My Powermac need new video card

[Nakia]

I have a Powermac G4 933. I want to change the video card. I currently have Geforce 4 MX in it. I planning on upgrading my PC card but I decide my Mac really needed it more.
I'm looking at dropping a Geforce 4 Ti in it. the FX seems to be $$$$ for my pockets now.
Do anyone have a good online store to order Mac Video cards? Before I over spend on one.
Thanks in advance!!!

[mlinde]

http://www.smalldog.com/

It's based in Vermont, in the US, but their price on the GeForce 4 Ti is $489, no taxes, only shipping.

[Nakia]

I was just checking out smalldog.com (Thats like the Mac user favorate Apple resaller up here in NJ/NY).
With that price, hmmm
Thats half the iBook the wife and I need for school.
THANKS for the response!!

[Triple G]

Hmm...$489 seems like an awful lot for that card. I found the same thing at MacMall for $394:

Apple Power Mac G4 NVIDIA GeForce4 Titanium Graphics Card Kit (http://www.macmall.com/macmall/shop/detail.asp?dpno=974941)

[archiea]

That is a high price. I paid the "high" price of $399 at the apple store. I've seen it at frys for $399. I believe that there is now a demand for the Ti card as there have been problems with the ATI. It must be a reflection of the market, as Small Dog usually has good prices....

[Nakia]

I should see an improve going from Geforce 4 MX to the Ti card. I know the Geforce 4 MX card is a weak card for PC.

[Triple G]

Originally posted by mlinde
http://www.smalldog.com/

It's based in Vermont, in the US, but their price on the GeForce 4 Ti is $489, no taxes, only shipping.

Not sure what page you saw that on, but I just checked the site out, and found this (http://www.smalldog.com/product/41879), for $385. It doesn't say anything about the "kit" mentioned on the Macmall page, though... :confused:

[mlinde]

Originally posted by Triple G
Not sure what page you saw that on, but I just checked the site out, and found this (http://www.smalldog.com/product/41879), for $385. It doesn't say anything about the "kit" mentioned on the Macmall page, though... :confused:

yeah, that's a BIG typo. The Small Dog price is $385, they don't charge sales tax, and shipping is about $7 The only disadvantage is that they don't keep the card in stock, so they order it when they get an order. Takes a few more days that way, but you can't beat $392 total cost for this card (in the states).

[Nakia]

Have any of you guys ever changed your video cards? if so and changes in performance?

[Triple G]

Well, I swapped out my old 16MB Rage Pro 128 card that originally came with my G4, and got a 64MB Radeon 8500 a little over a year ago, IIRC. I believe I paid about $250 or $260 for it at the time. I don't have any hard numbers to back things up, but performance levels in regards to feedback in Modeler and Layout definitely improved. Another big thing that improved my speed was upgrading my processor...I went from a 450MHz to a 1GHz with a Sonnet Encore card...HUGE difference. I honestly have a hard time imagining how I got any work done previously.

[Nakia]

The changes you made is what the PC folks say Mac user can't. :-)
End of next year I will be dropping a Dual CPU kit from I think its Powerlogix into my G4 933 (If I don't get the G5).
I guess my New video Card is what I will be next.
Thanks for the info!!!

[neoklassik]

Found the card on Microwarehouse for approx $375.00
I bought one.. will see if solves problems. 30 day money back.
Macwarehouse link (http://www2.warehouse.com/product.asp?pf_id=EX12374&blind=no&BCID=9709215)

[Triple G]

Originally posted by Nakia
The changes you made is what the PC folks say Mac user can't. :-)

Yeah, pretty much the only Mac models that I've heard are difficult to upgrade are the eMacs & iMacs, and the G4 Cubes. But pretty much every Powermac ever made (G4, G3, even older 68xxx-based machines) can be upgraded in some way, shape or form...whether it be processors, vid cards, RAM, etc. Powerlogix and Sonnet are probably the two most well-known manufacturers in the processor upgrade department. There was a nice article in this month's MacWorld mag on the latest crop of available processor upgrades. Probably worth taking a look at if you think you may be in the market for one soon.

[Paul Goodrich]

Well it wasn't that hard. I'm typing this on my G4 Cube, Which came as a G4 450 and ATI card and now has a Dual G4 800 (they make a dual 1 Gig but don't recommend it as the machine would melt down.) and a Nvidia GeForce 3 in it. I also added a NVidia 4Ti to my G4 933 when I upgraded my G4 Dual 500. My experence is that with my Macs is that a CPU upgrade had a MUCH bigger impact on LW performance than the video cards did. Maybe with real workstation video cards we'll see a difference but IMHO I'd spend the money on the CPU upgrade rather than the video card. At least for now.
Paul Goodrich

[Triple G]

Originally posted by neoklassik
Found the card on Microwarehouse for approx $375.00
I bought one.. will see if solves problems. 30 day money back.
Macwarehouse link (http://www2.warehouse.com/product.asp?pf_id=EX12374&blind=no&BCID=9709215)

Out of curiosity, neoklassik, what speed AGP slot do you have in your machine? If it's a 2X AGP and the GF4Ti works in your machine, I know I personally will be very tempted to go out and do the same. :)

[Julian Johnson]

I agree with Paul that the CPU upgrades always seemed to have far more effect on OGL performance than the video card itself. I haven't seen either the latest nVidia GF4xx or ATi 8xxxx/9xxxxs in a Mac but after trying to establish a test with Mike Breeden at Accelerate Your Mac that would accurately reflect a card's real world performance in Lightwave many months ago, Mike concluded that for most of the time, Lightwave OGL performance was CPU-bound. Or, at least, the calculations required to feed the cards were not capable of saturating the cards' capacities.

