Nvidia 5200 or ATI 9600?

[MacManiac1224]

I am going to buy a new Powermac G5 1.8, and I was wondering, is it worth the extra $50 for the upgrade to the ATI 9600 when I am not going to be really playing games, just movies and stuff. What do you guys think?

 

[Veldek]

I think you will be content with the 5200, especially when you don't play games.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

veldek is correct for the most part, if your not a gamer then not much need for a 9600 or 9800.

 

[Dr. No]

nVidia Support

Is it true that nVidia's Mac drivers are terrible?

And are the nVidia drivers in Panther much better??

 

[MacsRgr8]

Re: nVidia Support

Originally posted by Dr. No
Is it true that nVidia's Mac drivers are terrible?

And are the nVidia drivers in Panther much better??

Don't know about Panther...
But its not entirely true that the nVidia drivers are that bad.
The drivers are OK (AFAIK), but there are some differences between ATi's and nVidia's cards.
ATi support DVD Video playback better: more CPU offload.
Some games have trouble with the GeForce cards. MOHAA / SpearHead is reknown. Not speedwise, but some strange visual artifacts occur. I have seen them.
But UT 2003 runs better on nVidia's grfx cards.... (with about the same hardware specs as ATi's).
Playing movies or so is good on both.
Quartz Extreme is good on both too.....

 

[QCassidy352]

unless money is very tight I would pay the $50 to get the 9600. Even though it doesn't sound like you need it that much, the 9600 is much better... if you ever decide to play games or do graphical work I think you'll find that $50 is a small price to pay for what is a fairly large difference between cards.

 

[alxths]

I agree with qcassidy... considering the performance difference between teh two cards..$50 is a great ' just incase' price.