(from a reader email)
Subject: Radeon 9800Pro vs Ati 8500 comparisson in Dual 1 Ghz G4
Hey Mike, I'm not sure whether this will be usefull, but since I coulnd't find
anyone with a radeon 9800 Pro in a dual 1 Ghz G4 (QS2002), I just
decided to send it anyway... Although I knew my processor speed and the 4x AGP slot could be
bottlenecks, I decided to go for this card anyway, because it has 128
MB of memory, vs 64 MB on the 8500. Allthough 64 MB is enough for me, I
have a dual monitor setup, which would mean it would chop the 8500's
memory in half when using it in dual head mode, so I had a Ati 7000
(PCI) for my second monitor. However, video on the monitor connected to
that card was a bit choppy, when using genie minimize or Expose.
So, currently I'm using the 9800 in dual head mode, which means 64 MB
per monitor and fast graphics on both. It also saves me a PCI slot.
I don't know what brand the flashed card is (couldn't find any labels),
but it has a heavy cooler and quite a silent fan, and since the card
doesn't really seem to get very hot, I decided to stick with the stock
cooler.
To the point now. I have a dual 1 Ghz G4, QS 2002, OS 10.3.4 and 1.5GB
of RAM. I've used Cinebench 2003, Xbench 1.1.4 and the UT2K4 CTF
standard bench 3 to do some benchmarks. Graphs of the results are
attached.
Settings for the UT2004 benchmark were (resolution only varied)
Cinebench and Unreal Tournament show a substantial difference between
the cards, especially on high resolution the 9800 Pro crushes the 8500
by a factor 2. I performed the benches for the 9800 Pro both in single
(128 MB) on dual (64 MB) head mode, but that made no difference (even
on 1600x1200 resolution). Since the (avg/score) framerate just doesn't get higher than 23 frames/s (peak was just under 56FPS), I suspect that's just the processors being the bottleneck. (you can see that from the flat performance across resolutions) That's no problem however, because I can improve the image
quality now, because the 9800 Pro is not working at it's maximum
capacity yet.
Xbench showed no improvements at all, and even a substancialy lower
OpenGL score! This must be due a bug in Xbench. (XBench's OpenGL test
is only one test - spinning squares. Still you'd not expect the 9800 pro to be
slower.)
Overall, my mac 'feels' a lot faster, expose with many windows open is
much smoother for instance. Very nice upgrade, but I wouldn't buy the
retail version for it's too expensive for what you get (that is, with a
dual 1 Ghz G4 or lower), but this was worth it (250 euros is a lot of
money, but I can get a good price for the 8500 and the 7000 I'm selling
now; they're expensive in Europe). Hope this information is of any use. Thank you for creating the best mac website in the universe!
-Otto
Related Articles/Reviews:
|
