Quicksilver Newbie - general question about Graph Cards?

[RaKeR]

Hi guys,

I'm new to the forums and hope you'll a) bear with my newbie-ness and b) help me out some!?

I've been given a 2002 Quicksilver which I almost sold, but am now keen to make it as usable in my son's bedroom as possible as it's a wicked little machine with barely any hourage clocked up on it by the previous company who owned it.

It's a 733mhz model - I've added some RAM - 3 sticks of 256 so far, but will be upping it to the max 1.5gb.

It has the standard graph card in there, and I want to replace it with something that will enable my son to use it on sites like Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters as it struggles as it is unfortunately.

Really, I guess my question is this - what card would this machine [being a 733] get the most benefit from and is the ram worth maxing out? I'm looking to source a card that I will be able to literally fit and forget - not mess about flashing as I have no experience with Macs at all!

Many thanks in advance!

Si.

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

The problem with running those games is that they're probably written in flash (if memory serves), and Flash is horribly inefficient and is no longer updated for PowerPC Macs, that's why it wouldn't work. Hell, badly coded 3D software runs like crap on my ATI Fire GL X3, which currently holds the highest 3D OpenMark score for a PPC Mac on this forum. I have ported 1996 Quake engines that can run at 1 frame/sec because of mediocre programming. Fact is, if the software is written poorly (at least for old hardware), all the upgrades in the world won't help you if they are inherently incompatible with the software

 

[Zotaccian]

Upgrading graphics card will not make difference with Flash in old computers like this, on newer versions there is hardware acceleration features for some card so there graphics card can make bit difference.

It is the G4 and Adobe bad Flash optimization which together make many Flash games unplayable. My G5 1.8Ghz cannot play the website version of Angry Birds which I believe is mix of HTML5 and Flash.

 

[RaKeR]

Thanks for the quick posts - much appreciated!

That doesn't instill me with confidence guys!? So Flash-based games I can forget - and probably not bother with a G5 in that case either? An iMac is on the cards when they release the new version sometime soon, but I still have a real yearning to keep this Quicksilver and the Studio screen I've got with it.

What graph card then would boost 3D graphs in general then do you advise to make the machine as good as it possibly can be? Even for upgrades sake?

 

[Intell]

What graph card then would boost 3D graphs in general then do you advise to make the machine as good as it possibly can be? Even for upgrades sake?

Something with CoreImage. CoreImage is a GPU accelerated image processing engine that drives Leopard and part of Tiger. It also makes things much smoother. Because you want to keep your Studio display, you'll have to look for the only PowerMac G4 compatible card that has CoreImage and an ADC port for the Studio Display. I currently forget what it's called, but I know they are uncommon.