will make some Mac users choose it over the 6800, is that it doesn't block one of your PCI slots like the 6800 does. Of course, we'll have to wait until a Mac-compatible XX00 line appears (I'm referring to the X800, the X600, and the low-end X300).

[PlatinumBlade]

Hey ijimk,

Did you specify that video card? Did you order directly from Apple online? I picked up my G5 from CompUSA a few days ago and it, the dual 2.0, came with the 64MB 9600XT which I think does a very poor job of handling games. In fact, I initially bought the 1.8 and it came with the FX 5200 which is simply terrible. I kept that one day, and went back to the store to swap for the better system but I didn't have any options to upgrade the video at that time.

I plan on purchasing the 6800 when it comes out next month. If this doesn't allow me to play games just as well on the Mac as my PC I'm giving up trying.

I've used a lot of hardware over the years and I've tried gaming on a couple Mac systems. It hasn't ever stacked up. This new G5 hardware should be awesome. Heck it IS awesome but we need to see better video capability for games for sure. I think the best card, right now, is the 9800XT SE since you get more RAM on it. But since the 6800 is a month away I'm going to wait. I don't think anything, including the X800, which I'm not sure is coming to the Mac based on what ATI told me, will beat the 6800.

I guess I'm looking at it like this: I can get good performance now for $400 or great performance next month for $600. From what I've read about the 9800 on the PC platform it is good but not too far beyond my current 9700 Pro on my PC and that is what makes me want to wait for an entirely new architecture and go with the 6800.

here's to hoping my money won't be wasted!

[wrldwzrd89]

Hey ijimk,

Did you specify that video card? Did you order directly from Apple online? I picked up my G5 from CompUSA a few days ago and it, the dual 2.0, came with the 64MB 9600XT which I think does a very poor job of handling games. In fact, I initially bought the 1.8 and it came with the FX 5200 which is simply terrible. I kept that one day, and went back to the store to swap for the better system but I didn't have any options to upgrade the video at that time.

I plan on purchasing the 6800 when it comes out next month. If this doesn't allow me to play games just as well on the Mac as my PC I'm giving up trying.

I've used a lot of hardware over the years and I've tried gaming on a couple Mac systems. It hasn't ever stacked up. This new G5 hardware should be awesome. Heck it IS awesome but we need to see better video capability for games for sure. I think the best card, right now, is the 9800XT SE since you get more RAM on it. But since the 6800 is a month away I'm going to wait. I don't think anything, including the X800, which I'm not sure is coming to the Mac based on what ATI told me, will beat the 6800.

I guess I'm looking at it like this: I can get good performance now for $400 or great performance next month for $600. From what I've read about the 9800 on the PC platform it is good but not too far beyond my current 9700 Pro on my PC and that is what makes me want to wait for an entirely new architecture and go with the 6800.

here's to hoping my money won't be wasted!
My guess is that we'll see the X800 family eventually, but it'll be a while before it comes to the Mac. By that time, I'd bet that ATI and nVidia will have the next generation ready.

[PlatinumBlade]

It would be nice to see the X800 come out but when I was speaking with ATI on the phone a couple of days ago I received mixed signals. The girl told me she had already filled pre-orders for the Mac version of the X800 and it would be no problem to fill one for me but she was experiencing computer problems and would call me back.

Well, she did call me back and told me she was incorrect. There was no X800 pre-order available and she didn't see any timetable for its release on the Mac platform. She was mistaking the 9800 Special Edition with the X800 I think. Either way, if the 6800 does release next month it will hands down be the best bang we can get. Just very pricey.

I'd like to see performance numbers between the X800 and 6800 but since neither Mac version is on shelves yet there isn't really any way to obtain them as I believe both cards will probably be a departure from their PC counterparts and any PC numbers wouldn't likely do us Mac users any good.

Chances are they will be very close since the 6800 will release first giving ATI the chance to see what it does and possibly alter the X800 before it ships. You can't win though because as soon as the X800 ships, nvidia will be working on something better. You'd have to spend $$$ on a daily basis just to try and keep up.

For what it is worth, anything would be better than the stock cards. The FX 5200 is complete crap, and the Radeon 9600XT I'm using now is not much better. If I had the 128MB version perhaps, but this one is junk too.

[yamabushi]

Is Ati afraid to release the X800 out of fear that they will be beaten by the NV6800 on Macs? I wonder...

[PlatinumBlade]

It is really tough to say what their motivations are but I have to believe that the ATI guys realize how poorly their hardware performs on the Mac system. But who is to blame? I'd have to say the developers really for creating poorly optimized code. Maybe the best thing for ATI to do is wait it out and see how the 6800 does. That's what I'd do because if the 6800 does badly is there much point in ATI pushing to release a card that is very similar in performance? I know someone said earlier that the Mac isn't meant to be a game machine but the fact is that I am using it for gaming as well as other things and if I'm disappointed with the performance I'm sure there are others out there like me and I'd have to think ATI knows this. If I were a decision maker there I'd be wanting to wait and see how well nVidia did before pumping time and energy into an unknown like the X800 on the Mac platform.

