Barefeats: G5 comparisons / Model numbers of PCI-X machines

emulatorloo · Post by **emulatorloo** » Thu May 25, 2006 2:36 pm

An oldie, but goodie - posting for future reference for those who might go from g4 to g5 rather than intel because of legacy PCI cards. . .

http://www.barefeats.com/g527.html

SHOOTOUT: G5/2.7GHz Power Mac
Versus Other G5 Power Macs

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Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Thu May 25, 2006 3:15 pm

e-loo

Thanks for reminding me of that site. In addition to the G4/G5 shootouts, I was particularly interested in the warning about graphics cards.

This quote alone puts the nail in the coffin on an issue that has been bugging me for a long time:

We found the GeForceFX 5200, Radeon 9600, Radeon 9600 XT, and Radeon 9650 inhibit performance of those applications as well as 3D games (like Doom 3 and Halo). We recommend spending a little more for a Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Special Edition or a lot more for the Radeon X800 XT or GeForce 6800 Ultra.

The 9600 XT came with my G5, and I have suspected for a long time that it may be causing *some* of the crashes I've had with using DP's Consol. Windows. I've read in a few places where having a good card to handle the redraws was important, but none of the articles I've read went so far as to say that the stock 9600's which came with certain Macs were not up to the task. I've had my eye on the X800 for a long time, so I may just have to bite the bullet this weekend.

As for some of the benchmarks, it was interesting to see the 100MB sustained write test: The G4 1.5 P-BOOK out performed the G5 2.7 Dual Tower by at least 20%??!!!

emulatorloo · Post by **emulatorloo** » Thu May 25, 2006 7:07 pm

Frodo wrote:I've read in a few places where having a good card to handle the redraws was important, but none of the articles I've read went so far as to say that the stock 9600's which came with certain Macs were not up to the task. I've had my eye on the X800 for a long time, so I may just have to bite the bullet this weekend.

Hey -- keep me posted on that vid card issue, and if the X800 does indeed solve those crashes you're having. I really think it is more likely I will jump to G5 rather than intel for my next new machine, though in a way that just sounds crazy. The G5s seem like such great machines and I have some PCI cards that I just can't give up yet.

Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Fri May 26, 2006 1:11 am

You know, I'm thinking of holding off for a long time on the Intels for a lot of reasons. For one, there's no telling how much *better* the units will really be for our purposes outside of the expected CPU boost. Considering how *relatively* small the overall performance increases have been between the 1.8 and the 2.7, we're still having the same CPU spikes and VI brick walls. I just don't want to be a Universal beta tester. I've just have a feeling that efforts to make Macs more PC friendly will compromise certain Mac functionality in the initial phases.

It's starting to make a lot of sense to ride out the first issue of the Intel towers in favor of a pair of Quad PPC's, which might be half price a lot sooner than Macs have depreciated in the past. The other thing is that loading it up with RAM will be cost effective as well.

I just wish I could say the same thing about the Radeon X800. $380 is about the cheapest I've seen-- but check out this discalimer from nVidia:

Please note NVIDIA graphics options for Apple desktops and notebooks can only be purchased through Apple or as Apple update kits.

That means the price is likely to be higher than the Radeon DIY option. But, I appreciate that the Quads have dumped AGP for PCI Express for graphics. One of the new PCIex nVidia cards has a memory of 1GB. Impressive.

emulatorloo · Post by **emulatorloo** » Fri May 26, 2006 11:47 am

Frodo wrote:I just wish I could say the same thing about the Radeon X800. $380 is about the cheapest I've seen-- but check out this discalimer from nVidia:

Please note NVIDIA graphics options for Apple desktops and notebooks can only be purchased through Apple or as Apple update kits.

That means the price is likely to be higher than the Radeon DIY option.

Compusa is advertising the Apple nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra @ 349.00

And I guess Buy.com had a rebate deal on the Radeon x800 mac edition for @ 304.00, since expired.

But the Barefeats article recommends 9800 Pro Mac edition as well -- that would probably work for you? Looks like there is some ok pricing on that out there:

http://macworld.pricegrabber.com/search ... radeon+mac+

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Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Sat May 27, 2006 4:09 pm

I thought about the 9800, but even at that price it seemed like more of a middle ground rather than a significant improvement. Not sure-- but I would hate to get one only to find out that it didn't go far enough. While the mid $200's is definitely a savings over the mid-to-high $300's, the prices *seem* close enough that if the X800 is significantly better than the 9600 and 9800 Radeons it may be worth just paying a little more for the X800.

But I should look for benchmarks which compare the X800 with the nVidia 6800 Ultra. According to the Barefeats article, the 6800 Ultra appeared to have a slight edge over the X800-- but the X800 was the reviewers recommendation. However-- the prices you posted (thank you) for the 6800 were cheaper than I expected-- so if the 6800 Ultra is indeed a better card than the X800 for the same price or cheaper, then that me be the way to go.