video card suggestions? |
October, 31, 2002 10:43 PM |
dave-ann |
I've successfully installed 10.2 on my 8600. The sytem includes an xlr8 G3 400 OC'd to 470 2:1 backside cache now enabled. About 500meg ram (interleavened). 4gig quantum, 8gig seagate, stock cd rom, panasonic cw 7502 and stock floppy all functioning on internal scsi. Used the Swim 'j' driver to enable floppy drive. It is slow but works. I boot from a 40gig maxtor on ultra tek ata66 pci card. Everything seems to function including external zip. Even the panasonic burner mounts cds. I feel pretty lucky actually. 10.2 seems slightly slower in some respects and faster in others. In fact my maxtor bench tested much faster in 10.2 then in 9.1 and the write rates are finally approaching the read rates, which was never the case before. The most annoying slowness seems to relate to all things video. Especially scrolling etc. I still have the stock video with 2 meg vram. I would love to add a much faster (better) video card but I want to avoid all the problems I've been reading about related to video cards. Can anyone (or eveyone) give suggestions for a good video card to add this system to speed up graphics and scrolling without creating other problems? Thank you. |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 17, 2002 2:29 PM |
powderhaus |
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I have not seen this "sluggishness" with my computer. a J700 G4 400 408mb ram ATI Radeon Mac edition firewire/usb combo card with a 120GB HD and a CDRW on it. And there is no difference between 9.1 and 10.2 with quarz extreme. without QE it is a little sluggish but with it it is just like 9. I am verry happy with X. What kind of prossesor do you all have? a G4 400 works great! I got it last year so you should be able to find one cheap now. Has everyone here remembered to enable L2 Cache? thats like day and night, without it X is unbarable, with it X is great! |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 16, 2002 2:07 PM |
dave-ann |
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Marcush, Yea, my card has a fan onboard. You could call Image Solutions and see what types the have. Let me know if you ned a link or phone number. Casey (stuffcorp), I was under the impression that the throttle was on too aid in slowing down during boot process, but I will give it a try. I think I have it set at 4 right now. Certainly "snappy-ness" is subjective. OSX on my machine is unquestionably functional. It's just that the increase in overall speed and feel of OS 9.2.2 with the new card is so obvious that it makes OSX seem less so in comparison. |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 15, 2002 11:41 PM |
stuffcorp |
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dave-ann -- I was having unbearably slow video until I realized that the XPostFacto throttle was set to 7... turning it off sped things up to the point that it's usable now, although still a little slow (but to be expected with the IXMicro TwinTurbo card that's in there). With your new video card, I would expect things to be snappy. (If not, then maybe I'll hold off on buying a new card). --casey (stuffcorp@hotmail.com) |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 15, 2002 6:07 PM |
marcush |
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Does your card have a cooling fan? I was wondering if image solutions was selling the OEM card w/out fan. I'm thinking about maybe getting another one. It's always nice to have a spare. |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 15, 2002 1:18 PM |
dave-ann |
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Well here is where I am at with the whole video card situation. I bought a Radeon Mac edition PCI card from Image Solutions (referenced in another post on this thread). It was a little cheaper then the ebay bids for the same card. In fact most were going for about $160- 170 on ebay. The card is very reliable with my set up(see my first post for system specifics). I have since upgraded my classic to 9.2.2 and I can boot with no problems into OS 10.2 or 9.2.2. The card is a great improvement over the stock 8600 video with 2 meg vram. I am very happy with it and I agree with most that it seems snappier then the current Radeon 7000. I still feel that the overall performance in 10.2 is a little sluggish for my tastes. I know this is not simply a function of the Radeon card but rather the over-all system limitations. OS 9.2.2 seems so responsive to me now that I have a hard time thinking of fully commiting to OS X. I did use the quartz extreme enabler on this card and found the result to be a mixed bag. For me I will go without the quartz extreme and leave the PCI buss free from gridlock. |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 14, 2002 9:04 PM |
powderhaus |