[LoadRunner]

I don't know if ATI will released their new card, but I hope they do. For most application it's not going to be noticeable difference, but when it comes to a game like doom III the difference will be ovus. Right now there are no major application that take advantage of advancement in graphic architecture, such as normal mapping or reprogrammable vertex shaders, but there will be. OS C 10.4 has incorporated normal mapping and programable vertex shader into core graphics. For instance the water ripple demoed in widgets. Sooner or latter even adobe will be using these new technologies, so people can apply multiple filters in real time.

I don't think it's a question of will ati release new cards, because every one knows there is a demand, it's just a question of when. When will the driver be ready, and when will apple consider the current gforce card profitable, because it dose not make no sense to release another card so soon. It'll only increase their development costs, and it dose not increase their profits. Give it a few months apple will sell anuff nvidea card to cover development costs, and then they'll release another new card. The only reason to rush it, would be a need to increase fps scores for bragging rights, such as in doom III. :)

btw I don't know what your smoking, but ati card perform great in os x. In-fact ATI still holds the high score for fps inside q3a. There are some bad engines, but how can you blame ati for that. Most fps game use the q3a engine, so they'll perform well. Long as your computer can handle it.

[PlatinumBlade]

Kidding aside....I was basically just irritated that so many games ran poorly. However, since posting that I've actually found a couple that did vindicate the Mac a bit. Call Of Duty, Wolfenstein, and Aliens vs. Predator 2 run very well. I just want to see slick framerates in Black Hawk Down, among others that I saw in those. I have not tried Unreal Tournament 2003 or 2004 on the Mac yet so I can't really say. I do recall Quake 3 being pretty good when I played it on my G4 so I imagine it will be good here. But then that's Carmack. Anything Carmack seems to get along well with the Mac because he loves OpenGL.

[neoelectronaut]

The only game that runs poorly on my eMac is No One Lives Forever, which is weird, because it's rather old, and newer games run even better. Heck, Return to Castle Wolfenstein runs much better.

You know, I wish I had a G5 with a 6800, because all I have now is the 7500 in my eMac. But, well, in the end it's just a damn videogame. Big woop. I can live without playing Q3A at 600 fps.

[PlatinumBlade]

I'm not trying to incite any flaming opinions one way or the other. I'm only stating that I'd like to see better performance from a lot of titles. I know poor performance when I see it. I've played many games and have spent many thousands of dollars building super high performance machines to play them on. This is why when i see the performance lacking on the Mac it is so obvious to me and I know it doesn't have to be that way. This G5 is an awesome machine. Some titles do run fantastic and I'm thrilled about that. But there are others that I think stink and they shouldn't. The bottom line like I stated before is I will be upset if I spend the money for the 6800 and I don't see great performance in everything I try to run on this new system. Simple concept... you get what you pay for and I've payed a lot. Heck, wouldn't a Ferrari owner be upset if their new ride wouldn't hit 120MPH? I'm sure he/she would.

[BrianKonarsMac]

I'm not trying to incite any flaming opinions one way or the other. I'm only stating that I'd like to see better performance from a lot of titles. I know poor performance when I see it. I've played many games and have spent many thousands of dollars building super high performance machines to play them on. This is why when i see the performance lacking on the Mac it is so obvious to me and I know it doesn't have to be that way. This G5 is an awesome machine. Some titles do run fantastic and I'm thrilled about that. But there are others that I think stink and they shouldn't. The bottom line like I stated before is I will be upset if I spend the money for the 6800 and I don't see great performance in everything I try to run on this new system. Simple concept... you get what you pay for and I've payed a lot. Heck, wouldn't a Ferrari owner be upset if their new ride wouldn't hit 120MPH? I'm sure he/she would.

it's not the computer or video cards fault that the games run like ****, rather their coding. a poor game or port = poor performance. it's that simple. it's like taking your ferrari, and swapping the tires, engine, and exhaust for some off the shelf ford components. it doesn't matter that your car has a ferrari badge, it will still run like a piece of ****.

[PlatinumBlade]

Yup. That's pretty much what I said earlier in another thread where people were asking what games they wanted to see brought over to the Mac. I had said seeing all of them would be nice, but more important to me were seeing the ones that were brought over running as good as the PC versions. With the hardware we have available there really isn't any reason they can't be as good. And there are some that are. I would just like to see some of the bigger names done a bit better. One of my bigger gripes is Halo. Yeah it is a MS title now but come on....Bungie was originally a Mac developer and should have been able to make a flawless implementation of Halo on the Mac considering it was initially developed for the Mac first.

Bottom line...I'd rather have fewer high quality games than a ton of mediocre ones.

[yamabushi]

Coding is a large part of the problem but there are hardware deficiencies as well in the base configurations sold by Apple. Too little RAM and somewhat underpowered graphics cards is a real problem in the PowerMacs. You can fix this by ordering a custom configuration but you really shouldn't have to.

