RADEON 9800 Pro Special Mac Edition 256MB Video Card YA or Nay?

debating on purchasing this card, RADEON 9800 Pro Special Mac Edition 256MB 8x AGP Video Card from my local store but i was curious to see what everyone thinks. I have a new 20" cinema on the way and also a 512mb upgrade for my single 1.8 g5. I am curious if anyone has this card and curious to see what you think. I am really looking for overall performance, not nessecaraly specific benchmarks. I play a few games, halo mainly, but i also do alot of graphics in flash and photoshop and also produce films with final cut pro and after effects. I am just curious to see if having a better video card will make a big difference, since the card is not cheap. will it make a big difference also since i have the 20" on the way, i would think a better vid card would help since bigger screen means more pixels. I may be able to sell my stock card on ebay to help with the price, but i am curious, is it worth the trouble, or should i wait a year for the new nvidia to come down to $450-500 and buy that.

thanks

If you aren't going to be gaming much you wont notice a difference. The size of your screen has no impact on what video card to get, again unless you are factoring in the resolution you run when gaming.

d4rr3n said:

If you aren't going to be gaming much you wont notice a difference. The size of your screen has no impact on what video card to get, again unless you are factoring in the resolution you run when gaming.

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true that, i play a few games but nothing big, but i would think if i am uping the resolution for the desktop from 1280 to whatever, a better card may be a good thing. i have the 17" studio and i am going to the 20" cinema, so i would think that will definetly be a bigger resolution.

we will see what happens.

Within the OS and on the desktop the video card doesn't matter at all. I cant think of any modern video card that can't keep up with the 20" cinema's resolution (1680 x 1050). Again, as long as the video card will output that resolution you will be fine. Anything that is not a 3d application or a game is not going to affect the video card at all. IMO dont waste your money if you aren't going to be gaming.

Can you tel me this: I have a brand new wapped up in cellophane 9800 Prop Special Mac Edition 256Mb card myself here but don't wanna unwrap it now cos it says Power Mac G5 only on it. I only have a G4, and I am desperate to speed up desktop performance, when I see my browser crawling and twitching so badly I feel like buying a newspaper. My Dell Notebook at work is smooth and speedy and does't miss a pixel! Why can't I put this fat blue Radeon card in my G4?

Cheers
Mike

twitchymike@mac said:

Can you tel me this: I have a brand new wapped up in cellophane 9800 Prop Special Mac Edition 256Mb card myself here but don't wanna unwrap it now cos it says Power Mac G5 only on it. I only have a G4, and I am desperate to speed up desktop performance, when I see my browser crawling and twitching so badly I feel like buying a newspaper. My Dell Notebook at work is smooth and speedy and does't miss a pixel! Why can't I put this fat blue Radeon card in my G4?

Cheers
Mike

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I hope you mean it's in the anti-static bag and not in cellophane wrap.
What computer do you have? What video card is currently installed?
How old is your Dell? How much RAM do you have in the Mac?

From what research I've done there were two 9800 Pro Mac special Edition cards produced - the one that was being either made by Apple or specifically for Apple for the G5 and was a 8X AGP card. The second was the retail version of the card made by ATI that was a 2x/4x AGP card.

This is yet again, another example of purchasing a computer from any company, whether it be Apple, Dell, Packard Bell, Compaq, etc. that produces proprietary parts for use in their systems. The G5's system board is an 8X only board and the ATI card produced for it is 8x only. This reduced the cost to manufacture the computer and thus a) reduced the amount Apple could sell the computer for and/or b) increased the profit margin of the computer. Prior to the G5 the AGP slots were a max of 4x.

Once 8x AGP hit the market, the retail motherboards were typically 2x/4x/8x because the manufacturers didn't want to produce 3 different identical boards with only this one difference. Likewise the retail versions of video cards - they were backwards compatible.

I was working as a Dell tech support during that general time. The proprietary versions of the ATI cards Dell was producing could not even use the drivers that came from ATI. So, as ATI was updating their drivers, in particular related to functions within many of the games during the period - Dell purchasers were out of luck waiting for Dell to update their drivers - but that wasn't Dell's priority, theirs was only to sell systems - not video cards.

Things like this is why there still exists today a fairly significant group of people that build their own systems rather than purchasing anything off the shelf.