[Daninvt]

I have seen a lot of comments on this board and others regarding the low-end graphics cards in new Power Macs. Could this be a marketing decision on Apple's part regarding the most likely users of the machines? Photoshop doesn't tax the graphics card, and neither does Illustrator, InDesign or anything else that photographers, designers, etc... use. Right now, Apple's Pro apps (only a few of which are graphics-card intensive) are all aimed at video (and to a lesser extent music) pros. Those folks love Macs, but so do a lot of still-image and print pros... Introduce a CoreImage enabled Photoshop competitor that hits the graphics card really hard and I'll start to agree that every PowerMac needs a better graphics card.
As a photographer, I was really happy to be able to order my new Dual 2.0 PowerMac with a Radeon 9650 (it was cheap and gives me very high resolution output options). I would have been disappointed if my only option to drive an ultrahigh resolution monitor was a $500 video card. I don't own a 30 inch display, but $50 struck me as very reasonable to get the capability of driving one (or a third-party 24 incher with 2560x1600 resolution when that comes out).
I'm eagerly awaiting my new PowerMac (dual 2.0, stock except for the 9650, 4 GB of third-party RAM), which will be used for editing 450 MB Photoshop files (as well as word processing, e-mail and other things that don't need a dual G5). I don't even own a television (conscious choice), and I never play computer games, but I am a professional naturalist and nature photographer, and I scan 6x6 centimeter film to produce 9000x9000 pixel files.
Sure, many people use their Macs differently than I do, but it's good of Apple to give us a choice to fit them out based on our own intended uses. Gamers and video pros can choose a higher end video card. It would be nice if they offered something in between a $50 upgrade and a $500 upgrade, though... While the 9650 fit my needs nicely, it's easy to imagine someone who wanted more than that, but didn't care to spend $500.
Since we ALL use hard drive space, I wish Apple had taken the cost savings on DVD burners since the G5 came out and given us bigger drives (400 GB standard across the dual-CPU range, or AT LEAST 250 in the lower end model and 400 at the higher end). More RAM would be nice, but (especially in 4 slot machines), people often end up discarding Apple RAM for higher capacity modules anyway (I'm just pulling the 2 256s out of mine and popping 4 1 GB DIMMs in right away...). They used to offer a 0/0 configuration with no RAM and no drive way back in pre- Power Mac days. That would be a nice option to have return ($1500 dual 2.0 or a $2500 dual 2.7 just waiting for your RAM and drives, anyone)? Maybe even offer a 0/0 with no graphics card?



-Dan

[Eug Wanker]

Welcome to MacNN.

Most of the complaints stem from the fact that the 9650 is a DOWNGRADE from the previous 9600 XT in terms of performance, and there is nothing inbetween the 9650 and 6800U DDL.

[outsourced]

Interesting topic.

So...there's no difference between a 96xx series and a 9800 when scrolling through a large PS image? I can't imagine the 9800 would not be faster at ANY kind of screen refreshes, window resizing, etc.

Does anyone have real-world data on this type of use?

[Luca Rescigno]

It's not a downgrade... the 9650 is the same as the 9600XT, unless they reduced the memory clock on the 9650. They have the same fill rate according to Apple.

EDIT: Oops! Apparently the 9650 is an RV351, which is basically a bridged Radeon X300 (a native PCI-Express card). It must have the same 400 MHz core clock speed as the Mac Radeon 9600XT, but you might be right about it being a downgrade... the X300 is definitely a low-end card (the 9600 was at least intended to be midrange when it first came out two years ago) and it probably has slower memory than the 9600XT.

Kind of sad that Apple's using almost the same video card in their $3000 system now that they used in their $3000 system two years ago, though. I mean, they should be upgrading the built-in components to keep the value the same.

As I pointed out in a previous post, the graphics card used in the high-end 2003 PowerMac had a street price of roughly $160 back then. Today's high-end PowerMac uses a $110 graphics card (and it's probably actually worth a bit less than that in light of my edit above). Today, in fact, you can get a Radeon 9800 Pro for LESS than what the 2003 PowerMac's 9600 Pro cost.

[Pierre B.]

Originally Posted by Luca Rescigno

Kind of sad that Apple's using almost the same video card in their $3000 system now that they used in their $3000 system two years ago, though. I mean, they should be upgrading the built-in components to keep the value the same.

It is supposed that this is done to keep the same prices in the standard configurations, but I am afraid it is the other way around, that is to guarantee fat and healthy (how ironic) margins for Apple.

[powertrippin]

Originally Posted by outsourced

Interesting topic.

So...there's no difference between a 96xx series and a 9800 when scrolling through a large PS image? I can't imagine the 9800 would not be faster at ANY kind of screen refreshes, window resizing, etc.

Does anyone have real-world data on this type of use?

Videocards only really make a difference in gigantic resolutions or 3d applications. You would see no noticeable difference in window resizing from a 9800XT to a lowly nvidea 5200.