[zakee00]

yeah its REALLY sad that bf1942 runs better on my p3 800MHz/9600 pro then my brand new 1.25GHz/mobility 9600....
im pretty satisfied with how it runs games though, i never expected it to fly or anything...thats what a gaming rig is for. i can run halo on highest settings without pixel shaders, it runs fine. like >20FPS. ut2004 is kinda sad, my rig struggles on that.
im lookin to build a presscott 2.8ghz, 1gb ddr2 ram, 9600 pro rig...hl2 would run fine on that. :)

[Converted2Truth]

The nice thing about the X800, which IMO will make some Mac users choose it over the 6800, is that it doesn't block one of your PCI slots like the 6800 does. Of course, we'll have to wait until a Mac-compatible XX00 line appears (I'm referring to the X800, the X600, and the low-end X300).

Actually the X800 will block the adjacent PCI-X slot. The 9800XT does. And i have heard that the X800 is pretty much the same card dimention-wise. So unless the X800 is smaller than the 9800XT, it will block the adjacent slot.

And i really don't understand why everyone is dogging the 6800 Ultra. In every openGL test, the 6800 smokes the X800. And OpenGL is all that matters. So the X800 isn't better. It's shaders run a little smother in some situations, but that's not even noticable. All you X800 fans should buy this card and stick it in a PC, that's what it was designed for... DirectX.

[wrldwzrd89]

Actually the X800 will block the adjacent PCI-X slot. The 9800XT does. And i have heard that the X800 is pretty much the same card dimention-wise. So unless the X800 is smaller than the 9800XT, it will block the adjacent slot.

And i really don't understand why everyone is dogging the 6800 Ultra. In every openGL test, the 6800 smokes the X800. And OpenGL is all that matters. So the X800 isn't better. It's shaders run a little smother in some situations, but that's not even noticable. All you X800 fans should buy this card and stick it in a PC, that's what it was designed for... DirectX.
Do you know why nVidia's cards are so much better at OpenGL than ATI's, and ATI's cards trounce nVidia's at DirectX? I thought the two would be more even, but it seems nVidia and Apple were meant for each other.

[Converted2Truth]

Do you know why nVidia's cards are so much better at OpenGL than ATI's, and ATI's cards trounce nVidia's at DirectX? I thought the two would be more even, but it seems nVidia and Apple were meant for each other.

Tom's Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com) does some testing with both the cards, and announces the X800 as the winner... but they also admit that nVIDIA has the better hardware layout, newer technology, etc, etc... They say the X800 just builds on old stuff, but the 6800 is an entirely new breed of GPU.

The reason i say that the 6800 is better, is because it does better at openGL, which is what all games on the mac use.

But if you are asking for technical details on why each is better at different things, i'm not the dude to ask.

Oh, and another thing... Remember how Steve Jobs said at WWDC that the newest version of OSX (being developed) would offload lots of stuff onto the GPU? Well, he's implying the 6800's capabilities. It has the ability to do video encodeing and a bunch of other stuff. They just need to write the code to take advantage of that technology. I don't remember the names of each unit, but I remember reading that the 6800 is "Three in one". It's a gpu, an encoder/decoder, and something else. It's the next gen... I would assume that the next version of the Mac OS will take great advantage of this card because of it's extreme capabilities and programability.

Imagine encoding a video, and still having both your processors idle... That's what the 6800 is all about (oh, and the games :p )

[PlatinumBlade]

Well, I'm anxious to see it perform. When I get the 6800 after its launch next month I will certainly report on its performance. i've always liked OpenGL better than DirectX anyway simply because it a number of games I saw running it there seemed to be richer color. OpenGL is just that...an open standard of graphics where DirectX is a Microsoft API for Windows. It makes sense that cards tailored to running OpenGL well will excel on the Apple platform.

I don't remember who made the comment about Quake 3 but I will be happy playing it at 600 fps thank you very much! ;)

[yamabushi]

I don't remember who made the comment about Quake 3 but I will be happy playing it at 600 fps thank you very much! ;)
600 fps is pretty worthless actually. Anything above 60 fps or so won't make any difference. The trick now is to maintain 60 fps at very high resolutions and graphics quality.

[PlatinumBlade]

Yeah i know. I was just making a joking reply to whomever had said that before. So far I'm having pretty good luck with games and the Radeon 9600XT that is in the system. I have not actually looked at framerates yet but I can tell that most games are decent. Halo, Black Hawk Down, Unreal Tournament are the ones that aren't keeping up. Probably too optimized for DirectX. In fact I know that's the case with Unreal...it never had great OpenGL support.

I am curious to find out if the 6800 can maintain let alone reach certain framerates. I've often noticed games hiccup when the video cards had to clear out buffers, usually due to massive amounts of textures being preloaded. If the 6800 can seamlessly maintain smooth framerates in the FPS games I enjoy, I'll be really happy with it.