New Graphics Card?

I'm thinking of upgrading my graphics card from a GeForce FX 5200 64 MB to a ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Special Edition. I have a dual 2 GHz system with 4.5 GB of RAM and an 17" Apple Studio Display with an ADC connector.

Will a card upgrade make a big difference?
Are they any harder to install than RAM or a hard drive?
Is this a good choice, and where is a good place to buy the card?
What is the best thing to do with my old card?

Will a card upgrade make a big difference?
- from a 64m to a 256m?! sure would!!

Are they any harder to install than RAM or a hard drive?
- than a hard drive? certainly not!! (though if it's one of those oversized two-slotters, i've never used one myself, but surely still, no harder than a hard drive.)

Is this a good choice, and where is a good place to buy the card?
- i'll name names one of my fave places is otherworld computing (shop's at http://www.macsales.com/) - can probably find it cheaper if you try, but i always feel safe dealing with them; mac-only shop, and they test 'unlisted' products for compatibility themselves. or, try the 'froogle' route and see what's out there...

as far as 'choice', i've read a pretty even horse-race between nVid and ATI, as far as general feedback/quality. the card itself is above sl's hardware specs, so it should run fine. (better than fine, probably

What is the best thing to do with my old card?
- owc -might- take a tradein (or whereever you choose to purchase from); sometimes they do on certain items - ask 'em and find out. otherwise, ebay! (or amazon's also a good place to sell used stuff.)

not until you're settled and happy with the new card though; put the old one in a static-protected envelopes for a month or so until you're sure the new card gives you no troubles, with any of your other apps, or in general...

I've heard ATI card doesn't work AGP acceralation on SL. Consider again.

64mb vid cards are utter junk 128-256 (512 anyone?) is decent for SL, remember SL mostly cpu dependant tho,not gpu, sure you get more neat futures like shiney! and SL's Avatar vertex rendering (havnt seen this do jack tho ), if SL used Pixel shaders it would a whole other deal then youd really want a high end Vid card.

Anyhoo, SL and Ati agp isnt to good, they dont work that easy but apperantly its no diffrence in speed on a ati , if it was a gforce on other hand it would do stuff (+3/+7 fps), the thing is my friend has a Mac she had nothing but issues with GF + Mac + SL , appearantly Mac is better on drivers for Ati then GF ? (her words , i never touched one ever ;p)

rawr anyway dont expect to much of a diffrent fps then what you have, but expect prettier! and shiney stuff

Id get a gf6600 tho if i where you, cheap and pretty fast for their price.

Hard learned words they were too

I have the dual 2.5Ghz G5 and had horrible pixellation problems with the Geforce 6800 Ultra. I tried the FX5200 during troubleshooting and it ran very slow on SL by comparison.

As Thili says, the 64Mb VRAM 'aint enough no matter what the manufacturer, it ran no better than an old Radeon 8500, I have actually seen a *big* FPS improvement though, on the Mac at least, between the 5200 and higher end cards on direct 1-to-1 swap out comparison, the 5200 was very stodgy.

The 9800 Pro is a good card and I hear from other users that it runs very well with SL in these systems. Ask Elror Gullwing if you see him around...

I however pushed for the newer ATI X800 XT, which is equivalent to the 6800, nominally about twice the performance of the 9800 and certainly runs SL with no issues apart from the general SL funkiness

The 5200 is your main bottleneck on the system without a doubt, especially with 4.5Gb of RAM <envy>, from my experience your system will speed up noticeably in SL with a better card

If you can afford an X800 (or new X850) go for it as it's a more current card. Otherwise 9800 should be a fair boost.

Other questions: a graphics card is just as easy to install as RAM or a hard drive, just swap it into the AGP slot and your system will have the drivers natively (you're current with OS X updates ?). With ATI you can also download ATI Utilities to tweak settings. With Nvidia you have zilch.

Oh *be careful* with the card screw when changing the card as if it falls down into the depths of the G5 case you're in for an annoying time retrieving it !

AGP acceleration *does* work on the Mac on ATI as far as I can see. Dunno about for the PeeCee though.

Good place to buy - any Mac-friendly store online, maybe Amazon, don't neglect eBay for a bargain......I don't know which country you're in to give you specific advice for, but US has keener pricing than UK by far.

