3D card

[SiGmA_X]

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 - 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!

[Grifter]

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.

[.vooDoo.]

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. :-[

[Grifter]

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.

[SiGmA_X]

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?

[Brain]

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?

[Grifter]

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).

[SiGmA_X]

so this is the famious(infamus) 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?

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.

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 and cozy.... I give it a year until one of those happens... maybe a little less).

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)

[Grifter]

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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....

[.vooDoo.]

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.

[SiGmA_X]

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....

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

[Brain]

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!

[SiGmA_X]

You are worse then me. Goddamn spamer!

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

[.vooDoo.]

You are worse then me. Goddamn spamer!

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

Whats ur url Romulus?

[Brain]

You are worse then me. Goddamn spamer!

that really hurts,expecially comming from you

[SiGmA_X]

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.

[Brain]

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.

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

[SiGmA_X]

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.

[Grifter]

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.

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...

[SiGmA_X]

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.