# Good video cards?



## Bluetick (May 31, 2003)

I've been thinking about upgrading my video card for a few games (mainly Shadowbane, and well, if anything can help Diablo 2 run decently in either 9 or X that'd be great).  What are the options?  I have a G4-733, so it's got that Geforce2.  Pretty much all I've seen is the ATI Radeons 8500, 9000, and the Geforce Ti 4.  The Geforce is like 400, so way too much for me.  But how do the two Radeons compare?

The 9000 looks a bit better since it's got DVI and ADC, I plan to eventually get rid of my CRT, so that'd be good.  Or there any other good cards?


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## i am yujin (May 31, 2003)

Hmm..the Geforce 2 can't handle Diablo 2?
I remember playing D2 on my brother's PC Laptop with a 8mb ATI and it ran fine..guess that shows what games are like on the mac. =/

and go for the Geforce 4!


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## mdnky (Jun 6, 2003)

Surprised you're having problems with a GeForce2 and Diablo2....if I recall right isn't that a 32mb card?

Go with the ATI Raedon 9000, your best buy for the money.
http://www.macmall.com/macmall/shop/detail.asp?dpno=552375


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## Arden (Jun 6, 2003)

I ran the D2 demo on this computer (G3/233 with Rage Orion 128 bit, 16 MB VRAM) and it ran smooth as water through a hose.  I used it on a friend's Bondi iMac with 4 MB VRAM and it still ran smoothly, even though the graphics were a little low resolution.

Go for the Radeon.  You'll be very happy with it.


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## Drizzt (Jun 7, 2003)

I say go for the Radeon.  ATi's drivers don't seem as buggy as nVidia's.  I can also atest that the Radeon 8500 is a fine graphics card.  I've had it for a little more than a year now and haven't had any GPU problems at all.  Now if only my processor were a bit faster...


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## ajhubble (Jun 9, 2003)

> I have a G4-733, so it's got that Geforce2.



A Geforce 2 should be able to run Diablo 2 just fine. Maybe it has to do with something else in your system? How much RAM do you have?

How does Diablo 2 not run decently? Do you consistently get low frame rates (is it jerky all the time) or do you get more or less smooth frames but with a slight pause every now and then. Or does it just frame up with lots of action or on certain maps?

I know with my old Celeron 533 machine with a 32Mb TNT2, Diablo 2 framed up badly with lots of action and even with no action, there was an annoying pause or jerkiness every now and then. I attributed this to:
1. Not enough RAM (had 128Mb - 384 Mb helped somewhat) & hitting VM on occasion;
2. Slow CPU with not enough on-chip cache (I think the CPU speed was probably OK, but the small cache could have caused some slow-down);
3. Slow video card - but considering Diablo 2 was 2D only (except for some 3D lighting effects & perspective drawing if enabled) it should have been fine; 2D speed hasn't increased all that much from the TNT2 to Geforce2/3/4 (most of the R&D goes into 3D since that is where everything is going);
4. Combination of all of the above.

A 333Mhz Celeron compaq laptop I once knew had integrated graphics (obviously) and only 128Mb of RAM, and was virtually unplayable with even some action on-screen. There would be huge long pauses in a multiplayer game just when monsters come into view. By the next frame update, the player was already dead.
[Edit: actually, I think the laptop only had 64Mb - which was probably 90% of the reason for why it was unbearable.]

Diablo 2 performance was much better on my old P3 866 Mhz with the same RAM and TNT2 but there were still pauses every now and then. It is silky smooth all the way on my 1.67 GHz Athlon with 1Gb RAM and Ti4200 (not bragging, just a comparison).

Is your 733 G4 the model with the missing L2 cache (or is it the L3 - can't remember)? I don't think this should make much of a difference though. Most probably (and without knowing how much RAM you have or what extensions are loaded or background processes etc you are running), I'd say increasing the RAM should help *a lot* (stop hitting the virtual memory - multiplayer games take up lots more memory than single player)). If you have 512 MB or more, then just ignore what I just said (but it may be relevant for multiplayer games with lots of players).


