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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Desktops > 9800 Pro mac on MDD power mac dual 1.25 question

9800 Pro mac on MDD power mac dual 1.25 question
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JasonBourne
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Nov 27, 2005, 07:59 AM
 
Just purchased the radeon 9800 pro few day ago it will here on tuesday Nov 29th. This is an upgrade from radeon 9000 pro. First time to do this just wandering if I have to install a driver before I plugged this in. Just got used to plug and play all the time. All my upgrades are all plug and play just like my internal dvd burner. PCI firewire and USB, internal and external hard drive. I hope this one is also plug and play.
Thanks for your help.
     
jcadam
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Nov 27, 2005, 08:17 AM
 
Driver? Depends what version of OS X you are running -- I had a hell of a time with a Radeon 8500 on my MDD running Jaguar (no display until you get the driver installed, hmm....). With Panther it worked fine, same with the 9800 I later upgraded to (the 9800 was kind of wasted on the Dual 867 MDD, but came alive when I transferred it to my new G5, the MDD got the stock 9600 from the G5, and there was really no noticeable drop in performance).
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JasonBourne  (op)
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Nov 27, 2005, 08:43 AM
 
Thanks for your reply.
By the way I have Tiger 10.4.3 on my power mac. Are you trying to imply that 9800 wound be a waste on a G4 and 9600 would be a better choice. I don't play games mostly iLife and quicktime encoding. iPhoto is really slow since I already got 22,000 pictures. Just want my apps to respond quickly esp. iMovie and iDVD. and H264 encoding.
( Last edited by JasonBourne; Nov 27, 2005 at 08:55 AM. )
     
jcadam
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Nov 27, 2005, 02:49 PM
 
Upgrading from a Rad9000 should have little noticeable effect on app performance (unless you are into 3D-modeling/rendering). Video encoding is an extremely CPU and memory intensive task. The G4 has atrocious memory bandwidth, btw.

If you can't afford a new machine, a better idea might be more RAM (if you have 512M or less). And make sure you are running the latest version of iPhoto. The speed of that app improved significantly with each update (old versions of iPhoto run dog-slow even on my Dual-G5, I have lots of photos). Don't get me wrong the Rad9800 is a good card, but since you are not a gamer I don't see that it would help much with general computing usage.

Of course, My MDD is a 2x867 (yep, still use it as a secondary machine), so perhaps your 1.25 will be less CPU-limited than mine (yours has a slightly faster memory bus also).
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Lateralus
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Nov 27, 2005, 02:56 PM
 
Originally Posted by jcadam
Of course, My MDD is a 2x867 (yep, still use it as a secondary machine), so perhaps your 1.25 will be less CPU-limited than mine (yours has a slightly faster memory bus also).
And probably double the L3 cache.
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JasonBourne  (op)
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Nov 27, 2005, 04:48 PM
 
Thanks for all your reply.
I'll just wait for refurbished dual core G5 next year since I'm thinking of buying aperture. Maybe I should try playing some games.
( Last edited by JasonBourne; Nov 27, 2005 at 11:37 PM. )
     
JasonBourne  (op)
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Dec 1, 2005, 10:04 PM
 
Just installed the Radeon 9800 pro. Plug and play also on Dual 1.25 Power mac G4. So far the I notice only a slight difference the way my application respond. Core image app respond very well. So far I did not regret buying this card.
     
JasonBourne  (op)
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Dec 1, 2005, 10:05 PM
 
Just installed the Radeon 9800 pro. Plug and play also on Dual 1.25 Power mac G4. So far the I notice only a slight difference the way my application respond. Core image app respond very well. So far I did not regret buying this card.
     
Mac Write
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Dec 12, 2005, 11:16 PM
 
I am also looking at getting the 9800 Pro Mac 256 to run CoreImage/Video on my MDD. I have 1.79GB RAM and running on 3 HD's. So performance wise I am maxing my system out right now. Adding the 9800 Pro Mac should add a very noticable (hopefully) preformance boost since CoreImage/Video will be enabled and should off-load some of the stress off of the CPU.
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JasonBourne  (op)
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Dec 17, 2005, 09:36 PM
 
Originally Posted by Mac Write
I am also looking at getting the 9800 Pro Mac 256 to run CoreImage/Video on my MDD. I have 1.79GB RAM and running on 3 HD's. So performance wise I am maxing my system out right now. Adding the 9800 Pro Mac should add a very noticable (hopefully) preformance boost since CoreImage/Video will be enabled and should off-load some of the stress off of the CPU.
If you don't mind me asking what kind of core image application are you gonna run.
I did not notice any speed increase in video encoding but in multi-tasking I did not notice any slowdown in UI. Photobooth is working well and very responsive. Radeon 9000 can't handle Photobooth and it takes few more seconds to respond. My 4 year old son enjoy using it. My iLife application responds well. If you check pricegrabber the price difference between 9600 and 9800 is around 20-30 dollars.
     
Mac Write
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Dec 18, 2005, 03:01 AM
 
I need to buy in Canada and it is around $340 Canadian at present. I am looking into Aperture (the reason getting a video card came back onto my upgrade plans, I was going to say "screw CoreImage"and wait until my next workstation (2008) but things change. Dam you Apple.
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