Returning to the Mac

I am about to return to my roots and buy a Mac (after half a decade on the Dark Side!) but I want to make sure I don't shut myself off from SL.

The G5 comes with either an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
64MB

or

ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (I think with 128MB)

I think I am paying the extra $350 for the Radeon just so I can see SL with all it's glory - waving cloth, rippling water, etc. Please tell me that I will be able to see all that.

Of course, if the GeForce will do the trick, let me know. I can certainly find a use for the $350.

I agonized for a long time before I decided to save the cash and go with the 512M RAM that comes with the system instead of spending another $350 for a Gig. Will 512M be sufficient for SL?

I owned many Macs, once upon a time, and used every OS from 1.1g to OS 9. These G5s and OS Xs are a bit scary, but I'm determined to go back to Macintosh.

Well you definitely want the NVIDIA card just because of the ATI problems that still aren't solved.

You probably can run it with 512 but you should definitely bump it to a Gig whenever possible. Try looking on one of the warehouse stores like MacMall. They will often throw in extra RAM.

Good luck

Actually if I recall correctly I remember someone saying the vid card problems were reversed on the Mac - that ATI worked good and nVidia had problems. Don't quote me on that though.

The FX5200 isn't the best card, but it'll work. The "but ATI sucks" crowd may recommend against the Radeon 9800, but ATI's Mac drivers have always been solid. In fact, as of a couple months ago, (so this may no longer be the case) nVidia's Mac drivers had a flaw when rendering SL. ATI's offerings didn't.

The video card question really comes down to this: what monitor were you thinking of getting? If you're planning on using your existing monitor(s), my advice to you is to get the cheaper card, sell it on eBay or give it to a friend, and buy a regular video card.

See, video cards will work in either PCs or Macs, but the cards that ship with Macs have either a DVI (Digital Video Interface) and ADC (Apple Display Connector) connector or two ADC connectors.

Compare this to a standard card, which has either a single DVI connector and an old-style HD-15 (SVGA) connector, or two DVI connectors.

Technologically speaking, ADC carries video, USB and power to the monitor, while DVI is strictly video data. Basically, the difference between ADC and DVI is price. ADC allows Apple to charge more.

So if you have a decent monitor right now, you might want to keep it. If you have two monitors, you probably want to keep them both. DVI-to-SVGA adapters are cheap. Virtually all video cards come with them. ADC-to-DVI connectors cost $100.

Now, I might be wrong about there being even one DVI connector on the G5's 5200. It might be two ADCs. You'll want to check that before you buy.

If you're getting a new monitor, like one of those nice Apple flat-panels, just get the Radeon built in.

Remember though, if you do get a DVI video card now and an Apple monitor later, you'll likely want to get a video card with ADC ports, as the adapter just isn't worth the expense.

Nope, Ama's right -- the nVidia Mac drivers are slightly worse than ATI's. I would actually put ATI's Mac drivers ahead of nVidia's Windows drivers, if only because of the quality of OSX's monitor/display dialogs and the hideousness of the nVidia "Extras".

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Definitely. Kathy, there's no sense in running a G5-based system with so little memory. You want a gig minimum. Shop around, you can often get it for pretty cheap. Just don't get crappy memory. Cheaply-priced memory is cheap for a reason.

I always suggest DealRam and DealMac as a great place to find or watch for great deals. I get the DealMac daily list every day at 3pm.

I may be selling a G5, w/ fx5200, and 2 gig of ram. We hired a GA who would only work on a MAC and then quit shortly after. The system has After Effects, MS Office, DirectorMX, PhotoShop, IDVD, Illustrator, FlashMX, Dreamweaver MX, IDVD, Go Live, Borris Effects for After Effects.

- all the latest versions of the above software, and I have to check to make sure all the software licenses are transferable.

I may do a crossplatform on the Flash and Director since I can always use more licenses for these.

If your intrested I can post the price here before I toss it up on Ebay.

I'm interested.

The wife probably won't let me have a 16th Mac in the house, though.

...And I already have After Effects (SWEET program!) which at $600 or more for the Production Bundle version, isn't cheap in and of itself.

As someone who owns and uses Macs I have only this to say:

ATI with AGP on = crash. AGP off = slow, but stable.

NVIDIA = stable.

This is from personal experience playing on 2 Macs I own at home, and one I use at work.

I appreciate your help, Folks. I've decided to get the G5 with the Radeon 9800. At worst, it looks like I'll have to tune it down a bit like Marcos does, until they get the bugs out. At best, I'll be able to simply stop worrying about graphics cards for a while - and the water will ripple and the cloth will wave and that giant crease down my front will go away.

I also decided to get the Gig. This was because the computer store is giving me Apple RAM at near-DealRAM prices.

I snuck an IPod in there because I'll never ever get a chance to get one otherwise.

I've crossed the Microsoft Office off the list. I'm going to make a leap of faith that one can find free - or very cheap - substitutes for Word, Excel and Outlook. I use Eudora now, so I'm part way there

If anyone has any recommendations for their vary favorite free productivity and utility programs, let me know. Send me a note at [email]kathy@trainorphans.org[/email].

I have to say I'm excited to be making the switch back to good sense

AppleWorks works fine for me. I recently tried Microsoft Office v.X (for OSX) and I didn't really care for it. Well, PowerPoint was nice, but, everything else, AppleWorks is fine (and free.)

Oh, I highly recommend MacConnection.com...very cheap, very fast. I bought an iMac over the phone with them at 11:30pm on Monday night, I had it at 8:00am the next morning (Tuesday). That's less than 12 hours delivery. There wasn't a single problem.

Thanks, James.

By the way, "free"? Apple wants to charge me $80 for AppleWorks. Cheaper than Office, but a long way from free.

OpenOffice or AbiWord are both decent MS Office replacements. Both save and open Word files easily enough. They're both free.

http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/ooo-osx_downloads.html

Huh..maybe it's not free? I just know I have it...and I don't remember paying...*shrug*

Also interested. Would like to have a second Mac in the house... 16th will come later

That's alright. You may not have paid for it - directly, at least.

It might have been included, or you may hvae gotten a promotion, or someone might have taken a loss on it to get you to look at something else they wanted you to buy.

Or, it may have bounced off a truck as it went past

At any rate, thanks for mentioning it. I crossed off the Microsoft stuff and had the store add Appleworks to the list instead.

On the other hand, now that this Openoffice stuff has been mentioned....

It's still coming. I'm beside myself with waiting

As for software, I managed to find a free replacement (quality to be determined later) for every bit of software I ran on Windows. I can now go Microsoft Free again.

The OpenOffice looks great. It works fine right now - while I WAIT - on my Windows machine.

I'm looking forward to seeing SL through a proper video card.

If you do much FTP'ing I highly recommend Transmit. One of the few pieces of shareware I actually have paid for.

Appleworks would have come free with your iMac purchase. It's preinstalled on all iMacs. (Or at least it has been in the past.)

Salazar

I have two video cards, bu am not sure which would be best for SL.

Mac is a 1.7gig G4 with 1.5 GB ram. I have both a 128MB ATI 9000pro and an Nvidia GeForce4 Titanium. Whic would be best for SL, and what setting shoudl I be using?

You shoplifter you, and thats not much of a story either...