*DAMN R6 Forum

I?m wondering if i should upgrade my standard Mac G4. What type of 3D card should i choose?  ???

-McEven

I moved this to General Gossip as I thought you might get more responses here - fewer people visit the Mod forum...

Toby

First, what kind of system do you have (Powermac?), and what applications (games I'm assuming) do you usually play on it? Also, how much money are you willing to spend?

g force 4,(or is 5 the latest one)
*drools*
ooooohhh, yea
geeeeeeeforrrrrccceeee.....

it depends on how recent your G4 is... if its a AGP 2x g4 you could get a Geforce mx2 which is pretty nice, and if its a 4x AGP slot, you can get a Geforce 3 or 4 both are great ( i have one 8) )
however if its a older G4, ie a pci g4, you can get a radion 5500 or whatever

A fast Video card and a huge amount of ram will make your computer fly in the jaguar

Damn you jeb, damn you to hell.

I have the GeForce 4 in my new mac, and it does rock... but I've read three times now that the Radeon 7500 has better frame rates on most games (apple's site had the GeForce 4 out performing the Radeon, but it was with different machines).

It all depends on the card you can use... G4 cube's could only be upgraded to a Radeon, but you can't find that card anywhere, because it was a specific size to fit.  Then you could have PCI, AGP2x or AGP4x available on your machine.  Radeon makes a good PCI card that's 32megs and runs most games just fine.  Once you get into the AGP's, any top of the line ATI or Nvidia card will do (you just have to get the right one for your machine).  

Grifter, thx for eleborating on what i meant...
I've heard that the nivida cards have better drivers...
one side note, ATI is in canada, and we all know how much every american hates canada ;)

You can always count on Grift to elaborate eh?

ya, i had a bad revelation last night when i was playing elite force against some pc'ers(cough suck cough) anyways, i had a 50 ping and they were all above 100 and i was still getting my ass handed to me and i consider myself to be a very good eliter. I NEED A NEW CARD. I didnt think it was necessary considering i have a year old g4 450mhz 512sdram with cable connection, but how much is it for the best card for my machine, i will spare no expense when it comes to my gaming, I NEED INPUT AND WANT TO CRUSH THE EVIL PC'ERS, LOL

a good video card is fun, cause not only does the game get higher FPS. its easyer to look at, and visualy does the game justice.
My Geforce 3 allows me to run at maximum resolutions on all the latest games,
wolfenstien looks visualy stunning

Yeppers, despite being 100 MHz below the minimum requirement of RtoCW, I still get awesome fps on high res, high quality due to my GF3.

yeah the geforce 3 is the way to go, i've seen tests were the Gf4 is slower than the Gf3 on some websites. but with the new doom game, it will make my Geforce 3 obsoliete

i think that ravenshield will also pretty much melt anything less than a gf2(or the ati equivelent)

A good site for info on your machines is

www.everymac.com

There you can see which video connection you have... and then figure out which video card you can get...

Here's a good PCI based card for not much $$$:

http://www.macmall.com/macmall/shop/detail.asp?dpno=369724

Here's the top of the line ATI (I think it works on both AGP 2x and 4x... someone correct me if I'm wrong)

http://www.macmall.com/macmall/shop/detail.asp?dpno=967178

Here's the article on it:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/Graphics/radeon_8500/index.html

Hope that helps...

thank you grif, very helpfull but i still dunno what card i should get,  or how to find out what card i have for that matter. Should i open up my comper to find out?

well,that would b the the easiest way, it should have a sticker(or be etched in tracing, or some other identifying mark) somewhere on the board that tells what it is
if not try tech tool pro
if that fails, tell us what system you have and we may be able to figure it out

Yeah, i think i heard taht the Geforce 3 will work on 2x AGP slots, even though it says it will only run on 4x.

Apple System Profiler tells you what kind of card you have last time I checked.

If I were you, I would replace what ever came with your Mac with at least a GeForce3Ti200 Golden Sample. I would personally recommend putting at least a GeForce4Ti4400 in it, but that is your choice...

And if you want the budget model, get a ATI 8500LE.

