G4 Sawtooth videocard, pt.2

Morgan19 · Apr 12, 2004

Now I'm just looking for any sort of suggestions regarding a new videocard for a 1999 G4 Sawtooth. It seems like the Radeon 8500 and 9000 (AGP) and 7000 (PCI) cards are the majority of Mac videocards... But are there any others that can be found cheaper, possibly Geforce or others? I'm really only looking for better 2D performance and production work, not 3D at all.

*Someone* has to know something about this...

m19

Padawan · Apr 12, 2004

Morgan19 said:
Now I'm just looking for any sort of suggestions regarding a new videocard for a 1999 G4 Sawtooth. It seems like the Radeon 8500 and 9000 (AGP) and 7000 (PCI) cards are the majority of Mac videocards... But are there any others that can be found cheaper, possibly Geforce or others? I'm really only looking for better 2D performance and production work, not 3D at all.

*Someone* has to know something about this...

m19

What price range do you have in mind? I searced around quite a bit, but couldn't really locate anything priced below the Radeon 7000 (which ranged from $99 - $125).

Morgan19 · Apr 12, 2004

Padawan said:
What price range do you have in mind?

Me too... That's the aggravating part about Mac videocards which I'm now becoming aware of. It seems that 1) there's only one or two to choose from and 2) the price for a Mac videocard compared to a comparable PC card is often twice as much. Hmmph.

Before knowing that, I would've liked something in the $50 - $100 range, which is quite possible on a PC, but now it looks like it'll have to be the <$150 range instead since I can only seem to find the Radeon 7000 and 9000 cards. I understand there are GeForceMX cards for Macs, but I can't find any OEM or separate cards being sold.

I'm just not sure how much of a difference going from a 16mb card to the 32mb Radeon 7000 will make, although it would be DDR... Do you have an opinion as to how much of a "smoothness" performance increase the 7000 would make? The issue is that the old Rage'd been working fine with 9.2 but Panther's menus, windows, etc. seem jerky, so I'd like to get that smoothed out and, hence, a new videocard.

m19

Padawan · Apr 12, 2004

Yeah, your choices for a Mac graphics card unfortunately seem to be pretty limited, especially in the low-priced category. I'll keep looking into the GeForce cards to see if I can find anything else.

My Mac is a G3 iBook running a 32 MB ATi card, so I can't really say how the 7000 would perform. My guess is that it would definitely improve things, since you are, after all, doubling the video memory and running a newer card. Also, how much system memory is installed in your machine? Increasing that memory would probably help smooth things out in Panther a bit too.

Morgan19 · Apr 12, 2004

Padawan said:
Also, how much system memory is installed in your machine? Increasing that memory would probably help smooth things out in Panther a bit too.

896 megs. $:\$

m19

Padawan · Apr 12, 2004

Morgan19 said:
896 megs. $:\$

m19

Well, you can scratch that off the list of suggestions then.

Morgan19 · Apr 12, 2004

Heh.

That's one of the reasons Panther's sluggishness took me by surprise. But, ah well, can't imagine that a four-year old videocard would last forever.

I'm checking into the Radeon 9000 on CDW now. I can't tell if they have any in stock but it's listed as only about $25 more than the 7000.

m19

Morgan19 · Apr 12, 2004

I'm aware there's a hack to get PC GeForces running on a Mac, but quotes like the two down by my sig (found on various sites) make it sound like there are GeForceMXs you can buy specifically for a Mac? If I can pick up a $70 card that'll give a performance boost over a $100+ card, I will, but again I'm having trouble actually finding it.

"...or better G4, geforce4mx($70) or ati9000($160) and..."

"...however since the GeForce4MX and the Radeon 7500 are the only current AGP options at the Apple Store for the G4 towers..."

I also just found this link on nVidia's site: http://www.nvidia.com/content/wheretobuy/results.asp
...that seems to indicate you can buy GF4 MXs or Ti's at various stores. When I followed the link to Best Buy, as an example, I didn't see anything on those cards that make them Mac-specific. Do you think they'd work?

m19

witeshark · Apr 12, 2004

I think to be safe - ask the stores. It'd be no fun to have to take it back if it's the wrong kind

Padawan · Apr 12, 2004

Would any of these be something you'd be interested in?

http://search.ebay.com/search/searc...hi=&soloctog=9&sosortproperty=1&sosortorder=1

Morgan19 · Apr 13, 2004

Padawan said:
Would any of these be something you'd be interested in?

I'd thought of eBay, but since this is for a business and we needed a solution pretty quickly, I ruled that out. Thanks for the link, though.

I ended up purchasing two Radeon 7000s yesterday and am testing one in one of the G4s now. It's hard to quantify the performance without running benchmarks, but simply from an aesthetic/speed standpoint it seems to be handling Panther better. I think the processor is still a bottleneck, but the upgrade kit I found at MicroCenter for going up to a 1.x Ghz processor was something like $500. Eek. Besides, the way I figure any higher-end cards are going to give me greater 3D performance, which doesn't really matter for these G4s, rather than more 2D power. So I figure the 7000s should do quite nicely. Too bad they're PCI, but that was the only immediate solution that was really viable.

m19