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WizOSX · Nov 30, 2003, 04:56 PM

Everyone keeps saying things like "When you get your G5, just make sure you get the ATI 9600 instead of the GeForce FX 5200 Ultra." Why? The reviews I've seen don't seem to show that much of a difference. Is it mainly in 3D that it makes a difference? What if you don't play 3D things?

I'm mainly wondering because, if I saw an in stock G5 at a good price, it would have the GeForce card. Everyone says "pay the extra $50 for the 9600." But if that means BTO instead of an in stock deal you might be talking more like $150-$300 more.

powerbook867 · Nov 30, 2003, 07:22 PM

I have a 1.6 with the stock card you speak of. The machine does everything I need and more...I currently have done a bunch of video editing in i-movie, have been playing with FCE, surf, do mail, use office etc. and I have 0 complaints. On the gaming front, I just finished replaying Star trek elite force in preperation for the second game, play some warcraft 3, some quake 3 and alice...

I think people in general are just implying that bang for the buck, spend the money on the ATI card to add to the longevity of the purchase.

My mindset is that rather than buy a new computer next year, I'm going to upgrade the vid card, add a new hard drive and bump the RAM again....

If you saw a G5 at a good price and it does what you need it to do, buy it! I did and I would do it again!

Cadaver · Dec 3, 2003, 11:59 PM

The nvidia FX5200 is pretty slow when it comes to games. Even the PC folk tend to avoid this card. Definitely the "budget" card of the bunch.

The Radeon 9600 Pro is definitely the "sweet-spot" when it comes to bang for the buck in Apple's line-up. The 9800 is way fast, but you pay for it.

If you don't play heavy games or do serious OpenGL graphics development, then the differences may not make much of a difference to you.

Misanthrope · Dec 4, 2003, 04:03 AM

You'd be better off putting a GF4MX in your G5.

The 5200 is a hideous abortion of a 3D card.

It's only realistic if you're not going to be doing any heavy gaming. Besides, the margin between performance yielded by the 5200 over the 9600 is insanely big.

dr. zoidberg · Dec 4, 2003, 05:17 AM

do you have any links to test/benchmarks/whatever to back that up? i�m just curious. i will be getting a stok dual 1.8 soon, but i�m not a gamer (apart from some decent oldskool emulation

) so i probably won�t really care, as long as os x/quartz extreme etc. works fine on that card ... (which i suppose will be the case)

DrBoar · Dec 4, 2003, 08:39 AM

backing it up the German way all of 47 pages starting at
[/url]link

The 5200 seem to keep up quite well at 1024x768 but at 1280x1024 it lags behind. This is with DX and WinXP how it fares with Open GL and OS X is not that different according to http://www.barefeats.com/g5b.html
so that 45 Euro price tag for the bump to the 9600 pro do look like a good deal. However if you have a 5200 you still will have good performance at 1024x768and anyhow the upgrade options is very limited. The ATI 9000 is probably not much faster than the 5200 and the next step up is the pricy killer 9800 pro. Hello ATI wake up

WizOSX · Dec 4, 2003, 09:07 AM

Originally posted by Misanthrope

The 5200 is a hideous abortion of a 3D card.

Do you own a 5200�is that why you have such a strong reaction against it?

WizOSX · Dec 4, 2003, 09:13 AM

Originally posted by DrBoar

The 5200 seem to keep up quite well at 1024x768 but at 1280x1024 it lags behind.

Do you mean 1280x1024 in gaming�sorry, I can�t read the German.

Misanthrope · Dec 4, 2003, 09:45 AM

Originally posted by WizOSX:
Do you own a 5200�is that why you have such a strong reaction against it?

No, I just speak quite vividly.

To answer your question, the reason I speak so strongly about it is because it really is a terrible card. Granted, it's meant to bring up the rear in nVidia's lineup, the thing horribly lags behind even nVidia's previous generation of low end cards. God knows what they were thinking when they drew up the schematics for it. The only justification for the card is that it supports programmable pixel shaders in DirectX 9 that will be of great use when games like Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 are released. I believe the same applies to the Mac with newer versions of pixel shaders on OpenGL.

I mean, if someone is simply going to do anything but 3d gaming (or modeling, etc), the 5200 should do fine, because it isn't doing anything 3d. So, it makes sense for it to exist...somewhat. The other reason is that you can get them brand new for about $80 on the PC side. But, if you do plan on doing gaming or anything else that would strain a GPU, stick with the 9600. The 9600 is also an excellent choice if you plan to future proof your G5.

roders · 09:08 PM

The Nvidia 52FX although not a true gamers card is not worse than GF4MX you Gonzo, in some tests when it was first released it was not much better or slightly worse that the GF4MX due to very un-optimised drivers. This situation has now changed, and on my 1.8Ghz G5 with NVFX52U I can play all games max settings at 1152x870 nice and smooth.
It's not a crap card but an average too Ok one for a very good price (on the PC).
The Radeon 9600P is a better card for gaming, and the upgrade price to this card is quite good too on the G5.
P.S the DX9 functionality is next to useless on this card though, since it hasn't got the raw power to run the shader programs at a descent enough clip.
Try KSPS, I get about 5fps in this game...
So basically your talking out the wrong hole mate.