Grifter - What model of GeForce4 do you have? The *real* GeForce4's (GeForce4Ti) all KILL the ARI Radeon 7500 scores in 3DMark2001SE by at LEAST 3000pts. There is no better card then the GeForce4Ti4400 - And you can't counter with the GeForce4Ti4600 because the 4400 will OC faster then the 4600 will!

First of all Rom, thanks for coming back in the style you left.....

Don't tell this guy to buy cards that he can't even get a freaking driver for on his mac...  Just because Mac's are using Nvidia cards now doesn't mean that they make drivers for each model (that these can work with the Mac's).

The cards tested between ATI and Nvidia were what ship in Mac's.... check www.acceler8yourmac.com for their tests (I don't want to look up macworlds tests, but they did some as well).  

Back to McEven, unless you have a G4 cube, I'd probably pick up the ATI Radeon 8500.  A good mix of price, performance, and should work in both AGP2x and 4x.  You can't find a GeForce4Ti card with Mac drivers in the stores (or mail order), and you can't just download drivers from Nvidia's site.  Hell, Nvidia's site didn't even tell you which cards were supported in Mac's last time I looked.

HOLY SHIAT!! Back from the dead!! How are ya Rom? Although very helpfull I am even more confused than before. I dont need or want all the tecnical babble babble(although helpful, ty grif)I just want a kick ass card!!! I will spare no expense on this. thx for the help guys but i think im just gonna go to my buddies at the computer loft in Boston to get help on this. :-[

Just grab the Radeon 8500 Voodoo... I linked to it earlier.  

It is a top of the line card, and you'll never notice the difference between it and the GeForce4.  Also, you wont have to guess which one you can find a driver for...

If you have a year old G4, it's got a AGP4x slot (you can check in your system profiler).  Grab the Radeon, you'll like it.

Sorry Grifter, I thought that Mac's would be able to handle a GeForce4Ti because they DO ship a model of the G4 that has a GeForce4Ti...

I?m just great, thanks for asking!

How many 3DMark's do you get? Heh.

Now, if in fact (As Grifter says, and he is normally right), Mac's can't take GeForce4Ti's, then follow his advice and get a Radeon 8500LE (128MB RAM, and a little bit faster). You want to stay away from GeForce4MX's, because it's just a faster GeForce2MX, with a different name. It's a NV17 (I think) vs a NV25 (GeForce4Ti).

Grifter - When are G4's getting DDR333 and AGP 8x? And what do you think of that new rack mounted server?

so this is the famious(infamus)<sp> romulus
nice to meet you

those rack mounted servers look cool, but  i wonder about how much of a chance they have in a pc domnated server environment?

The GeForce4Ti is OEM only on Apple right now... can't buy one anywhere.  You have to have the right drivers for it, and wont get them if you just pick up a GeForce4Ti for the PC....

The standard GeForce4 card in Mac's right now is one of the MX models (of which there are many, by the way) with 64 megs of memory and yes, the NV17 chipset.

As for rack mounted mac's... there have been rack mounted iMac's for a few years now....  Hard to say how it will play out.  Apple has to do a lot more pushing with WebObjects as a good solid J2EE middleware platform in business to make them really take off.  People that use Mac's as file servers and web servers for the most part today don't have large class 3 server rooms with racks anyway.  The companies that do don't chose apple yet (obviously this is general and not 100%)....

If they market their tools and reliability more... and to the right crowd.... then they'll take off.  If not... they wont.  

But I've read that the E-Mac is doing well already.  And they've started selling it on the open market (macmall.com etc)....

As for DDR333 and AGP 8X.... why?  You don't need a huge bus speed on chips that are only at 1-2ghz.  Without that huge bus speed difference... you don't need the faster ram or the AGP 8X.  AGP 8X would just be for hard core gammers... and people that buy Mac's aren't that.  We may love our games.... but we all bought Mac's for other reasons.  I'm more interested in the G5's that are supposed to be announced in July...  and what that will mean for the powerbook / iBook lines.

