Gaming on the mac
 

Will ram make a large diference in gaming on the mac? i have a QS733 g4 with 256 ram and am only seeing around 10fps in JK2. Is there anything ya'll recommend for a performance increase for gaming?

Run "Activity Monitor" and see if you are getting a large number of pageouts. That would indicate that more RAM would be beneficial.

You will also hear the disk a lot if this is happening.

Since the official requirements are 256 megs of RAM, I'd say you should have 512 in your system for the game to play nicely. Minimal requirements mean, what is required for the game to laod properly... not to play smoothly...

RAM has to do with it, but mostly it's CPU and GPU.
More RAM has never hurt anyone.

....
 

Thanks guys, I've got another stick of ram on it's way so I'll post the results here.

The CPu part should be ok... 733 should run it fine... have seen it... Yellow mentionned the GPU and indeed that woudl cause some issues... Not sure that the 32 MB NVIDIA GeForce2 MX will be sufficient... You may need to go to a 64meg card with a more performing GPU. That is if the RAM upgrade doesn't fix it...

....
 

Well, ram was not effective at all. I have notice that the system seems a bit more peppy and definately halps in opening multiple programs but as far as gaming performance, I havent noticed any gains in FPS. I have a geforce 5200 128mb agp card but it's for a PC. Anyone know of a good way to get this to work on my mac? The ports (agp) look the same as far as comparing the two cards..Todd

Try BareFeats
 

He does the most published testing on the game performance subject that I know of.

<http://www.barefeats.com>

Want a kick-ass card for your machine?
 

OWC just posted these and they wont last long at this price

http://eshop.macsales.com/link.cfm?id=8270-9904

http://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/Fr...deo/index.html

At this point, I want to move from nVidia GF4 Ti to a 256MB video card. But they are insanely expensive still..

256 sure would be sweet ... and expensive ? ... yeah ...
 

I got a 9000 based on the evaluation BareFeats made that the 8X agp cards did no better than the 9000 in machines with the 4X slot .. and buffer is important to me. I dont know of anything made 4X with 256 .. I looked again ... the 9800 retail is just out there on price too

Owc
 

will also give you a trade-in rebate on your old processor here:

http://eshop.macsales.com/Service/in...ge=rebate.html

.......
 

So that's $350 for a 1.4ghz CPU upgrade when? What's the catch? I checked out my video card and it says that it has 64mb virtual ram. What's that all about? i also used a program to check out the specs on my card called mbtoolkit and it didnt even list a gpu for my card. ANyone know what's up on this thing? I'm tempted to go with that 9600 for $119. That's not a bad price at all. My main concern other than decent frame rates is that I need a card with a svideo out. I have been trying to find a mac card with this feature and cant. I want to display my computer on my tv so I can watch movies etc and dont really know how on a mac. Any suggestions?

the radeon 8500 or the 9200
 

have S video out

http://store.yahoo.com/lovemacs/atira8564dva.html

I'm not sure what you mean by what's the catch .. that list is what they will buy your old processor for if you get a upgrade processor from them. In your case, they will give you 20 bucks for that 733 you have by their list.

http://eshop.macsales.com/MyOWC/Upgr...=Show+Upgrades

I have dealt with OWC for years and they have been nothing but fast, friendly, helpful and reliable as they get. Prices can be beat now and again, but they are always near the bottom. What their level of customer service quality is worth is up to you. New Egg and ZipZoomFly are also near the bottom for price and tops in speed and service.

