Radeon Rage

T

tkdragon

Registered
I just installed a new video card after 5 years of the same old thing. I replaced my ATI Rage 128 (16MB) with an ATI Radeon 8500 (64MB) both AGP. Anyway, everything seemed to be going great until I got to the shrink-to-dock effect when you hit the yellow button on a window. Before, on my old card, this effect was no problem; maybe the pinwheel of death would come up if i did the slow-mo, but the pinwheel would go away after the effect was over. Now, however, whenever I do the effect on a large window (iTunes, Safari) it freezes, slow or regular. The whole system/computer just locks up.
I have the ATI Display Updater installed (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/13327). I also zapped the PRAM and reset the NVRAM and checked permissions. I also stared at my frozen computer in awe of the counter-intuition that this whole problem arises: I buy a new video card, but freezes on things my old card did just fine.
Awe...
 
Hmmm... can you try uninstalling the drivers and trying the effect that way? Mac OS X has always shipped with a pretty robust set of drivers, and the Radeon 8500 is included (actually, every ATi card made now that works with a Mac has a driver already in Mac OS X).

The difference between the two is that Apple manages the drivers that are built in to OS X, while ATi wrote the drivers you installed, and they just don't have a history of writing good drivers, especially for the Mac.

Also, what kind of machine do you have (I'm assuming some sort of early graphite G4 due to the Rage 128), and what version of OS X are you running?
 
An old Sawtooth 400MHz (upgraded to 700MHz now) 1GB RAM, and running 10.3.5. I did try it before installing the ATI software, just running on OS X power, but that had the same dismal effect. Would it make a difference that I installed my OS, then installed my new card? Or would i need to install OSX while the card was in, for it to take effect?
 
osx has all the built in drivers you need so it should just work. your new video card supports quartz extreme and it should have enabled itself when it detected a radeon card in an agp slot.

use this app to check: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/15911

use this one to enable if its not: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/16006
its a hack for radeon pci cards but enables some stubborn agp cards also.

once quartz extreme is enabled I promise you will notice a big difference mainly because you have an agp slot.
 
I don't think the problem is whether or not Quartz Extreme is enabled -- the problem is that the "genie" window minimize effect locks up the machine...
 
scale is the way to go on any mac for me. faster and hoggs less cpu.

I say hit the reset button on the mobo. have you tried this?. do a google for exactly where it is on a sawtooth if you're not sure. good luck.
 
Last thing is to send it to ATI for repair/replacement. I had a brand new Radeon 7000 that failed 3 months after I bought it - video had thick white vertical stripes, then went completely grey with the stripes. ATI replaced it immediately, no questions asked.
 
Where did you get the card? Is it new or used? Is it a genuine ATI retail Mac card or a flashed PC video card? If it's a flashed card, forget about asking ATI for help as flashed PC video cards are unsupported.

Try making a new user and see if the same crashes happen. Maybe there's some preference that's whacked enough to do funky stuff (very slim chance, but it's worth a try).

You can try reinstalling 10.3.5 via the Combo installer. It's possible a driver may be corrupt for whatever reason. I'm not sure how reinstalling 10.3.5 will affect any files updated via security updates though. You might need to reapply them one by one.

If all else fails, and you have a spare partition, reinstall a clean 10.3.5 system and see how things go.
 
I took your guys' advice and switched the minimizing effect to "scale." I can even do slow-mo scale and it doesn't freeze up. I guess I'll just have to live with this. Thanks for all of your help.
 
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