Is a Radeon 7000 PCI worth it in OldWorld Machine? |
January, 03, 2003 6:33 PM |
chrisdold |
Is it worth the money for the upgrade to a Radeon 7000 PCI for an OldWorld machine such as a 7500? I'd love to see some results from a benchmarking program, such as XBench, SpeedRun, Cinebench or the UT Wicked400 demo, or real-world FPS from any games if anyone has them. System configurations to go with the results would also be nice. I currently have a 7500 256Mb RAM w/ a PowerLogix 450Mhz G4, an ATTO UL2D, Nexus 128. All drives are connected to the ATTO card and performance is not too bad. I'd like to know if the bottleneck for video on this machine is the PCI bus or the processing power of the card. Any thoughts? TIA! |
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Is a Radeon 7000 PCI worth it in OldWorld Machine? |
January, 06, 2003 10:42 PM |
ken882 |
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rschroedr1, I've been trying to get XPF to run on my J700, too. When I use the default settings, I reboot into a black screen as well. But when I set the Verbose Mode and Single User Advanced settings, and the Extra Diagnostics option under Debug, I boot into the Open Firmware white screen. At this screen, I see the message "NVRAM string value is too big", which I think is the real problem. I'm using XPF 2.2.5b5. I'm waiting for the next version to come out, hoping that it will solve the problem. Perhaps you are having the same problem that I have. Hope this helps, Ken |
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RE: OS X install on Supermac |
January, 06, 2003 8:55 PM |
rschroedr1 |
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When I try to install OS X on this computer which is a J700 with G3 400 proc. and 416mb ram, Maxtor 7200 40gb drive XPostFacto runs and installs but when it reboots all I get is a black screen. I've tried using the origional video card. Then reinstalling the ATI Radeon 7000. but nothing works. I have to boot from the OS 9 CD. Then all runs fine there are os x files installed but can't get it to boot to os x. Help! |
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RE: Is a Radeon 7000 PCI worth it in OldWorld Mach |
January, 06, 2003 8:49 PM |
rschroedr1 |
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I've tried to install Photoshop 7 on to a supermac J700 with a Power logix G3 400 but it will not run it starts to load but hangs before the splash screen when I try to force quit the mac freezes hard. I have 416 mb of ram an 80gb 7200rpm western digital drive with 8mb buffer. and a Maxtor 40gb 7200rpm drives. I've tried installing on both with the same result. any ideas? |
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RE: Is a Radeon 7000 PCI worth it in OldWorld Mach |
January, 04, 2003 10:30 PM |
rpjallan |
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I just bought an ATI Radeon Mac Edition on eBay. I have a Power Mac 7300 with Sonnet G3 300 (hopefully soon to be G4 800). I am using OS 9.2.2 and OS X 10.2.3 with PCI Extreme! and it is running faultlessly. This card gives a huge improvement in OS 9 & X. I wish I had bought it years ago! Richard |
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RE: Is a Radeon 7000 PCI worth it in OldWorld Mach |
January, 04, 2003 4:11 PM |
willschou1 |
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. "Is a Radeon 7000 PCI worth it in OldWorld Machine? January, 04, 2003 3:22 PM mjoecups358 . I have the original Radeon PCI, and it does allow me to play games on my g4/420 512M powerwave... Also it gives you the ability to do DVD playback... Marty PS I'm hoping that ATI introduces a newer PCI video card at some point." The Mac Edition Radeon is a much better video card then the Radeon 7000 and also sold for nearly twice as much. It still sells for a high price in the used market. Any ATI 128 card or Radeon lets you play DVD's. I wouldn't hold my breath on any new PCi Video cards. Why ATI quite selling the Mac Edition card and went with the lower end 7000 as there only PCI card is a bit of a mystery. |
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Is a Radeon 7000 PCI worth it in OldWorld Machine? |
January, 04, 2003 3:22 PM |
mjoecups358 |
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I have the original Radeon PCI, and it does allow me to play games on my g4/420 512M powerwave... Also it gives you the ability to do DVD playback... Marty PS I'm hoping that ATI introduces a newer PCI video card at some point. |
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RE: Is a Radeon 7000 PCI worth it in OldWorld Mach |
January, 04, 2003 9:42 AM |
cschmidt |
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Here is my benchmarks from Speed Run Graphics 122 Harddrive 325 Processor 209 Ram 403 Overall 265 Unit Config has the following: PM 7300/180 Sonnet G4-800 Apple UL2D UW Scsi 18 Gig Quantum Atlas 5 Drive ATI 7000 PCI Board 512 MB of OWC FPM Simms Apple CD 12x Belkin 2 port USB PCI Card Plextor External Scsi CD Writer 12/10/32S Since I have loaded Xpostfacto 2.2.7 and have been using that I have noticed a slight video slow down. Not sure why. I run programs like Photoshop 7.0.1 and I am happy with it on this machine. Looking at the benchmarks, this computer comes close to the G4 Dual 500 that I uses at work. This makes me VERY happy. Since I got the PM7300 for nothing with a 17 inch Sony monitor, keyboard and Mouse, my investment to bring it up to the above specs was around $700. Should I have saved my money and bought a new G4? I am not sure. I had way too much fun bringing this thing up on 10.2.3 and trying to make it stable. I still run 9.2.2 for alot of stuff due to that OS running like a swiss watch on this machine. The other reason that I wanted to do this upgrade was to keep another Old World Mac up and running and out of the Landfill. I have run some of the new OSX game demos on this machine and things seem to go well. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon seems to run fine, Bugdom runs well and even X-Plane was almost okay. Little jerky and no Joystick yet so it was difficult at best with Xplane. I would like to see this run the new Nascar 2002 by Aspyr, but I don't think it will make it. I really think that in my system the PCI buss is my bottleneck. But I can live with it. MAybe after I get done paying for my son's college tuition I'll consider a new iMac.... Chris |
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RE: Is a Radeon 7000 PCI worth it in OldWorld Mach |
January, 04, 2003 3:30 AM |
willschou1 |
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Games and some graphic programs (Photoshop) are likely apps that will show a difference . Most people who already have one of the ATI 128 cards will feel they've just wasted some cash IMHO..They also run 2 monitors... |
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RE: Is a Radeon 7000 PCI worth it in OldWorld Mach |
January, 04, 2003 1:29 AM |
alan |
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I just installed a Radeon 7000 in my 8600 G3/500, hoping to get better 2D video performance - especially scrolling windows. I had an ATI Rage orion Rage 128 16Mb card before, and scrolling in IE is very slow. in OS 9 it is really quick. With the new card, I now have the "drop shadow" around my cursor pointer, but no obvious increase in speed. I even tried PCI extreme and didn't realy see much of a difference. I am afraid the seed of your CPU probably makes a big difference. The people who have been talking about better speed have the new G4/800 upgrade from sonnet... For me, I didn't see any difference - at least in 2D scrolling.... |
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RE: Is a Radeon 7000 PCI worth it in OldWorld Mach |
January, 03, 2003 8:11 PM |
gordner |
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The Radeon 7000 gives me the following results in XBench under OS 10.2.3 (8500/120, 504 MB RAM, Sonnet G4/800, WD Caviar 100 GB JB on an Acard 66) at 1153x870, Millions of colors: Quartz Graphics: 52.37 Open GL Graphics: 96.72 User Interface: 50.83 Overall: 63.59 Speed run Graphics: Millions: 140 Thousands: 223 Is it worth it? Good question. Even the best card won't be able to overcome the bottlenecks of bus and PCI bus speed... |