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leongwt · Jul 19, 2000, 10:41 PM

i am wondering is there any diff on the H/W side between the 2 cards.

can i put a RADEON with 64Mb of DDR (only available for the PC) into my G4, get the drivers for the RADEON for Mac and run it? will it work or will it fry my G4/display?

Evangellydonut · Jul 20, 2000, 12:28 PM

In theory, it'll work. That's how people got the V3s to work on Macs using unsupported beta drivers.

However, I recall reading something regarding there is a fundamental difference with the coloring/graphics handling on the Mac then PCs. I haven't came across anything regarding which is superior, and that's for another discussion.

I'm assuming you want to buy the 64MB DDR Radeon to get the max usability, but I don't think that's wise, because of the difference I just mentioned. Why do you suppose nVidia took so long to jump onto the Mac market if it were as simple as hiring 5 software engineers to write drivers? ATI cards for the Mac, and the V5, are built with Native Mac support...I just emailed ATI sales department, in hopes of them making a 64MB version of the AGP card in limited quantities. Spread the word, and keep on emailing, if enough people are interested, I'm sure they'll look into such matters. As I said in the email I wrote them, it's not all that hard to throw on 4 more RAM chips and write the code for it. I know 'cuz I've done such.

Hope that helps.

leongwt · Jul 20, 2000, 09:21 PM

Thanks for the reply. I will e-mail them as well.

What led me to think that there is not too much difference between a card for PC and a card for Mac is because 3Dfx and ATI did not take too long to come out with a Mac version. I attribute the time it took for nVidia because the Mac market is very small compared to the PC market. As the new kid on the block, they will want to put all their resources into developing and perfecting the PC version first before they spend time on the Mac version. I have a feeling that they are not really interested in the Mac market because they did not make the Mac version of GeForce 2 GTS.

MacNZ · Jul 21, 2000, 07:52 AM

I read somewhere that since current macs only have 2x AGP slots and most new PC's have 4X there was a difference. The 64Mb PC version can evidently bottleneck a system in a 2x AGP slot v. easily. If we can get a usable mac 64MB version it'd be great. Our main hopes at the moment though are getting a better graphics card than the Rage 128 in Macs ASAP!!!

MacNZ · Jul 22, 2000, 05:57 PM

Sorry, i knew I was wrong as soon as i posted my reply so i looked up the ATi site. I couldn't find anything which would suggest the PC version wouldn't work with the Mac but I'll leave it up to the experts to reply this time.

Adam Silver · Jul 22, 2000, 07:07 PM

A PC Radeon card will not work in a Mac. In fact, with the exception of Voodoo 3 cards, no video card is cross-platform.