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A Few Video Card Questions

wsteineker

wsteineker

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 17, 2001
727
0
Montgomery, AL
I was wondering a couple of things about video cards for my Quicksilver. First thing has to do with my current card. I've got an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro, and I was wondering if there are drivers newer than the ones included on the install disc. The one posted on ATI's site lists it for use with 10.1.3 to 10.2.2, and warns against use with later versions of the OS. I'm running 10.2.8, and I was wondering if I'm missing something. Assuming that there are no drivers available, what can I do to boost the card's general performance?

Second, I was wondering if I'm just not looking in the right place for new cards. I've only been able to find Radeon 9000 and 9800 models by ATI, and the GeForce4Ti from nVidia. I was hoping that there was a card available with a bit more oomph than my 9000, but fit somewhere inside the $200-$300 price range. Any thoughts?
 
The Radeon 9000 is a very good card, especially considering its price.
The nVidia Geforce 4Ti is WAY too expensive, as you can buy the Radeon 9800 for the same price. Forget about that one.
As for the drivers of the 9000: Mac OS X 10.2.2 and higher provides newer drivers than ATi's website. So if you are running 10.2.8 there is no need to install any other drivers.

If I were to recommend a grfx card for around $ 200,- it'll be the 9000...

If you were to upgrade, only consider the 9800 Pro. This card definitely justifies the price as no other grfx card will.

So, in short: you are not missing anything :)
 
i think ati will introduce a 9600 card but right now there is a huge gap from 9000-9800. to bad we dont have any nvidea card makers other then apple. also if you have a quicksilver then you most likely want adc but the new ati9800 doesnt have it. and they call it a pro mac version:confused:
 
just a little--rgr8- but how can you produce a video card without adc and call it a pro mac is beyond me? maybe ati will give us the 9600 and 9600 all in wonder for mac with ADC but right now what macsrgr8 says is true. im in the same boat with a geforce3. titanium is way overpriced in the mac market and the 9800 is the card but they just introduced the 9800xt which is about 5-10% faster then the 9800 pro. 1 more point and ill shut up. nvidea is about to announce a new line of chips probably coming out of fishkill so i expect these suckers to be bad and apple and ibm is getting cozy so why not have apple buy these new chips and make mac nvidea video cards? the last one was the geforce4 titanium wasnt it?
 
Thanks for the information, guys. It appears that I'm just going to have to stick with the 9000 for a while. I really don't understand why there's not a 9600 series card being produced, as it would most likely be a big seller. Oh well. Guess I'll just have to fiddle with my settings to get better framerates. Thanks for the help!
 
I could be wrong, but I don't think the 9800 would really even help you.

I remember when the 9700 first appeared for the mac I saw benchmarks on a dual 1 Ghz powermac, and the 9700 barely beat a GeForce 4Ti even though it's a much better card. The CPU of the quicksilver just wasn't feeding the 9700 fast enough for the card to show what it could do...
 
Originally posted by QCassidy352
I could be wrong, but I don't think the 9800 would really even help you.

I remember when the 9700 first appeared for the mac I saw benchmarks on a dual 1 Ghz powermac, and the 9700 barely beat a GeForce 4Ti even though it's a much better card. The CPU of the quicksilver just wasn't feeding the 9700 fast enough for the card to show what it could do...
Click to expand...

Well that's kind of a downer. I'm hoping that what you're describing is a correctable issue, as this machine is only a little more than a year old, and I'll be stuck with it for some time more. Any thoughts?
 
wsteineker never says his quicksilver speed and some of what qcassidy352 is true in some games but it does allow you to crank up the resolution and latest & greatest effects etc. again dont know the speed of your quicksilver but there is allways upgrades and better video cards a coming.
 
graphics

The 9800 pro has huge banwidth. I hope that failing to redesign to fix the ADC problem is beacause ATI and Apple plan to release 9800 XT. That would be awesome. While the 9800 XT is only a little bit better than the 9800 pro, it is supposed to be much better at pumping heat away from the card. Also it appears that ATI is building in some kind of automatic overclocking feature to the XT but is still working on perfecting the driver. It is supposed to allow it to run faster when it is cool enough. Drool.
 
Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
wsteineker never says his quicksilver speed and some of what qcassidy352 is true in some games but it does allow you to crank up the resolution and latest & greatest effects etc. again dont know the speed of your quicksilver but there is allways upgrades and better video cards a coming.
Click to expand...
I've got a DP 1 GHz, so I'm a little upset by the review mentioned. Still, a new card would allow me to run things like shadow effects, fs anti aliasing, and other enhancements at higher resolutions. I guess I'll just save for a 9800.
 
good choice lets just hope for a adc version soon and with its open gl panel you can set it up all kinds of ways. i have heard nothing but good about this card so i guess everyone is using adapters or have them on older machines?:confused:
 
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