To answer an earlier question as well... yes, followed my general rule and picked up the dual 1ghz powermac a couple months back.  (my general rule being when a computer comes out twice as fast as my current one, I replace it..... more or less.  I replaced a 366 iBook with a 600 iBook and a G4 500 cube with a G4 dual 1ghz... so until the powerbook makes it to 1.5ghz or the G5's hit 2ghz... I'll be nice a cozy.... I give it a year until one of those happens... maybe a little less).

First, it?s infamous. Second, I think that they would rock, but the problem is that a Quad XEON is about the same price as the high-end model.. And the XEON is running at 2.533GHz with 1033MHz RDRAM, so it?s a lot faster.. I think that for now, a XEON is a better deal. But if you are on a Mac network, and want a cool looking computer, get the server ? fast and cool looking! It?s what I would get (The dual with 512MB) if I were going to get a Mac again.


I would have thought that a GeForce4Ti is a GeForce4Ti weather or not Apple was shipping it. Oh, the differences of Macs from PCs...

Grifter, What do you think of the NV17? I think it's prety damn lame, being its just a speed boosted GeForce2MX, with a higher price.

The need for higher clocked ram - So you can OC faster! AMD's can only use DDR266 (PC-2100) actually, but the chipset for DDR333 was made so that the RAM would run at 166MHz with not problems, so that you can OC higher, and with more stability. I am planning on getting a EPoX 8K3A+ next weekend and a stick of PC-3200 (DDR400) so I can OC the hell out of it. With my kickass water cooler, it will probably hit 2GHz, even thought my 1.6GHz is cracked (Meaning more heat is produced, and the real-time speed drops a little bit because of the higher temperatures)

Actually, most enterprises don't use the Xeon servers either... they use high end Sun's and HPUX machines as servers.  Throw in a smattering of AS/400 and RS/6000's for your mainframe crowd.  But it's Sun for most Web / Middleware / n-teir application layer servers and HPUX for Oracle (for some reason, Oracle likes HPUX better then Solaris).  There are plenty of Compaq's running Solaris for Intel etc in the mix... but not much call for the Xenon.  Apple's rack mount will be compeating directly with SUN's more then anyone elses (mixing performance / price / apps serverd).


There is more then one model of the GeForce4Ti.... and if you change anything, it needs to have the drivers updated.  PC's have driver issues all the freaking time, so I figured you were aware of this.  The driver let's the OS on the computer talk to the hardware on the card.... with each change in the card, the driver needs to be updated.  It's why you can't just pop any ATI Radeon into a mac... you have to use the one's that there are drivers for.

As for the GeForce4MX that's in the Mac.  It works fine.  It or the Radeon 8500 out perform any needs I have on them today.  Hell, the only video card I have that doesn't cut it is the one in the old iBook.  I can play games with decent frame rates on any of my Mac's but it.  Having a GeForce4Ti for me right now is like having a Ducuti 998 and not having paved roads to ride it on.... sure, it's sexy... but what can you do with it?  A honda 80 is just as fast (or faster) on those dirt roads....  Same with the GeForce4Ti..... when there are apps that actually run poorly on the MX... then I'd think about upgrading it.  By then, I could find it and the drivers in the stores too.


First, I'm probably in the 0.001% of Mac Users that have actually Over Clocked their Macs (OC=Over Clocked for those that missed it).  It's not a big thing with Mac users...  Intel / AMD users just need bigger datapaths and to rember what RISC stands for....

As for faster RAM and BUS speeds.... why pay for it until the chips actually need it?  With faster G5's out soon (someday), mac's will need to go to a 166mhz bus.  but not until they get near the 2Ghz chip.  Even then, the data pathways are much bigger in the G5's... so they can take much more data at smaller frequencies....

thanks grif, rom, for all your help. I think I am goin to go with the Radeon ATI 8500.

And MacEven, the one who started this thread, what are you gonna go with???

vOOt, let the gaming begin.

Right on. I was referring to the XEON for a home server, or a home web server. It's in the same price bracket as the new G4 Rack-mountable server.

I know there are different models (4400,4600, and the newest, the 4200 which has two models). I think that there should be drivers for all of them for Macs, but in reality, there aren't games for the Mac that could use the 4AA and all the features...

