[bigbri069]

Well, I've owned my first Mac for over 2 1/2 months now and I have to say I absolutely love it. Last night I was burning a DVD, rendering a movie in iMovie, downloading via Bit Torrent and playing Mac Solitaire and there was not one hiccup! Try doing that on a M$ Windblows XP machine and you would fail miserably.

I would like to get back into some gaming. I've upgraded to 1.5gb of ram and now I am thinking about upgrading the video card. I currently have the basic ATI 9600 that came with my G5. I have been looking at the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Special Edition. Is it worth the $230 price tag (after rebate) for the 9800 Special Edition or will the 9600 do the job?? I am looking to play the new Tiger Woods 2005 golf game, X-Plane 8 and maybe something along the lines of Battlefield 1942.

[OogaBooga]

If you plan on gaming with your Mac, good video cards are a hefty investment. If I were you, I'd get by with the 9600 for now, and save longer for a better card. The 9600 isn't a slouch, but it's not exactly the best either.

I'd wait a few months to see if the new Nvidia 7800 cards become available for Mac, as these babies are virtually indestructible on the PC side of things. They probably won't ever make an AGP version for G5s though, so you may want to go ahead and spring for an ATI X800XT. To me, spending over $200 on a 9800 SE when you can get much better performance for $400 - $500 is plain crazy.

Another option you have is to buy the PC version of the Nvidia 6800GT and flash it to work on a Mac, although I'm not sure if all the features will still work.

[hpence]

non-working DVI has yet to be resolved with the 6800 series when they are flashed.

A cheap, yet quite noticeable upgrade would be to buy a PC 9800pro and flash it to mac. It would be a ~40% speed boost and only run you about $130 + some reading in other flashing forums.

[Mafia]

as of my last upgrade to the x800xt i can't recommend anything but it. going for about 300 - 400 on ebay. anyway i'm sure the 9800 pro is a great card...