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There has been an increce in Firewire speed for me. More than likely has to do with the fact that Jag has updated firewire support. I when from about 10 and 12 (random read and read) to 16 and 19+. Also my write (random and normal ) went up 2 points to about 12 and 13. This is using BENCHX from Intech's speedtools (they made a bench that works in X but no driver. you don't need other drivers) |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 14, 2002 1:42 PM |
marcush |
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The only problem I have seen after enabling QE was in Final Cut Pro capture. The video qaulity was reduced and the clips had sound dropouts. Games still run well, even better it seems. |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 14, 2002 7:08 AM |
powderhaus |
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I will do a bench latter to see how much it has hurt the other PCI cards. I will test my firewire hard drive. In 10.1.5 it read at 12mbs and writes are 10. I will check that to see if it has changed. |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 14, 2002 5:10 AM |
muri |
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remeber it is a hack ... it overloads the pci bus killing other cards bandwidth ... I think there are more cons than pros about this hack. |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 14, 2002 1:02 AM |
marcush |
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You can download PCI Extreme from versiontracker to enable QE automatically or you can do it manually by editing Configuration.plist. You can find it quickly via the terminal with the following line: sudo find /System -name Configuration.plist -print Then cd to the path that find prints in it's output and edit the file with your text editor of choice. You will have to reboot for the change to take effect. Or you can save some time by killing the window server process. You will get dumped back to the login window where you can login again. At this point QE is enabled. Alternatively you can boot back into OS9.x.x and use simple text to edit the file then boot back into OSX. |
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You can use QE on PCI... |
November, 13, 2002 9:07 PM |
powderhaus |
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You CAN enable quartz extreme on PCI busses. it is a hack but i forgot the exact URL and the folder in which you do the editing. All you have to do is ope a file in textedit and chage AGP to PCI then save it to a different part of the disk, start up in 9 and swap files. If you dig around a little you could be able to find the URL that explains this. I have a Radeon mac edition 32mb with quartz extreme running. |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 13, 2002 5:46 PM |
muri |
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No Quartz over PCI bus ... |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 13, 2002 5:07 PM |
john.england |
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But can you enable Quartz Extreme on Mac OS X with these Radeon Mac Editon 32MB cards? I thought the 700o was the only model that allowed that on Old World machines. |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 13, 2002 5:03 PM |
marcush |
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Here's where you can still get Radeon Mac Editon 32MB cards: http://store.yahoo.com/image-solutions/apatiradpcid.html They are worth the extra cost if you can justify it to yourself. |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 12, 2002 9:27 PM |
earlyd |
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I'm running an ATI Radeon 32MB card in my 8600. It replaced an ATI 128 Rage. Got it via eBay. It costs a premium over the 7000, which is newer, but that's because it's a better card for our olde world macs. If you search at eBay, make sure you search for "ATI Radeon PCI Mac" because there was a similar video card for PCs which can't be upgraded with a firmware change to run on a Mac. Too bad because the PC models are a lot less expense. Good luck! --Dwight |
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RE: Firewire not bootable - that's a shame |
November, 12, 2002 8:56 PM |
heavyside |
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nick.ashton- Looking forward to the workround to this in XPF V3. Your explanation about drivers is reasonable, and I got it. In the meantime, as I obliquely suggested, the ACARD ATA PCI card is an alternative for booting from the larger, cheaper ATA drives. I know, it is not as portable as Firewire, and maybe there are some other considerations (speed?), but the ACARD can be managed by Apple Drive Setup or Hard Disk Speedtools 3.4, because it actually emulates hardware SCSI. In my case, I had originally set up a 57 Gig ATA on Firewire as a bootable drive on a new world Apple OEM G3 (part of my earlier confusion re: this firewire question), and I used HDST3.4 to successfully take over that drive on my 8500/G3 as an ACARD drive (It wrote new drivers to the disk, while preserving my previous Firewire-installed OS 10.1.5 system, and it is bootable). Just a thought and followup. -Jim |
