(originally posted in this thread)
I posted the Xbench results on another thread.
But, I shall give some more info here... see it as a review:
I have a Dual 1.25 GHz (FW 800) G4 with 1 GB RAM, and had 3 different grfx cards in it. When I bought this G4, the Radeon 9700 was BTO, but I had to wait a couple of months for it... which I obviously didn't want to do. So I left the OEM Radeon 9000 in it, with the intention to buy the Retail version of the Radeon 9700. That one never came, so I hastedly bought the GeForce 4 Ti instead (didn't want it first, but by then this card was the best around). As the Radeon 9800 Pro Retail card came out only a day or two later, the reseller agreed to "swap" the GeForce 4 Ti with the 9800 when it finally arrived in Holland! So now you why I have had 3 different grfx cards. The review:
In short: the 9800 is better than the GeForce 4, which is better than the 9000. Keep in mind that the Core Clock Speed of the grfx cards are VERY important, and have most influence on the framerates, while using exactly the same settings.
But, results vary upon different games:
Games I like to play are:
RTCW, MOHAA/SpearHead, F1 CS 2000, Nascar 2003, Tiger Woods 2003....
MOHAA/SpearHead somehow had irritating visual arifacts on the nVidia: sharp blue, or red lines on places where they shouldn't. Both Radeons are far better.
F1 CS 2000, somehow really loves the extra horsepower and memory of both the 128 MB VRAM grfx cards.
Nascar 2003: This one eats the processors.. wow! Most ovals aren't too much of a problem, but the Coca Cola oveal (much bigger, thus has to draw much more track every frame) is the nasty one. I like taking this oval for benchmarking: Right at the start, exiting turn 4, all 34 cars in view, driving slowly, 3D settings maximum possible, 1600 x 1200, extreme res...... Each card varied only a little here. Where the 9000 got 17 FPS, the GeForce about 20, the 9800 luckily gets 24.
As I posted in the other thread I use ATi's control panel to override the settings for RTCW. This looks SO COOL, that for this feature alone I would have bought this card. It's superb. Forget the rest.....
I don't have the hard FPS numbers for the games, but I think those utils are not the way to express overall (gaming) experince.
Bottom line is that ATi's Radeon 9800 Pro Retail is the card to have, if you want serious fun on your Mac. I wonder how it will perform on sub- 1 Ghz G4's in an AGP 2x slot. Still the control panel will work.
BTW, there is NO ADC port on it, and also needs an internal power supply. This making it quite different from the G5 BTO-one (also the G5 BTO one needs AGP 8x...), and the Retail has TV-out.
I am happy I have it!
I posted the Xbench results on another thread.
But, I shall give some more info here... see it as a review:
I have a Dual 1.25 GHz (FW 800) G4 with 1 GB RAM, and had 3 different grfx cards in it. When I bought this G4, the Radeon 9700 was BTO, but I had to wait a couple of months for it... which I obviously didn't want to do. So I left the OEM Radeon 9000 in it, with the intention to buy the Retail version of the Radeon 9700. That one never came, so I hastedly bought the GeForce 4 Ti instead (didn't want it first, but by then this card was the best around). As the Radeon 9800 Pro Retail card came out only a day or two later, the reseller agreed to "swap" the GeForce 4 Ti with the 9800 when it finally arrived in Holland! So now you why I have had 3 different grfx cards. The review:
In short: the 9800 is better than the GeForce 4, which is better than the 9000. Keep in mind that the Core Clock Speed of the grfx cards are VERY important, and have most influence on the framerates, while using exactly the same settings.
But, results vary upon different games:
Games I like to play are:
RTCW, MOHAA/SpearHead, F1 CS 2000, Nascar 2003, Tiger Woods 2003....
MOHAA/SpearHead somehow had irritating visual arifacts on the nVidia: sharp blue, or red lines on places where they shouldn't. Both Radeons are far better.
F1 CS 2000, somehow really loves the extra horsepower and memory of both the 128 MB VRAM grfx cards.
Nascar 2003: This one eats the processors.. wow! Most ovals aren't too much of a problem, but the Coca Cola oveal (much bigger, thus has to draw much more track every frame) is the nasty one. I like taking this oval for benchmarking: Right at the start, exiting turn 4, all 34 cars in view, driving slowly, 3D settings maximum possible, 1600 x 1200, extreme res...... Each card varied only a little here. Where the 9000 got 17 FPS, the GeForce about 20, the 9800 luckily gets 24.
As I posted in the other thread I use ATi's control panel to override the settings for RTCW. This looks SO COOL, that for this feature alone I would have bought this card. It's superb. Forget the rest.....
I don't have the hard FPS numbers for the games, but I think those utils are not the way to express overall (gaming) experince.
Bottom line is that ATi's Radeon 9800 Pro Retail is the card to have, if you want serious fun on your Mac. I wonder how it will perform on sub- 1 Ghz G4's in an AGP 2x slot. Still the control panel will work.
BTW, there is NO ADC port on it, and also needs an internal power supply. This making it quite different from the G5 BTO-one (also the G5 BTO one needs AGP 8x...), and the Retail has TV-out.
I am happy I have it!
the R9800 is better even than the GF FX 5900ULTRA (NV 35.) And your clock speed comment it rubbish because the R9800 PRO operates @ 380MHz while the NV 35 operates @ 450MHz. Also Motherboard, NorthBridge, System RAM, CPU type and Speed, Hard drive, etc... also have a major impact on gaming frame rates. 