[NeverTriedApple]

hi guys,

there is an ATI FireGL video adapter in IBM Thinkpad T43p and ATI Radeon 9700 in Powerbook. Can anyone tell me which one is stronger in Illustrator and Photoshop? Or Powerbook is wholy graphics machine so video card is not that important?

[photoeditor]

There probably isn't much between these cards on 2D applications -- I am pretty sure they both have dual 400MHz DACs, which would pretty much standardize the performance on 2D graphics. Any other differences are going to depend on things like the processor, and Altivec support on the Mac and SSE/SSE2 support on the PC and so on. The Powerbook is falling a bit behind the Pentium-M these days on overall performance although Photoshop has traditionally been pretty well optimized for the Mac using Altivec (SSE is the PC equivalent to Altivec but it doesn't have as many accelerated features).

And it will take some months for the new Adobe CS3 to come up which will equally support both the PowerPC and Intel versions of the Mac.

I have compared several cards on the Mac side on paper and the differences on 2D are miniscule compared to 3D. XLR8yourMac.com is a good source of information in general, though they won't have PC-only cards like the FireGL.

[mduell]

For apps like Illustrator and Photoshop the video card doesn't matter. Where the FireGL will really outshine the Radeon is in CAD/modelling apps that can use it as an accelerator.

[NeverTriedApple]

thanks, guys. great explanations!