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RE: Firewire not bootable - that's a shame |
November, 06, 2002 3:58 AM |
nick.ashton |
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Heavyside, I was really hoping you had finally discovered a Firewire adapter with bootable firmware. However, Ryan's explanation is that most (it seems all) manufacturers don't put the necessary Open Firmware drivers onto their cards. It's doesn't matter what you use to format the attached drives it's something that the Firewire card itself either has or hasn't. The only good news is that Ryan is hoping to give us a workround to this in XPF V3. I think that will involve doing the initial part of the boot from a SCSI or IDE drive and then switching to the Firewire drive early in the boot sequence, once the necessary drivers have been loaded. |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 05, 2002 5:52 PM |
mjoecups358 |
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The Radeon 7000 is the ONLY current PCI video card available for mac. Lame too. It would rock hard if someone came up with OpenGL support for the Voodoo 5500 PCI, I bet it would smoke the crappy Radeon too. Marty PS I have the original Radeon PCI, which does work and is marginally better then the 7000, but is still kind of disappointing |
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RE: No, Firewire adapter card is NOT bootable! |
November, 05, 2002 12:19 PM |
heavyside |
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Nick.Ashton- I have to apologize. After posting my last response Nov. 4, 2002 in this thread (NOT a hasty response, I assure you!), I questioned myself about the bootability of my Firewire drive, which has a partition containing OSX on it. I attempted to boot from it using XPF 2.2.2 in OS 9.1, and XPF reported that it was not a bootable drive. The funny thing is that while booted in OSX from another drive, Startup Disk in System Preferences shows the Firewire OSX partition as one of the valid choices for booting OSX from. I had just assumed from that that it was bootable, but had never had occasion to boot from that drive in this Legacy system, until I questioned its bootability. The other notable thing about this is that this Firewire drive was prepared on a stock OSX-compatible Macintosh G3 (with built-in Firewire) in a computer lab, and that it IS bootable on those machines (which brings up the question to me that if XPF was usable in OSX, would it then recognize recognize this Firewire disk as a bootable disk in Legacy OSX, even if on an add-in Firewire adapter? In order to be a bootable disk in a Legacy Mac, it has to have the XPF files, which it does not, but it may need additional drivers as you say.). BTW, it is an Adaptec "FireConnect 4300" adapter card, and not an "Adaptec 4100 Firewire" card, as I had stated in my previous post. I had first bought an Inland IEEE1394 Firewire card because of the price, but something happened and it blew up, and so I replaced it with the more expensive Adaptec card. So, EVERYONE, do NOT go running out to buy a Firewire card for your Legacy Mac on the basis of my previous post of November 4, 2002, expecting to have a bootable Firewire drive on it, because it will not happen! Again, I apologize for this error, and for being off-topic in this thread. -a chagrined Jim |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 04, 2002 10:25 AM |
swoup1213 |
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I installed the Radeon 7000 card in my 9500 along with the OpenGL and Quickdraw extenstions from OS9.2 since I'm using 9.1 as my classic OS system. What I've noticed with the 7000 card in OS 9.1 was that the Spiderman game would not launch and that the game Riddle of the Sphinx would turn everything red until I trashed the display preferences. In OS 10.1.5 I would not see the gray start-up screen and I would have this rainbow curser artifact which I could not get rid of. Eventually it came to the point where I could not boot-up with this card and I sent it back to OWC. I've recently installed an older Radeon card, 32mb mac edition. It's much more compatible. Spiderman works, Riddle of the Sphinx works and in OSX, I get the gray screen and no permanent rainbow curser. I would recommend the Radeon Mac edition, you can find one on eBay for around $140 or so. For an older machine, in my opinion, it's well worth it. |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 04, 2002 2:51 AM |
heavyside |
