is the radeon 9650 any good?

[Sun Baked]

Well, I think the reason the 9800 is not in the iMac is it's too big for the case. But yeah, there is no excuse why x800s are not standard. Apple is always stingy when it comes to graphics cards, which is a shame because they are the first thing to go out of date in a computer.

Apple is moving forward and has dropped the ADC cards altogether (except for the on iMac in the PM case.)

The mid-range and high-end cards will most likely be single and dual dual-link DVI moving forward.

Because the x800 had an ADC port, Apple most likely avoided it -- they don't like confusing the feature set.

Of course the 9650 has one feature the x800 and 9800 didn't -- it's a low power card.

So for $50 it's not a bad card, and the x800 isn't a bad 3rd party card.

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If PCI-express is close, then Apple wouldn't be too worried at this point in getting a decent mid-range card.

Since it's not worth doing it for R&D purposes.

The 9600/9650 will probably live on in the SP PM, if the other PMs get upgraded soon and move to a newer architecture.