Graphics Card Upgrades

OK, so I'm sat here with a spiffy Dual G5 tower, as much Ram as you can cram into it, and I'm still not getting as many fps as I'd like to.

I was considering upgrading the graphics card from my meagre GeForce FX 5200, but I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations/experiences of better cards before I did?

Basically, I'm asking if anyone has upgraded - and if so, did they notice a significant improvement in SL?

I would be interested as well. I have an imac g5 with the geforce, was thinking of going to an ATI Radeon 9600.

Refer you to this thread.

Okay: so the general message about the FX5200 is that its best replaced.
My problem is that I run one of the original issue iMacG5s: shipped with the 5200 which is fitted in a way that can't be swapped out.

Now, I know that it won't make as big a difference as a better graphics card, but are there any other suggestions to speed up L2 performance. My current spec is standard for the cheaper model, 1.6GHz, 512KB cache, 522MHz bus, though I did add more memory and have 768MB on board.

Kind regards,
Anima Graff

Unless you can upgrade your graphic card, I cannot help but refer you to Brent Linden's tips.

Anima,

where is your source on this? I hadn't heard that the video card was not swappable on the imac g5s. I have 17" flat panel - first generation - am I not able to upgrade the video card? gah, should've gone with the powermac g5

Thanks Seagal

Ok my knowledge on mac' you can write on a penny but, if you are planning on upgrading your vid card for SL fps performance,

You should consider SL uses cpu alot more then a vid card so unless you got least 2ghz+ you wont really get any fps gain, however you will be able to use more spiffy effects, however for other games it will make more of a diffrence.

I Know Dee Firefly and her issues with diffrent vid cards, she finally got a x800 or something ati (memory o.o) and that worked very nice for her compared to all the issues she had using nvidia, we had completly diffrent issues, but hers was on nvidia, mine was on ati, (she has mac i have pc)

Hello Thili, thank you for your useful suggestions everytime.

But I wonder why you stick to the idea that SL uses cpu alot more then a vid card.
Accoridng to the paragraph, "Graphics Card Performance" on this Apple's page,And my Mac's dual processors have used each power less than 60% to play SL since I upgraded to nVidia 6800 Ultra. I want CPUs to work much more, such as 95% each when I set graphics options higher on SL preference.

HI... i also run SL on a Dual G5, with Mac OS X 10.4.2. Although the vid card is a key component to the SL experience, you also need the whole hardware and connectivity package to maximize SL performance. In addition to the base system, I run:

ATI 9800 Pro (256 VRAM) card

2.5 GB memory

6 Mbit/sec cable modem broadband connection


Also, run Software Update to ensure you have the latest system updates from Apple.

If you are running a ATI card, be sure and use the latest ATI control panel and drivers from ATI Technologies. Version 4.5.5 was released on August 23. You can also play around with the Game Overrides, but, I have not seen any appreciable effect of overriding SL's Preferences settings. In fact, you can even degrade SL performance with some of the ATI overrride settings.

Good luck...

I tried a GeForce FX 5200 64M and a Radeon 9600 Pro 64M in my Powermac G5 dual-2GHz. The 9600 delivers 19-21 FPS and the 5200 9-11 FPS in SecondLife 1.8.0.

I'm buying a 128M 9600 and selling the 64MB 9600 and 5200.

YMMV.

Upgraded to a 6800 Ultra and the FPS doubled again.

~10 FPS - GeForce FX 5200 64MB, 2GB system RAM
~20 FPS - Radeon 9600 64 MB, 2GB system RAM
~20 FPS - Radeon 9600 128 MB, 2GB system RAM
~40 FPS - GeForce 6800 Ultra 256 MB, 1GB system RAM

G5 Dual 2 GHz tower, 8 RAM slot model (May 2003?)

The 6800 actually reaches 59-60 FPS when all the textures have loaded.