Mostly happy but considering Sonnet 800MHz card |
November, 01, 2002 11:57 PM |
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First, let me say that the XPostFacto software is amazing. Combined with OS X 10.2, I may be able to put off plunking down $1600 for a new mac. However, I've got some minor quibbles. Mostly, this machine just does web/userland stuff, but occasionally, it is expected to join in a game of Unreal Tournament. However, the G3 400 (Sonnet) and the Radeon 7000 really aren't up to it in OS X. It runs stably enough, but it's slow. It's the same speed no matter what the resolution, which suggests to me that it might be the PCI bus slowing it down, although my 8500 running in OS9 with a VooDoo 4/4500 (the main reason it isn't running OS X) has a plenty acceptable frame rate. So, to y'all with Sonnet 800MHz upgrades, does it help with 3D games? Or do I really need to buy an iMac? Would a faster video card help? Is one available? Finally, I still can't record MP3s with this machine. It plays just fine, NFS attatched to my Linux server, but it won't record reliably either to the local drive or the NFS server. It just hangs and I have to reboot to get iTunes running again, although the rest of OS X is fine. This isn't really all that important, as I just rip the stuff at work, write a CD, and take it home, and it isn't worth $1600 to me to be able to rip MP3s at home. So, if the 3D performance would just increase, I'd be happy. Any ideas? My configuration: PM 8600 512M matched EDO ram non interlaced Sonnet G3 400/200/1M ATI Radeon 7000 running one monitor right now ATTO PCI UltraSCSI card 10k RPM IBM 18G drive with OS9 installed on it 7400 RPM Seagate 9G with OS X installed on it 10/100 AsanteFAST ethernet card |
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RE: Mostly happy but considering Sonnet 800MHz car |
November, 03, 2002 11:21 AM |
earlyd416 |
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I have the same Mac - 8600(/200) but with a Powerlogix G4/450. I, too, can't rip or cut a cd with my Sony 1600L Firewire drive - it fails the varification everytime if it gets that far. (I've just bought a Firewire card for my wife's Dell. So, I'm going to check out the drive after my wife finishs this Qtr's grades. 8-) So, anybody having trouble burning CD's via a Firewire Drive? --Dwight |
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RE: Mostly happy but considering Sonnet 800MHz car |
November, 02, 2002 8:27 PM |
marcush |
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The original Radeon runs circles around the 7000. Check out the benchmarks at barefeats.com. That being said. I've been playing Quake 3 at 50 frames per second with Quartz Extreme enabled. Return to Castle Wolfenstein also plays very well, though I don't know how to measure framerates in it. It slows down in very large environments but does not get choppy. I run my games off of an 60GB IBM 120 GXP 7200 rpm hard drive. The bottleneck for me is the bus speed, but I did notice an improvement in playability with both games after adding the Sonnet G4 800. It is also great with Final Cut Pro 3 in OS X. It will do the real-time effects, which I could not do with my previous G4 450. |
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RE: Mostly happy but considering Sonnet 800MHz car |
November, 02, 2002 12:29 AM |
paul_findley |
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Oops, I forgot to say, I had to put in a Radeon PCI Mac Ed to get the video as good as it is (replacing the stock video), I read somewhere that the original Radeon is better than the 7000 for 3D, but I don't know by how much. |
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RE: Mostly happy but considering Sonnet 800MHz car |
November, 02, 2002 12:25 AM |
paul_findley |
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I don't play 3D games, but I can testify that the video (VCD, and Quicktime) is smoother at larger size. Can almost play DV-codec (huge) clip at full size, can play more compressed video at full size (suggesting that the processor performance on the decoding is now fine, and the bus and hard drive are the bottleneck). I am using stock SCSI. Forget playing anything back from a firewire drive. Considering how souped up your system is otherwise, it seems that the old, slow G3 is way out of balance with the rest of it. So I'd recommend the 800MHz G4, but I can't say anything about 3D games. |
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