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## a2daj (Jun 9, 2003)

Here's a post I made in another forum regarding DII performance on Macs:  

Unfortunately, outside of using a 3dfx card in OS 9, software rendering is the only mode that provides consistent frame rates in both OS 9 and OS X with both ATI and NVIDIA cards.  I believe it wasn't the cards that were slow at loading and flushing textures, but it was more driver related.  The game animation is all based on 25 fps, so anything above that is basically free time for your OS to process other things like sound and input, so you don't really need a consistent 60 fps.  BTW, to check your frames per second, hit the return/enter key to open a chat window, type 'fps' without the '' and hit return/enter again.  Your fps, ping, and rendering mode should appear at the top of the screen.  If you're running a hardware accelerated mode and then switch to window mode you'll notice the game switches to software mode.

I've wasted many, many hours doing performance comparisons on various boards (V2, V3, V4, V5, Rage 128 Pro, Radeon AGP, Radeon PCI, Radeon 8500, Radeon 7500 Mobility, GeForce2MX).  Since the engine is optimized for Glide performance, those ran the game perfectly in terms of framerates (occasional graphical glitches). 

In OS 9, both RAVE and OpenGL can often times benchmark higher but when the screen gets really busy, frame rates can plummet and strange rendering effects can occur (missing head while standing still, missing legs while running, maybe a missing torso while swinging. Pretty funny actually) with RAVE getting the significant nod over OpenGL.  One area in Diablo II that will kill OpenGL frame rates is at the Act V city gates.  Ugh! Even with a 1.2 GHz processor, that part of the map can potentially drop the fps to around, oh, a frame ever couple of seconds.  Another test I like to do is to go kill Shrek (Schenk), the unique mob at the too of the Bloody Foothills.  If you run at him from the nearest WP, there's usually a spot near the base of the stairs where all the mobs get loaded.   In RAVE and OpenGL there's typically a rather long pause (a few times it causes rendering issues until I quit).  With software and Glide, the pause isn't nearly as long.

Software rendering keeps a rather low average, but it tends to stick around that average even in heavy traffic.  OpenGL definitely has the worst performance out of the four rendering choices.  When I play DII, I want to maintain a steady frame rate as often as possible so if I'm going to be playing for a while I boot into OS 9 and use my Voodoo5.  If I just want a quickie in OS X, I use software rendering.

According to a Rob Barris, the Blizzard Mac engineer who's working on the Mac version of DII 1.10, they're going to be using similar techniques that Quartz extreme uses to improve texture loading and unloading, so you'll want a card that's either a Radeon or a GeForce card.  I don't believe the performance boots will work with anything below those cards since they aren't Quartz Extreme compatible.


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## Bluetick (Jun 9, 2003)

I have 640 megs of ram.  I don't know if it's the model without L2 cache.  It's a Quicksilver model.

I have to run it in software rendering.  I've heard of that problem before, I just figured it was a problem with Nvidia cards.  With Rave or OpenGL, the frame rates drop really low.  In software mode, it's usually in the teens or low twenties, I can't really remember.  But all the settings are real low as well, and all the stuff is turned off in software mode, so while the framerate isn't great, that's not the worst thing about that mode.


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## Bluetick (Jun 9, 2003)

This is OS9 of course, the OSX version always crashes on me.


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## Arden (Jun 9, 2003)

All G4's have L2 cache.  Not all have L3.


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## Greystroke (Jun 11, 2003)

if it's a quicksilver it should have the L3 cache.

i run a 867mhz with 894Mb of ram and a GeForce 2 MX...i usually run D2 LOD in windowed mode because it runs cleaner and less laggy. 

As soon as they are available for purchase I think I'm goign to get an ATI 9700 Pro MAc Edition Card 128 mb ddr

ATI cards are usually cheaper and run just as good or better than their nVidia counterparts.

http://www.ati.com/products/mac/radeon9700prome/index.html


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## a2daj (Jun 11, 2003)

The 733 Quicksilvers didn't have L3 caches.  The education 867 Quicksilvers didn't either.


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## Greystroke (Jun 11, 2003)

> 2 MB backside L3 cache running at one-fourth the processor speed (867 MHz and dual 800 MHz systems)


sorry man it says it right there on Apple's Support page that the 867 has an L3 cache...

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58839

the 733's released in January of 01 had an L3 cache but those released in August did not...at least from reding that's what i've gathered...


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