Should I get a Radeon for my Beige?

Mac Write

MacWrite.com
I have the dreaded (or is ita good card?) ATI Rage II+ 2mb vram in my Beige G3 MT Rev A. I run at 1152x870 and on 2MB vram is ok. what preformance change would I see by going to a Radeon Mac or Radeon VE with 32MB vram?

has anyone done this upgrade on a Beige G3 and what was the prefornace increase?
 
Well, since I never ran X on my original video HW, I can't really comment on the performance increase beyond saying "I'm quite happy."

FWIW, This card has worked like a champ from 10.0 on. Between that and the G4 ZIF upgrade, I'm ready to ride this machine right on until the G5s with HyperTransport ship.

(BTW, I use a Dual-800 Qicksiler at work <drool> and I can still come home and be perfectly content on Old Biege here...)

-alex.
 
i had a later rev beige with the rage pro chipset...i ran my second monitor off a nexus128 ati card. there was a significant difference in how each screen refreshed and performed...that will be even more dramatic with the radeon.

but it all comes down to what you are doing with the computer...games, graphics etc...go for it.....if all you do is email and web browsing then its not really a necessity.
 
If it speeds up the UI in:

•Menu drawing
•QickTime playback
•Millions of colors at 1152x870
•improved Quartz preformance


it's worth it. and for web browsing, I hope it will speed up the rendering of webtrends live, which takes 10-30 seconds per page to render on a fast (4mbit) DSL connection. I was at a place showing my stats on a PC, and the pages rendered INSTANTLY!!!

also would it help with photoshop?

gaming is low key. but being able to play

•Quake 1
•Carmageddon 1/2
•Myth I
•Unreal

with better preformance would be nice. The video card was the last upgrade on my list (other then a CPU upgrade which won't happen) but since I heard Quartz uses OpenGL, I thought the video card would help (and millions of color to). QuckTIme playback speed boost would be a big help.
 
okay...with that additional info, i would say definitely you'd be happier with a new 32mb radeon than the 2mb rage+...especially if you've found a good deal on the card!

you'll see major improvement in just about everything......
 
I would gladly get the Radeon 8500 (it's CPU is faster then my Computer!!!) but I don't know if it will come out in PCI. I had been planning on getting the Radeon 2 for over 2 years.
 
Just found out that the ATI Radeon VE has come out in PCI form. I will be buying as soon as it become avaliable. It's just too bad that the 8500 won't be coming out in PCI form.

sweet 3 montor support. well only 2. The Rage II+ will be used for TV out (very helpful during a keynote).
 
The radeon 1 is more powerful than radeon VE..

More expensive though.

Trouble is ATI sux in driver updates, I mean wheres the update to have software AA on the radeon cards...i wont buy one until they get their act together, I just wish nvidia would add competition and release drivers for an MX pci card! (flawless drivers not those hacks that ppl have been tryin to make work)
 
Originally posted by ThE OutsiDer
The radeon 1 is more powerful than radeon VE..

More expensive though.

Trouble is ATI sux in driver updates, I mean wheres the update to have software AA on the radeon cards...i wont buy one until they get their act together, I just wish nvidia would add competition and release drivers for an MX pci card! (flawless drivers not those hacks that ppl have been tryin to make work)

What's the difference in preformance between the Radeon 1 and VE?

EDIT: The Radeon one has a 166/166mhz while the VE has a 181/181CPU
 
wellthey say the VE has performance of between an ati 128 to a radeon 1 card... VE has minus T/L,and missing other features like only 2 piplines instead of 3. Its clock rate is higher but it has less feztures, I think its also not DDR.
 
Originally posted by ThE OutsiDer
wellthey say the VE has performance of between an ati 128 to a radeon 1 card... VE has minus T/L,and missing other features like only 2 piplines instead of 3. Its clock rate is higher but it has less feztures, I think its also not DDR.

Do you have a Beige G3? if so , which card do you use? What is the real difference in preformance between the cards?
 
Not that there's anything wrong with a Beige G3, it's just that in my experience I have gotten myself worked up over expecting great performance with a new card, RAM, chip or otherwise put in an old box only to be disappointed. I doubt that you will be overwhelmed with the new performance unless your current card simply sucks.
 
I'd just like to point out a common misconception about OS X in its current state: OS X does not offload any of the GUI calculation operations to the video card. So, you will not see any difference in the UI regardless if you have a GF10 that works with the Mac and has 999 GB of video RAM (if only there was a :dreamy: smiley). It won't help, at least in the state that OS X is in right now. :(

I'm pretty sure that Apple is working on a way to do this for future versions of OS X, as it would significantly take off the load off of the CPU for GUI calculations. Until then, however, getting a new graphics card will only improve games and such that actually use the video card.

I can't wait for Apple to do that though. OS X would be really improved with that. :)
 
I am going to just get the Radeom PCI.

How will it help with these games preformance?

•Quake
•Carmageddon I
•Carmageddon II
•Myth I
•Unreal
•DukeNukem3D
•Quest for Glory V

Will the QuickDraw 3D excelleration help with games that don't used OpenGL?
 
Back
Top