Yeah, most Macie's don't OC. It's really easy to OC on a PC - You just hit the BIOS key when you start up and change the FSB and maybe the multiplier (If you have a unlocked AMD, or a P4 test sample). And you have to boast the voltage also.

You?re right about not needing the fast RAM and FSB with Mac's until the processors hit 2GHz. Intel just released RDRAM that runs at 1024MHz (I think) for their new 2.533GHz computers. I personally am going to be getting DDR400 (PC-3200) in the near future, even though my AMD only runs at 266. The reason is because with OC'z you can have better stability. This is the reason that they made PC-150 (PC-133 designed to run at 150MHz). It worked better with [h]ardcore OC'erz.

VooDoo - From what I have read on that card, it's a decent card. And with the low price, it?s probably just about the best you can pop in to a Mac. It will beat the shit out of a GeForce4MX. And it's cheap (Did I mention that?).

Have fun!

Does anyone know PHP? Message me if you do! I am having a problem with a read/write/MySQL script

so that is how you post so much text to so many threads...
his head is a frigging computer! ;)

You are worse then me. Goddamn spamer!

No, my script is sersiously fucked up! It keeps crashing my site! LOL!

Whats ur url Romulus?

that really hurts,expecially comming from you :(

VooDoo - The site is www.FusionGamez.com and I might as well tell everyone, I am now known as SiGmA_X.

I fixed the scripts. Here is a simple description of it - Basically, it inputs the data from Stanford?s F@H servers and loads it in to my MySQL DB's. Then the data can be quickly printed out, which is great, because if we ran off of text files instead of the MySQL, each PAGE would take over 30 seconds to load, and time out the PHP.

Brain - You spam a lot, but it's all gravy :) I was joking with that comment, and you shouldn't worry all that much about spam. You will learn in the end that it's bad, and then you will clean up what you post. Trust me. Well, you should never ever trust anyone about anything, but you get what I'm saying. I hope.

And if anyone here thinks that they can hurt me in the PC world because I *cheated*, sorry, everyone knows the real story of what happend.

i figured it was a joke
and i get most of what you are saing but ,i'm not shure what you mean by the 'it's all gravy' part though

Dont worry about it.

30 seconds to load from text files??  What the hell are you using for a server... two monkeysand a typewritter or a Windoze machine??  Lot's of sites are run with PERL and just flat files... and run great.  I know of an antique auction house that a good buddy of mine coded that uses nothing but flat files... no database at all.  

Besides, from the look of the site, you are just using PHP-Nuke's templates to generate your content... which are, by default, set up for mysql.  

Until you start dealing with complicated get's in SQL, flat files should perform as well or better then mysql.  You treat each object as a seperate file... come up with an architecture of directories and files... and boom... it's just pulling and parsing from the flat files.  vs running a seperate app in the background which it has to communicate with, run the queries, return the info and then parse it out.

Don't get me wrong.. there are needs for using databases behind web pages.... simple content delivery isn't one of them.

BTW Rom, how is this different from your last web site??  Besides the fact that I didn't see Asterax's name on it...

The text files are on a very over-used server at Stanford (http://folding.Stanford.edu/), and they are each 500KB. It takes a while to grab them if it's also loading the PHP too... The servers are Linux MP servers, if I am not mistaken.

How do you figure that pulling in two files that are almost 1MB off of a remote server is faster then pulling two lines of data from a MySQL server? I have never heard that one before!

About that content delivery thing - Yeah, but the content is needed to be delivered, too! PHP times out after 30 seconds, and it takes more the 30 seconds to read through some 100,000 lines of text, sort it, and then display it. We need the site to load fast, not time out.

We are going to be using a PHP-Nuke for the site (As does Utterer.com and many other great sites) but customize most of the scripts. I had my own PHP programs running a week ago, but I was getting too many errors (The MySQL didn't like what it was being fed..) and I didn't have time to do a full debug so I just installed the Nuke and left it at that. Our own theme will be up this weekend, alone with some custom scripts.

Asterax is not a staffer, and we are just starting out. In about a week, we will be doing a new review of a different product every day and will be posting tons of news. We have a very high powered team behind us, and a lot of money for parts is coming with that :) If you go look at the site in about 2 weeks (Maybe even as early as Thursday) it will be far better - New layout, lots of reviews and guides, and lots of news.