If you do some simple tests by orbiting two spheres around one another and measure the frame rates in Layout you can see that that supposition might be true. Here's an example from my DP800 with 1.5Gig of RAM in 10.2.4:

ATi Rage 128 16Mb

Poly Count @10000: 21fps
Poly Count @20000: 11fps
Poly Count @80000: 3.5fps

Geforce 3

Poly Count @10000: 36fps
Poly Count @20000: 14fps
Poly Count @80000: 4fps

What you normally see in Layout is a kind of 'threshold' above which the cards revert back to relying on the CPU to derive the display. On my machine, with these two cards that's at about the 20000 poly mark. Above that point all cards I've tried tend to perform about the same. Whilst you keep below that threshold you can see and feel a genuine difference in performance in Layout.

This may have changed with the latest generation of ATi and nVidia cards (possibly the threshold has moved). It would be interesting to do some tests in Layout but I'd suspect, as they're still game cards, that they would continue to exhibit the same kind of behaviour - being honed towards providing rapid 'low' polygon screen refresh for games.

Compounding that issue, up until the the last iteration of the G4 and now the G5, was the bus speed on Macs, as I understand it. This inhibited a fast flow of data from the card to the CPU.

Would love to see results for different CPUs/cards to see if this behaviour is consistent and whether the G5 with it's huge bus/CPU advantage will fix this.

The test scene is here, if anyone's interested:

http://www.exch.demon.co.uk/ogltests.sit

It's 1.2Mb. Viewport set to Textured Shaded Solid. None of the display options (e.g. faster ogl highlights etc.) seem to have much effect on the frame rates.

As for Modeler, well, that's a complete mystery. With both my cards, the threshold rule seems to apply. Anything over 15000 polys starts to slow things down such that it's hard to distinguish between the two cards. Zooming in on a 100000 poly object takes the same time to refresh all viewports (@5s) with both cards.

Of course, all these tests are done within the limitations of my machine setup and specifications. It may be very different on other CPU/card combos.

Julian

[neoklassik]

"Out of curiosity, neoklassik, what speed AGP slot do you have in your machine? If it's a 2X AGP and the GF4Ti works in your machine, I know I personally will be very tempted to go out and do the same."

Running a dual 1.25 mirrored.

I went and looked at ATI's website.. the last version of the driver I could find was Jan '03, with the statement that the update won't support X 2.2 and up. That is incomprehensable to me. If Apple is going to limit it's cards the way it does you'd think they'd stay on top of the manufacturers. The problem is unless it affects Photoshop or one of thier programs like FCP or something, LW (especially mac) users are a minority base and therefore ignored. ATI burned me once before back when they switched from system 8.5 to 9 and the sound quit working on the All in blunder card. Wasted $100 some bucks. And here we are again.

hmm... sorry about the mini rant.. it's late :)

[Triple G]

Originally posted by neoklassik
Running a dual 1.25 mirrored.

That's a 4X AGP machine, right?

[mlinde]

Originally posted by Triple G
That's a 4X AGP machine, right?
Yes, his machine is 4x AGP.

[archiea]

Julian!!

its great to hear from you again!!!!

perhaps you can post that test scene and results under its own topic. It would better alert other users, and provide a poor man's benchmark for people to generate results, especially with these new G5's. I know its not officially a benchmark, but if people were to dl this scene as post their screen resolution, mac model and configuration, it would answer alot of different question for alot of people. thanks again!!

[mlinde]

Originally posted by Julian Johnson
Compounding that issue, up until the the last iteration of the G4 and now the G5, was the bus speed on Macs, as I understand it. This inhibited a fast flow of data from the card to the CPU.
Hi again Julian! I guess you've got a break from you crazy work schedule. I have to disagree with this statement, simply because professional 3D video cards have existed for Windows since the 33Mhz PCI bus was top of the line. I'd be much more inclined to agree that the bottleneck is the processor design (or at least the firmware) for the video cards.

[Julian Johnson]

Hi Michael,

I'm sure you're right :-). I remember a long thread (what else would you expect from Ed M.) a year or so ago which pointed the finger at the front side bus (rather than the PCI bus) on Macs which, apparently, runs at something like a third of the speed of most PC buses. However, since I always skip right to the end of Arstechnica articles and even then never fully grasp the conclusions, I'd have to say I really wouldn't know my frontside from my backside or, indeed, how much latency was left in my instruction set at any given moment.

There's definitely some constraint in the pre-G5 designs that seems to slow down video performance in comparison with PCs. If it is firmware then there's some hope that pro-level cards could give much better performance in legacy macs, if we ever get them! If it's just raw processing power then the G5 should raise the Mac bar :-)

Julian