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Nick.Ashton- When I discovered Firewire, I decided that it would be a very practical upgrade for me. Relatively cheap, adds huge disk capability to older machines (which SCSI doesn't do well), and is portable and can be moved from machine to machine. At the time, I was doing some movie-making on a G4 machine at a University computer lab, and I was getting really really tired of putting certain programs I needed on the lab machine everytime I went over there (The Lab's human monitors had made it so anything that wasn't put on by them was deleted overnight). So I partitioned my firewire drive and installed OSX on it, using their G4, then booted to my OSX partition and installed my programs on the same partition. Voila! I had taken over a powerful machine and made it my own, and made my files secure because I would take my Firewire drive with me when I left the Lab. Yes, it would boot to my 8500 at home, using XPostFacto, and so would another HD that I had set up the same way. I've since moved the larger (60 GB) HD with one of the OSX folders to an internal location on an ACARD PCI to EIDE card, and had to "take over" the Firewire driver I'd used on the HD with another driver suitable to the ACARD PCI card (that drive is not supported by Apple Drive Setup). It still boots to the IDE HD just fine. I believe both drivers were installed by Hard Disk Speedtools 3.4, although I had also been experimenting with something called Heat Utilities 1394 (which came with one of the enclosures I had bought. MacAlly?), and of course everywhere possible I used Apple Drive Setup. On my external Firewire HD (20 GB) I have installed OSX, and it is bootable. The original installation of OSX on the external Firewire was formatted with the Heat Utilities formatter, which installed the Firewire driver. After deciding that I liked Hard Disk Speedtools, I also "took over" this drive with HDST 3.4. Both the internal IDE drive on the ACARD and the external Firewire drive are bootable to OSX or OS9. The "take overs" were an experiment, and both were successful. I dunno, maybe I'm lucky. My suggestion is to just try it, that's what I do a lot of. Oh, BTW, that is the Adaptec "FireConnect 4300" card, rather than "Adaptec 4100 Firewire" card which I had stated in my first post. I had bought an Inland firewire card at first because of the price, but something happened and it blew up, so I got the higher-dollar Adaptec card to replace it with. I feel fairly certain that the installations of OSX using XPostFacto could have been done from scatch on the 8500/G3-300 MHz Upgrade, because I have installed upgrades up to OS 10.2.2 on both of these drives, while running on the 8500. I don't have Firewire or ACARD on my 9500/dual 180, so I can't say anything about there, but my intuition is that it should work. -Jim |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 01, 2002 10:00 PM |
nick.ashton |
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I have a question for heavyside. In your post you said : "Adaptec 4100 Firewire card and external HD (which works flawlessly with a bootable 40 or 20 gig HD using Inland's HDT 3.4)" Are you saying that the system is bootable from a Firewire disk using this card? I wasn't aware of any adapters which provided the necessary on-board drivers to boot from Firewire. |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 01, 2002 3:59 PM |
heavyside |
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Izzat stock video the onboard video? My 8500 works well with an earlier ATI XClaim VR Pro video card w/ 8 megs of mem, in OS9 & OS 10.2.2, but I get a panic everytime in OSX if I try to boot using just the onboard video, or with two monitors attached to both ports. I'd like to figure out how to make that machine boot with the onboard video only, even if slow, as I have a 9500 (w/out a vid card or onbrd vid) that I'd like to get up (and no money!). I read somewhere (Maybe OWC Larry ?) that reducing the color density to thousands instead of millions of colors helps speed things up, so I've done that. I'm really pretty satisfied w/ the ATI card speed in OSX, but I'm sure I wouldn't be if I were used to later machines. I'm also happy with the way XPostFacto 2.2.2 and OSX works, with a few unanswered questions. My 8500 has 352 megs RAM, an early MaxPowr G3/300 processor, an ACARD PCI ATA card and two bootable ATA drives formatted w/ Apple's Drive Setup, an Adaptec 4100 Firewire card and external HD (which works flawlessly with a bootable 40 or 20 gig HD using Inland's HDT 3.4), and the aforementioned ATI XClaimVR Pro which works as I've described in the first paragraph. -Jim aka Heavyside |
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RE: video card suggestions? |
November, 01, 2002 12:01 AM |
avit |
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Heh. The "without creating other problems" clause is a sticky one. It's really hard to say anything one way or the other. My Radeon 7000 seems to work well in my 7600. Be sure to scan the thread about freezes in 10.2 (the one with 99+ posts). Some video cards are mentioned in there, although I no longer think they are the source of that problem, at least not exclusively. |