Radeon 9600 upgrade (MDD)
Hello everyone,
Last week, I bought a couple of RADEON 9600 Mac/Pc Edition (original cards - not flashed) and, after some troubleshooting, I was able to make them work perfect in my 2 MDDs.
Here are the improvements over the stock Radeon 9000:
- Transparent Menu Bar is now automatically enabled.
- much quicker dock animation for opening folders.
- flash playback is even faster (!) (Didn't expect this one as it's mostly CPU driven but the extra memory of the 9600 can't hurt).
When it comes to 720p/1080p, here are the results (I used the 4:3 trailer -mastered in 16:9- from Star Trek Next Generation Season 2 Blu-Ray release)
MDD 2x1.25:
720p
VLC 1.1.9 great/no frame loss
VLC 2.0.4 great/no frame loss
iTunes so-so/frame loss
1080p
VLC 1.1.9 shows only 1 frame
VLC 2.0.4 some frames shown/compression artifacts
iTunes decent attempt/shows lots of it/slow down
MDD 2x1.42:
720p
VLC 1.1.9 great/no frame loss
VLC 2.0.4 great/no frame loss
iTunes good/some frame loss
1080p
VLC 1.1.9 shows only 1 frame
VLC 2.0.4 several frames shown/compression artifacts
iTunes better attempt/shows lots of it/slow down effect/surprisingly watchable
At the end of the day, I'm amazed by 1080p in iTunes; I expected nothing and I got "something" (as flawed as it can be).
Next step : SSDs !