First... MP doesn't make a difference all the time.. especially if it's an intel PPro200 dual or some such crap. ?There are plenty of slow MP boxes out there... no matter what OS they run... ?


Ok, that's a simple one....

I'm going to assume that you are parcing out the 1 meg worth of data into the mysql database when you get it... because you mentioned that you are only pulling two lines... ?you could just as easily parse out that 1 meg of data into flat files and serve it the same way without having to use mysql.... ?

Somewhere you are slicing off those 1 meg files into smaller bites.... you can do it the same using flat files... ?and 1 meg is not a lot of data to parse through. ?You are NOT parcing that same data on the fly with mysql and doing it real time. ?You are taking it and storing it in the database for future use.... well, if you take it and store it in flat files for future use... your scripting language should be able to get them faster as flat files then using sql....

Nope. You are wrong. The data I pull is near the middle. It takes it 20 seconds to grab the 3 lines of data from the file and then to print it. It takes my MySQL PHP page a whole 15 seconds to file the data away in to the MySQL, and then it takes 2/10 of a second to grab the data.

I'll take my way and use the MySQL.

well this thread went way off subject,
and btw, does anyone know what these 2 nerds are talking about, lol ;D

Let's see Rom.... it takes your system 20 seconds to grab the data and then 15 seconds to load it into mysql... ?that's 35 seconds. ?So if PHP times out at 30, you are doin this offline, not on the fly. ?Right?

Ok, so then, you have a choice... the data is all there on your server... it's either in flat files or a database.... you follow? ?Now, when someone hits the web site, php submits a request.... it can either just go to the flat file and get it and then render the page, or it can compose a sql request... send that to another program (mysql in this case), the database can then look up the data and send it back to php, which then can render the page... ?which one sounds more simple to you (I didn't even bring up formats...)? ?Which do you think would be faster for php to do? ?Which do you think will be more stable (two programs that have to work together, or just one of the two)??

There are reasons for using databases behind the scenes... you just haven't made a case for it. ?Complex searches and joins... lookups on multiple tables... running calculations (not just simple ones)... etc. ?Those are reasons to use databases. ?Well... that and very very large volumes of data, but at that point, you are having to normalize the databases and it's as much for backup purposes. ?Remember... the more data you put in the database, the slower it will get. ?While if architected right, the flat files will keep the same speed (because you are relying on file naming and directory structure). ?

So if I'm wrong, you sure better explain to me how adding a second app speeds something up when you are talking about simple text data??

This simple text document is HUGE. It takes about 20 sec for the PHP script to find the required data, then it outputs it. This means that it will take 20 seconds every time a page loads! With the MySQL, it takes about 20 seconds to file the data away in to the tables. Then, when it pulls the data out, it only takes about 2/10's of a second.

Another reason that you left out is for easier and faster changes of data files. You just have to modify one Row instead of a entire text file. I personally like the MySQL route better, as do many PHP programmers. I have noticed that many PERL programmers prefer text documents for the same stuff...

Rom, try real hard to understand this... you are still comparing apples to oranges....

With the mysql process, you are parcing out the data that you need from the old text files OFFLINE.  Then you compare it to PHP going through the old text files ON THE FLY.  What I am talking about is you pull the important three lines into a NEW TEXT FILE, just like you do when you put it in the database... just keeping it as a flat file.  Then, when PHP has to do it's thing... it just has to pull up the correct text file (which should only be about 1k in size).... not search a 500k file, because that is history.  Changing these new text files is easier then changing a record in mysql... because you don't need to know SQL to do it... just the file names.

As for why people that use PHP like mysql so much is because PHP was developed with mysql in mind.  It has many shortcuts to it.  It's faster then PERL because of these shortcuts (PHP was written just for the web.. PERL is a bigger and much more powerful scripting language).  PHP with mysql is just easier for some people to setup, since it's already done for them by projects like PHP-NUKE....  it doesn't make it better.  It's less reliable could be faster if they didn't always rely on a database for the small stuff.

not a single fucking clue
??? <--me
all i know it they were talking about websites at one point