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I'm considering another upgrade to extend the life of my Dual 450 Power PC G4 w/1024 MB RAM and a (AGP) Rage 128Pro card in the PCI slot. The bus is 100 mhz and only 1MB L2 cache. I'd like to boost my gaming performance, graphics and video.
Apple has just recently announced the release of the newest video cards. I have to assume there is a break even point where an improvement in the card is offset by the limitations of the box. Is this an easy assessment, or am I making this too hard?
Stuff I do: Photoshop 7.0, iDVD, Ghost Recon.... etc....
Any suggestions will be appreciated.
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Selecting the right video card
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#2
SueG 
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Posted 07 April 2003 - 06:34 AM
When I asked this forum for help evaluating a shopping list of upgrades, people encouraged the processor upgrade as the most helpful. Of course that's pricey for gaming improvement, maybe a nice PS 2?
#3
claydillinger
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Posted 13 April 2003 - 12:02 PM
Umm, Sue, that was a pretty lame and unhelpful reply. Of course you want to upgrade the Rage video card. That would be like $400 bucks cheaper. Radeon 9000 or 8500 are the best out, but you can find a Nvidia Geforce 4 for macs on ebay and other places. The Geforce 2 for macs is pretty good too, if you want a small improvement. Depends what your budget is.
#5
claydillinger
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Posted 13 April 2003 - 09:58 PM
A processor upgrade really won't improve your 3D games graphics and frame rates. It will help stuff like scrolling and useless stuff (well maybe stuff in iDVD such as converting, importing, and things that have a "status bar", but they're really really expensive and not worth the money to me)... go with a nice, cheap video card upgrade.
#6
Chrisso
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Posted 14 April 2003 - 12:42 AM
In reply to:
A processor upgrade really won't improve your 3D games graphics and frame rates. It will help stuff like scrolling and useless stuff
A processor upgrade really won't improve your 3D games graphics and frame rates. It will help stuff like scrolling and useless stuff
Of course it will! OpenGL is very CPU intensive, and with a slow processor, the new graphics card will just sit and wait for the data.
Even with a Voodoo 3/3000 and 128MB RAM I couldn't play Unreal Tournament on my 7200/75 some years ago...
#7
MacCheetah3
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Posted 14 April 2003 - 12:57 PM
Hi
Just a note. Apple claims that all nVidia graphics accelerators, at least the Mac compatible ones, require at least a 4x AGP. Which wasn't added to the Mac until the Digital Audio G4s, 466MHz and up. I would say go for something like the RADEON 9000 Pro. It isn't too badly priced at OWC If that doesn't seem to yet provide the performance, you may consider a CPU upgrade or even saving money for a new machine within a year or so.
MacCheetah3
"Well, pop my peepers"
Just a note. Apple claims that all nVidia graphics accelerators, at least the Mac compatible ones, require at least a 4x AGP. Which wasn't added to the Mac until the Digital Audio G4s, 466MHz and up. I would say go for something like the RADEON 9000 Pro. It isn't too badly priced at OWC If that doesn't seem to yet provide the performance, you may consider a CPU upgrade or even saving money for a new machine within a year or so.
MacCheetah3
"Well, pop my peepers"
#8
Jauu
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Posted 14 April 2003 - 08:38 PM
Thank you all...
After checking the spec on my machine and doing a little cost benefit analysis, I think I've decided to try the graphics card first at roughly $165 with a CPU upgrade later on at roughly $600. I'm going to have to do both sooner or later. For those who care, the Radeon card at MacZone is $3. cheaper than OWC. The combined effort still brings me in at under half a new G4 box, without the extras.... I'll let you know how it goes once I install the card.
An interesting note... I traced this down before but forgot where I found it: My G4 model number M5183 doesn't show up in the apple G4 model comparisons, but it all maps out to an AGP Gigabite Ethernet machine... go figure. Thanks again...JW
/forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
After checking the spec on my machine and doing a little cost benefit analysis, I think I've decided to try the graphics card first at roughly $165 with a CPU upgrade later on at roughly $600. I'm going to have to do both sooner or later. For those who care, the Radeon card at MacZone is $3. cheaper than OWC. The combined effort still brings me in at under half a new G4 box, without the extras.... I'll let you know how it goes once I install the card.
An interesting note... I traced this down before but forgot where I found it: My G4 model number M5183 doesn't show up in the apple G4 model comparisons, but it all maps out to an AGP Gigabite Ethernet machine... go figure. Thanks again...JW
/forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
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