[pity]

Right now I have a 933Mhz G4 with the Nvidia 4mx 64meg card. I'm hearing that this is really a lower end Nvidia card and the Nvidia 3 card is actually better. Since I can't seem to find one of those and can't wait for the ATI 9700 to come out, anyone have a clue on the ATI 8500 Radeons in comparison to the Nvidia 4mx?
would it be worth the purchase?
Foe Games
For DVD playback

[a2daj]

For DVD playback, definitely. ATI cards have arguably the best DVD playback out of all video card manufacturers without a dedicated DVD solution. For the Mac RADEONs, you'll get the ability to use Adaptive De-interlacing to improve the image quality when you watch non-progressive scan DVDs (a very large percentage of the Anime out there).
Much of the DVD video decoding is offloaded to the Video card. More so than when using NVIDIA chipsets. So, DVD playback will utilize less CPU.

As for games, it depends. The NVIDIA drivers are highly tuned for Quake III and other Q3 engine games. IMO, ATI has better overall compatibility.
ATI has more features enabled in their drivers, such as FSAA (I've heard rumbles that NVIDIA cards will be able to do this soon, nothing concrete though) and TruForm (only with the 8500). And it has features other cutting edge hardware features that only the GeForce 4 Ti will have enabled among NVIDIA's cards (on the Mac. For some reason, some of the GF3s features will not be supported).

What type of games, or even what specific games do you play and intend to play. That can make a difference in which card you want.

But check out other sites for benchmarks (unfortunately, they're all pretty much Q3 scores).

GF4MX vs. GF3
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/archives/...02.html#S13266

GF4MX vs. GF3 vs. GF4Ti
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/Graphics/...anium_Mac.html

GF4MX vs. GF3 vs. RADEON 8500 vs. Radeon vs. Radeon 7500 vs. GF2MX
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/Graphics/...00/index2.html


I personally stick with ATI cards because they're more active within the Mac community, more frequent driver updates which also support older cards, and better DVD playback, and, at least with the 8500, price/performance is just fine.

[iamnid]

The 8500 is a great card -- I have one -- but it is really only marginally better than the 4mx for most tasks. True it does have some features that the 4MX does not.

If it were me, I'd wait until the next card from ATI is released or get yourself a Geforce 4Ti -- then you'll see some real improvement. In other words, the money you'd be laying out for the 8500 wouldn't get you that much improvement in performance over your 4MX

[JoNoiD]

Originally posted by iamnid:
The 8500 is a great card -- I have one -- but it is really only marginally better than the 4mx for most tasks. True it does have some features that the 4MX does not.

If it were me, I'd wait until the next card from ATI is released or get yourself a Geforce 4Ti -- then you'll see some real improvement. In other words, the money you'd be laying out for the 8500 wouldn't get you that much improvement in performance over your 4MX

I agree with iamnid. The 4mx is already an adequate card for most tasks. It handles games well especially with your current configuration. I would recommend waiting for the next ATI or NVIDIA card.