Video card for windlight. Radeon x800??

Hi. I have the April, 2005 edition G5 2ghz dual processor, 1 gig of memory and the stock ATI Radeon 9600 128 video. I had hoped to be able to use windlight. I tried the first look viewer last night. When I activated "sky" in preferences, SL became unusably slow. 60 seconds or longer for camera, chat, inventory, moving or anything to respond.

It has been suggested that I get additional memory and a different video card. It looks like I am pretty much restricted to the Radeon x800 XT card. Opinions??

Also, I currently have 4x 256 in my four available memory slots. I understand that memory must be installed in pairs in this machine. Can I put 2 1gig ddr sdram in two of my slots and keep two of the 256 in the other two slots?

comments/suggestions, please

Molly I don't have personal experience with the X800 card, but I know for certain that adding more RAM will help you a lot. I think 2 GB would be a good amount. Yes the G5 takes memory in matched pairs so you can add 2 x 1 GB and keep your current 256 sticks for a total of 3 GB. SL is memory intensive so the more you have the better your experience will be.

I think the X800 is your only choice for your AGP 8X slot G5. You might want to check www.xlr8yourmac.com for some reviews of that card before deciding.

Strangely enough I was just looking at vid cards for my 2x2.5 G5 yesterday - looks like one other choice is available, but it's the 9800, so not as much of a bump as the X800, which definitely seems the best bet. I will also attest to SL running much better w/ more RAM, when I went from .5 to 2.5 GB it was like night @ day.

Windlight is something that really needs an OpenGL 2 compatible vid card for best use, from what I've been reading, and the 9X00 series afaik doesn't seem to have been updated for OGL2 (again from what I'm reading).

So, yes, looks like the x800 is about it for vid cards.

Hi, I am running 2nd Life on a Mac Pro and I am crashing alot. I have 2x2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon, 1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM. Should I be looking into an extra graphic's card or boosting my memory? Thanks Much!

I'd go memory first. SL is a RAM pig. I saw huge gains when going up from .5 to 2.5 GB on my G5, I'd bet your vid card is better than my ATI 9600 128mb AGP card already, and it works for most of SL (though not all the best new eye-candy).

You can never be too rich, too thin or have too much ram!

Does your machine have the full-width AGP slot? I have a Dual 2.5ghz G5 with a NVidia 6800 Ultra (256mb) card. It could be faster, but it performs fairly well on the Windlight viewer (with sky off though, it is a performance hog). I picked it because it is meant to have very good all-round OpenGL support.

I believe that was the pricey option I could have done via BTO back when I bought the machine - Lately I haven't seen that one available. It looks like currently the best bet is an ATI X800 256mb card in aftermarket. Looks like (after searching around) there may be some other even better cards available, mostly pre-flashed cards built for PCs originally. I may look further into these.