Do I need a new Video card? where from?

[Zisa]

Hi

I bought a second hand PowerMac with a 1.8GHz DP, which came with the default ATI Radeon graphics card with 64 MB VRAM.

I love the machine, works really nice with Leopard, especially when I upgraded my RAM to 4 GB.

I mainly run the following apps on the mac:

Office 2008
iWorks 08
iLife 08 - excluding Garage
Adobe CS2
Macromedia Suite 8
Freeway Pro
Adobe Lightroom

I have two questions:

1. Will I benefit from a 128MB/256MB graphics card?
2. I have a slight problem with the crispness of the characters on the screen. Is this a sign of a faulty card or a dodgy monitor?

Will a new card fix this problem?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I don't know if any of those apps stress the GPU particularly hard, so I can't really answer your first question.

In regards to your second: Are you new to Macs, and switched from Windows? If you are, Mac OS X renders fonts differently from the way Windows does it. There's really nothing you can do to change it, and it has nothing to do with your hardware if that's the case.

 

[Zisa]

Yes, I am new. I am comparing the crispness to Windows and was worried whether the video card was faulty, given that the computer is four years old.

Hence my question whether a new video card will fix the problem.

Having said that, it is proving very challenging finding one of the cards that Apple recommends in stock.

thanks for tip, btw.

 

[Consultant]

On "sharpness", proper AntiAlias vs windows over-sharpening
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/7038395/

That whole thread has additional info.

 

[MSD401]

I cant comment on the font issue but on the hardware front....

http://www.macsales.com/

is usually a good bet for parts...

 

[JustGretchen]

Windows does oversharpen, but the fonts should still be nice and crisp on the screen. They are on my PowerMac 1.8ghz...I have a 17.4" Apple Studio Display and a Planar 17.4" LCD monitor hooked up to it. Everything looks nice.

Maybe try a different monitor but it could be your card.

I have that same crappy 64mb card in it too, and I'd love a new one, but I haven't found anything. I have a really really hard time putting 200 bucks into a machine from 2003 that I don't use that much for work for a new vid card. If I could find a used one I'd do that.