macgeek2005 said:
I'd get the 9800 pro if my computer could take advantage of the 256mb of vram. Tell me more about that, and why it can't take advantage of it.
thanks.
Well, it isn't that it CAN'T take advantage of the extra memory...it's more a question of diminishing returns. For example, my Digital Audio originally had a Radeon 7500 with 32MB. Performance with OS X was good, but the card struggled with 3D apps. So I upgraded to the 64MB Radeon 9600 Pro, from OWC, which was $120 when I bought it a year ago. Performance increases were huge across the board - Call of Duty went from being a slideshow to pretty smooth, and Doom 3 was actually playable with the settings turned down.
At this point I was close to my G4's performance ceiling, even with my upgraded CPU and fast SATA hard drives...still I decided to try hacking the GeForce 6800GT to my Mac, just for fun. The GeForce 6800GT is a
lot faster than the 9800 Pro, even with the same amount of VRAM. After successfully getting the card running on the Mac, benchmarks showed a noticable but small improvement - the 7500-9600 upgrade had been a lot more noticable, even though the 6800GT was, on paper, a HUGE upgrade.
The problem is that my Digital Audio's system bus runs @ 133MHz. No matter how fast my CPU, video card and RAM are they can only talk to each other at 133MHz. Same goes for you and your MDD - your bus is a little faster @ 167MHz, but the difference is negligible. The reason newer video cards need more and more RAM is because newer machines like the G5 have system bus speeds that are up to 10 x faster than ours, so they can use the extra memory since that much more info is able to be moved per cycle. In our cases, a Radeon 9600 64MB running at full bore probably uses 85%+ what a G4's bus can deliver....so buying a card that's 2x faster will only net you a 15% or so gain in performance, for a much higher price.
Most of these numbers are guestimates, but if you go to the Barefeats website and search for benchmarks with various G4s you will see that, while they are still reasonably fast, the G5s make much better use of newer video cards with more VRAM/higher clocks due to their fast system bus.
One more thing - the 9600 Pro is passively cooled; It needs only a heat sink. Cards like the 9800 Pro or my 6800GT have fans and draw much more power. Thus, they run hotter and way louder. My G4 can handle the 6800GT just fine but it's something to think about.
All in all, the Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edition is the best video card for the G4: it can push more pixels around than the G4's bus can handle, but it does represent a performance gain over the 64MB 9600 Pro. However, the 9600 Pro is a lot cheaper, runs silent and cool, and is satisfyingly quick for anything other than new games. The 9600 with 256MB will probably show a small performance advantage over the 64MB model but IMHO if you are willing to spend the $$ on it you're better off getting the 9800 Pro.
The only thing that using a DVI -> ADC adapter affects is your bank account....I don't recall hearing about any issues but I've never used one.
