Will Lich King Expansion Run Well on G5 Tower?

[Eidorian]

Since this is rather old information i would suggest you start looking at the archives of The Inquirer, Anandtech, The Register, or any other web computer related news source.

I can recall the first two from memory. I barely read The Register.

The Inquirer is gong to show release dates for G84/G86 from late 2006. Ho hum until early 2007.

Anandtech is going to pit the 8600GT vs. the 7600GT. Given the time and launch price they're going to recommend the 7600GT because the 8600GT barely offered any performance gain. We're talking ~$100 cards vs. the usually $150 8600GT at the time. The 7600GT is going to win in F.E.A.R and 3DMark 05. The only thing that held back the 7600GT at the time was the 128-bit memory interface.

Once time goes by the 8600GT's architecture is going to pull ahead in 3DMark 06 and in games.

The 8600GT is a completely different architecture like I've said before. It's unified shader hardware over the fixed vertex and pixel shader ones that existed before. You're also going to get DirectX 10 support with unified shader based cards.

Please show me where the 8600GT is somehow a rebranded or higher clocked 7600GT.

 

[Cabbit]

I can recall the first two from memory. I barely read The Register.

The Inquirer is gong to show release dates for G84/G86 from late 2006. Ho hum until early 2007.

Anandtech is going to pit the 8600GT vs. the 7600GT. Given the time and launch price they're going to recommend the 7600GT because the 8600GT barely offered any performance gain. We're talking ~$100 cards vs. the usually $150 8600GT at the time. The 7600GT is going to win in F.E.A.R and 3DMark 05. The only thing that held back the 7600GT at the time was the 128-bit memory interface.

Once time goes by the 8600GT's architecture is going to pull ahead in 3DMark 06 and in games.

The 8600GT is a completely different architecture like I've said before. It's unified shader hardware over the fixed vertex and pixel shader ones that existed before. You're also going to get DirectX 10 support with unified shader based cards.

Please show me where the 8600GT is somehow a rebranded or higher clocked 7600GT.

Do not make me repeat myself, i gave you the source information it is up to you to go look it up it means no difference to me ether way at this time in the evening i have no care for the topic.

 

[Eidorian]

Do not make me repeat myself, i gave you the source information it is up to you to go look it up it means no difference to me ether way at this time in the evening i have no care for the topic.

Like I've said before the 7600 GT uses older fixed vertex and pixel shader pipelines and supports DirectX 9.0c.

The 8600 GT uses 32 unified shaders that support all of those previous functions and supports DirectX 10.

There's no way that the 8600GT is a rebrand of the 7600GT. In addition the 9600GT is based on an entirely different core as well, G96, when compared to the 8600GT. 48 unified shaders over 32 in addition to more TMUs and ROPs.

If you're looking for a rebrand then the 9500GT is effectively a 8600GT.

 

[Bimmi]

I just replaced the stock Radeon 9600 in my G5 with a 9800, and the performance gains in WoW have been minor at best. Framerates took a huge dump when I upgraded to a widescreen monitor; the 9800 lets me get usable performance with my old, fairly modest settings, but nothing more than that.

I'm very fond of my G5 but it's a pretty terrible gaming machine.

 

[Chone]

Do not make me repeat myself, i gave you the source information it is up to you to go look it up it means no difference to me ether way at this time in the evening i have no care for the topic.

If you can't cite sources for such a preposterous claim like the one you made then I suggest you stop spreading meaningless FUD and then requesting users (in an arrogant and demeaning matter I might add) to search for the information themselves when asked for an explanation.

The 8600GT is not a rebrand of the 7600GT ; it ends right there.

 

[aznguyen316]

9400m on WoW is no problem at all. ultra and avg ~30FPS but I haven't been into Lich King areas but I have the new graphics settings turned on and up. So yeah.. just my two cents.

 

[Cabbit]

If you can't cite sources for such a preposterous claim like the one you made then I suggest you stop spreading meaningless FUD and then requesting users (in an arrogant and demeaning matter I might add) to search for the information themselves when asked for an explanation.

The 8600GT is not a rebrand of the 7600GT ; it ends right there.

Sources were cited though as i said before i am not going to read though the archives of every one of these sites to look up the old articles.

 

[Eidorian]

Sources were cited though as i said before i am not going to read though the archives of every one of these sites to look up the old articles.

Well here you go then.

The older pixel shader vs. the unified shader architecture. It took four clicks to reach the article.

You can't just tack on DirectX 10 support when you have to move entirely over to a unified shader architecture. G70 and G80 are entirely different as much as you want to say the 8600GT is somehow a rebranded 7600GT.

 

[Huntn]

I've got a 1.8 Dual G5 tower with 2GB RAM and a Radeon 9800Pro 256MB VRAM and it runs classic WoW excellently, TBC pretty good, and WotLK acceptably when run in a window but be prepared for aweful performance .5-10 fps in the city of Dalaran on Northrend. Fortunately you are not doing any real questing in Dalaran but trying to move from pt A to B is a pain. Violet Hold (a jail) which is an instanced dungeon in Dalaran and it does ok. Performance in WotLK dungeons is playable.

 

[Chone]

Sources were cited though as i said before i am not going to read though the archives of every one of these sites to look up the old articles.

That's not citing a source. Eidorian's latest post shows an statement with a properly cited source.

 

[lutopia]

Just a follow up. I ended up buying a refurb iMac. It has the 2600 Pro in it. Most of the comments in this thread had me pretty nervous about my purchase until it arrived last night. The upgrade from my old computer is HUGE! I mean, the comparison is so stark that I felt the need to double to check to see if I was playing the same game.

Haven't gone to Dalaran yet though.

 

[Plutonius]

A G4 and G5 will run WoW but not that well in the later expansions. From all that I have read, WoW is more dependent on the CPU processing power then the graphics card.

 

[RobLS]

Just sticking to the question in the title. My cousin has similar specs on his PC as you show on the G5. He runs it well and is playing a lot of other games.