Speaking of Ebay, that's the best place to dispose of your old one, though don't expect too much for it as the market is often already flooded with old 5200FX and it's not a greatly desirable card. You could always keep it as a spare if it doesn't sell - probably wise choice anyway in case anything goes wrong as Nyoko mentioned above.

Best of luck !

The GeForce 6800 is out of my price range. The other two cards the Apple Store said were compatible were the Radeon 9800 and the X800, which are $250 (after rebate) and $500 respectively. If the X850 is going to drop the price on the X800, it might be worth waiting, but I don't know that will happen.

I'm not really after the shiny stuff (I run with that off.), so much as fixing horrible lag problems in sims with lots of AVs or lots of prims/particles. I expect some lag in sims like that - but it's completely unusuable for me. I can't even chat it's so bad. I figure it can't be my broadband connection (tested it), can't be the memory , shouldn't be the processors, which leaves the card.

Thanks for all the advice. I would never have thought about keeping the old card until I had had the new for a while. All my upgrades have been the "add" kind (more RAM, second hard drive, etc.) not the "replace" kind.

Yup, thanks Thili and Dee. Those are very usuful informations.
But Dee, I've used dual 1.8G with 6800 Ultra without any trouble for about a half year. I'm not sure what the difference are between yours and mine.

Hi Seagel, I never really found the true answer to the problem with the 6800 Ultra - and it may well be since then that OS 10.4 Tiger fixed it with new drivers, or even that an SL update has fixed it, or both - but I did go through several cards trying to fault find the problem till eventually giving up when the ATI X800XT launched for the Mac early this year.

Really glad yours works for you - it is a great card, I just shudder when I think back to the problems I had, lol

Hi again Morgana

Yes the 5200 did slow down the GUI, including chat typing, when I briefly had one in my G5, and it slowed down my movement too even just staying at home - didn't go many places else before hurriedly putting the faster card back in, lol

I'm glad to hear upgrading will help with stuff like chatting and moving. I'd love to get one of the two faster cards, but I spent my money on RAM thinking that might help, so I guess it's the 9800 for me unless I find some extra cash.

Keep an eye on eBay - search for X800 Mac - there's a few listed at the moment starting $300 and up - sometimes you get lucky on there

Happy hunting !

Looks up the thread at Thili I *will* spend some time back in world sometime m'dear

If you go with the Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edition, be aware there is one Radeon 9800 Macintosh version that is compatible only with G5 and another 9800 that works on both the G4 and G5. Check for the presence of DVI or ADC, with ADC being the G5-only version.

The issue is that the G5 Macintosh's "AGP pro" slot can deliver sufficient power to drive VGA+ADC, and the G4 AGP slot can deliver power only for VGA+DVI.

I got the Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Special Edition. That's the G5 one (my monitor is ADC), which doesn't need the power connection to your internal power supply - which they do NOT say in the manual. I had to call Radeon to find out it wasn't missing, I just didn't need it.

I downloaded the latest ATI Displays, but they also have a "January 2005 Radeon Update" and a "Remote Wonder" update. Do I want those?

Thanks for advice everyone - I'm more of a software person than a hardware person, and finding solid information about this stuff online has been tough.

Hi Morgana

Glad to hear you got your new card !

ATI Displays basically gives you a control panel to fiddle with functionality, though I must admit, I haven't really got round to using it much.

The most recent drivers are in Mac OS X if you are up to date with that, so you should be OK there actually.

The www.atitech.com download site gives you a separate page for the drivers you need for each version of OS X (10.4, 10.3, 10.2 etc). From what you said you can see, I'm guessing that you are looking at the 10.3 page. I don't believe Remote Wonder is relevant at all. The Jan 2005 update for 10.3.6 or higher may be relevant, but only if you are using 10.3.6. If you are using a newer version of OS X than that, such as 10.3.9, then the drivers with that will be newer than those in the update, in which case I would be inclined to leave your system as it is and only install the ATI Displays component.

Sorry I'm a bit vague, it depends on which system update you are using you see, but basically, the card should work fine as plugged in, with the ATI Displays panel just being an extra 'tinkering tool'.

Enjoy your Radeon

Thank you! Yes, I'm on 10.3.9. I guessed that Remote Wonder and the 10.3.6 thing didn't apply, but wasn't completely sure. I haven't played with the ATI Display panel, but I figured having the newest one couldn't hurt.