Video Card Upgrade Question

[bzollinger]

For those of you that know, can you tell me if it's worth upgrading the ATI 9600 128MB AGP card to the ATI x800 256MB AGP card?

G5 Dual 2Ghz PowerMac, 1.5GB Ram, 160GB & 500GB SATA
Primary monitor: 22" WideScreen ViewSonic @ 1680x1050.
Secondary monitor: Panasonic AE900U projector @ 1280x720.

Can you tell me if I'll benefit from the upgrade? I don't game, I'm just looking for a snappier system. Is my set up stretching the 9600 capabilities?

Thanks for any comments,
BZ

 

[macenforcer]

If you don't game don't waste your money. You will not notice a difference really. The only difference I noticed was that High def video seemed to be a little smoother with that card in the G5. The G5 really isn't fast enough for 1080i on its own.

 

[slughead]

The x800/x850 is an excellent card, miles ahead of the 9600. I'd highly recommend it.

 

[Kosh66]

I agree with macenforcer, if you're not playing games, then it's not worth the upgrade. You'd see more improvements in games than improvements in general system usage. Your setup is not stretching the limits of the 9600.

 

[bzollinger]

I agree with macenforcer, if you're not playing games, then it's not worth the upgrade. You'd see more improvements in games than improvements in general system usage. Your setup is not stretching the limits of the 9600.

Thanks for the input. I forgot to mention that in addition to snappier overall preformance a bigger problem experienced is a degraded video quality when playing DVDs on the projector from the G5. There are a lot of "jaggies" on moving objects. Would a better video card help this? Is there a different player besides VLC that would work better then OSX's DVD application?

Thanks,

BZ

 

[slughead]

Thanks for the input. I forgot to mention that in addition to snappier overall preformance a bigger problem experienced is a degraded video quality when playing DVDs on the projector from the G5. There are a lot of "jaggies" on moving objects. Would a better video card help this? Is there a different player besides VLC that would work better then OSX's DVD application?

Thanks,

BZ

The jaggies on 'pans' in DVDs are normal because of MPEG2. Sometimes the production companies actually mess up when encoding them.

It's also more apparent when doing progressive scan instead of interlaced.

It's unlikely anything will improve performance on DVD playback better than a 9600.

 

[bzollinger]

The jaggies on 'pans' in DVDs are normal because of MPEG2. Sometimes the production companies actually mess up when encoding them.

It's also more apparent when doing progressive scan instead of interlaced.

It's unlikely anything will improve performance on DVD playback better than a 9600.

Thanks for the info. My only question now is why does my dedicated 6 year old Toshiba DVD player look so much better than the G5s output of the same disk to the same display?

Thanks again.
BZ

 

[slughead]

Thanks for the info. My only question now is why does my dedicated 6 year old Toshiba DVD player look so much better than the G5s output of the same disk to the same display?

Thanks again.
BZ

progressive vs interlaced: crappy is better

It has to do with framerates on DVDs (TVs) vs framerates on movies. To compensate for the discrepancy, every other line on a DVD is from the previous frame. An interlaced system only shows every other line anyway, so you don't notice.

A progressive system, however, shows all lines, including the one from another frame.

Your toshiba is probably outputting over RCA, RGB component, or S-Video, whereas your computer is outputting in VGA.

I used to be able to explain it better, but I think that's the gist of it.

 

[bzollinger]

progressive vs interlaced: crappy is better

It has to do with framerates on DVDs (TVs) vs framerates on movies. To compensate for the discrepancy, every other line on a DVD is from the previous frame. An interlaced system only shows every other line anyway, so you don't notice.

A progressive system, however, shows all lines, including the one from another frame.

Your toshiba is probably outputting over RCA, RGB component, or S-Video, whereas your computer is outputting in VGA.

I used to be able to explain it better, but I think that's the gist of it.

Thanks for the info, that makes sense. Good day!