[Nobody]

I am upgrading my 9600/200 with the Sonnet/Crescendo 800 Mhz G4 Card. The 9600 came with 4 MB VRAM originally installed and 768 System RAM. I added an Ultra Wide SCSI II PCI Card and 3 External 9, 4.5 and 18 GIG Wide HDs). My Question: I can use the existing original graphics card ixMICRO? I know I will gain performance with a new card which is the most compatible and adds the best performance?

[Nobody]

With a pci based machine, the fastest card you can get will be a Radeon 32mb, either one of the older, original ones (VERY hard to find nowadays) or the newer 7000. Either of these will provide a significant boost to your video performance right away,
depending of course what you intend to use it for....

HTH images/icons/smile.gif

[Nobody]

doggdamac
Thanks for the info. I am a graphic design professional and work with huge graphic files (150 / 200 MB Photoshop files routinely). This is a legacy Mac at one of our workstations that we just want to remain usable for awhile longer. We are holding out on upgrading our other machines too waiting for that big performance boost in the sky at January 2003 MacWorld. nullInsanely Great new PowerMac Pro Towers would be a dream come true. Where would I likely find one of the two graphics cards you mentioned; the newer one is probably better? No?

[Nobody]

If you're planning on running OS X 10.2 on this computer, you should know that by default Quartz Extreme won't be enabled on a PCI-based graphics card like the ATI Radeon 7000.

Apple means for only AGP-based video cards to be able to run QE.

There's a utility called PCIExtreme that will allow you to enable QE on the PCI bus. It works pretty well on my 8600/466/Jaguar.

[Nobody]

Damien
Can you recommend the best card for ultimate compatibility vis--vis the fact that this is a 9600/200 with the Sonnet/Crescendo card and we may want the ability to upgrade to Jaguar, OS Xv.10.2?

[Nobody]

Well, as previously stated, the best PCI-based graphics card currently for sale is the ATI Radeon 7000 with 32MB or VRAM. I know of no PCI graphics card with more VRAM than this that is "qualified" to work with OS X 10.2.

The Voodoo 5 card has 64MB of VRAM, but there are no OS X drivers for it. I was able to use my Voodoo 5 card with Jaguar, but there was no video acceleration whatsoever. I get better performance with the Radeon 7000.

So unless there's another 64MB-128MB PCI-based video card I don't know about, I'd say the best card for use in you 9600 would be the Radeon 7000.

I'd be interested in hearing what others have to say on this though. Anyone got some hacked drivers for the Voodoo cards? (wishful thinking...).

[Nobody]

With the Radeon 7000 on a 7600 running 10.2 with our new Crescendo/PCI G4 800, the Quake frame rate test showed 37.4 to 37.7 fps. We've had really great results across the board with this graphics card.

As earlier stated, Quartz Extreme won't execute via PCI, but the earlier graphics are still supported under Jaguar. It'll never be equal to a new machine in every respect, but you'll be surprised how well your old friend can do.

[ 09-16-2002: Message edited by: Karl Seppala ]

[Nobody]

Thanks guys(?). I did go to the Radeon site and the 7000 PCI card is out of stock. I will call and see if OUT OF STOCK means Out of Luck. It is very cheap something like $69. Where did you buy these cards. I'll go for the Radeon 7000 but who sells it? I REALLY appreciate the help. images/icons/smile.gif

[Nobody]

I'm not sure, but you might have beenn looking at a wintel version for the price you cited. The Mac version appears to be available for $129 right now. It is also shown as "available" on the MacWarehouse site, which is the only other place I looked.
http://www.ati.com/s...icesmacusa.html

It isn't cheap, but neither is anything else about upgrading to OS X. I hope this helps.

[Nobody]

Rikki,

I got my Radeon 7000 at buy.com about a month ago for $106.00 w/ free shipping, seems they have went up a bit since then. but look

HERE

still the lowest price w/ free shipping I could find in a quick search images/icons/tongue.gif

But the others are right, at $69 you were looking at the wintel version.....too bad it wont work in a mac images/icons/frown.gif

And BTW, I have mine running (w/the PCI extreme hack) on my B&W G3 and it does really well with PS and everything else too images/icons/smile.gif Just make sure that you have a 100% stable & fully functional Jag set-up before applying the hack. If not it can really cause some strange effects on screen images/icons/shocked.gif

HTH images/icons/smile.gif

[Nobody]

So I am primed to get the Radeon 7000 but is the PCI extreme hack radical? Can I expect problems or a smooth transition. And lastly, are there other cards that allow upgrading to Jaguar without a software patch like the Hack?

[Nobody]

Unfortunately NO......

Quartz Extreme is not enabled in the OS to function on PCI based machines, so regardless of what card you put in there QE aint gonna work without the hack.

But as I said above, be certain that everything else is stable & working 100% before applying the hack.

And NO it is not that radical, it just changes one of the ID strings in the codebase that tells QE not to come on if OS X is running on a PCI-based machine.

And all QE really does is offload the GUI rendering, window drawing & screen effects thru the graphics subsystem instead of sending it to the main CPU. It does this because the AGP bus has the added bandwidth necessary to handle those tasks in addition to everything else that normally runs thru the video card....

Please post back after you get your 7000 and let us know how it goes

[Nobody]

We are installing the Sonnet/Crescendo upgrade card tomorrow (9/18). Will let it run until the weekend (unless you recommend longer) then we'll add the graphics card. Will keep you posted. Thanks again.

[Nobody]

According to www.xlr8yourmac.com, QE will max out a PCI bus, so unless you plan on getting slow PCI-based SCSI hard drive access, I suggest you stick with regular Quartz. That's just what i've heard, though.