Another method I use to shop for prices on a given model part is simply to do a google search ..enter a search string like "radeon xxxx mac" and see what comes up ... and what the various online price searches that show up on the right come up with. DealMac is another good resource site for price searches, as is LowEndmac. Pricewatch is great for PC parts, but they just don't have many listings for Mac parts

My own list of vendors or resources for parts collected over a long period
 

this in no way constitutes an endorsement for anyone, simply a list of vendors I have personally dealt with at one time or another and have had no problems with.


http://www.azatek.com/
http://www.baucomcomputers.com/
http://www.18004memory.com/
http://www.compusa.com/
http://www.Compu-Terra.com/
http://www.datamem.com/
http://www.devdepot.com/
http://dttservice.com/
http://www.dvwarehouse.com/
http://resale.headgap.com/
http://www.macconnection.com/
http://www.macnstuff.com/
http://www.macresq.com/
http://mac-pro.com/
http://www.macgurus.com/
http://www.macs4all.com/
http://www.megamacs.com/
http://www.welovemacs.com/
http://www.micromasters.net/
http://eshop.macsales.com/
http://www.pcretro.com/
http://www.powermax.com/
http://shop.poweron.com/
http://www.pricewatch.com/
http://www.printcountry.com/
http://www.printerworks.com/
http://www.smalldog.com/
http://www.sncomputers.com/
http://www.timco-computers.com/
http://www.upgrade-solution.com/

Regarding X, graphics and GUI speed
 

you might well take solace in this great article

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/G5.ars/1

the particular quote I had in mind is on page 7

<Responsiveness


One of the most widespread complaints about OS X is the overall sluggishness of the GUI. While each successive release of OS X has led to a speed up, it seems like the demands of the GUI have always been a step ahead of the hardware. OS 9 "graybeards" are always quick to point out that even on an old Bondi Blue iMac, OS 9 is extremely responsive. Window resizing is instantaneous, application launches are quick, and one is seldom left waiting on the GUI.


The Dual 2.5 is easily the most responsive Mac I have ever used OS X on. That should go without saying, given the processor speed, architecture, and the fact that it's Apple's top-shelf machine. However, it seems with this machine that the hardware has finally caught up with the GUI.


One of the most noticeable areas of GUI slowness was resizing Finder windows. In early versions of OS X, the best way to describe it was that you could time window resizes with a sundial. My previous Mac tower, a Dual 800MHz G4 tower with a GeForce4 Titanium video card was fairly responsive, but I still had the feeling that my hardware was a bit slow for the GUI. The PowerBook (a 1.25GHz AlBook) was significantly better. The G5? Fantastic — window resizing is near instantaneous on the Dual 2.5. There's a tiny lag between the mouse movement and the window position, but that's it.


Overall, the Dual G5 is very SnappyTM. Responsiveness is excellent, spinning beachballs rare, and start up very quick (of course the only time this machine gets restarted is for software updates requiring a reboot). Applications launch quickly, especially the second time. The machine is a pleasure to use and never feels slow.>

Seems it takes a dual 2.5 G5 to get back to where 9 was in some regards. *pulls on the grey stubble and cusses up a blue streak under my breath*

.......
 

I cant thank you enough Gary54. You seem to be the one answering everyone's questions on this forum. These options feel like what I will do. I feel while the processor could use an upgrade, the real bottleneck on my system is the video card. I have a buddy that has a radeon 7000 for $40. Is this a decent card? Good buy at $40? Thanx again, Todd

the 7000?
 

chuckles .. thanks .. *self confessed parts junkie here* The only new Mac I ever bought was the very first one. Paid more for that 16 mHz LCII than anything came after. I may be an old Mac hand, 11 years now ... but I sure am new to X and I am reading and learning a lot from what everyone else is posting .. lots of sharp folks here. I toss in my two cents if think I might be able to contribute. Glad you get something out of what I post, makes it worthwhile to write. Its always my goal to pare things down so I get the most out of an old machine, and get the most bang out of limited bucks.

The 7000 a decent card? No ..it sux in a word. Its a discontinued card, Mac version was PCI only, slow, 32 meg buffer, replaced recently by the 9200 which for a PCI is a damn nice card. Not to mention, sells for less than the 7000 ever did. I have a 7000 from when it was one of the few options available, got an 9200 not long ago when it first came out and use it to run the second monitor. I'm very happy with it.

Only advantage you might get out of a 7000 is to use it as a secondary card for a second screen. I tried it in that way, its not too bad in that role and it has the S video too. 40 bucks? Used that way I would think it would be worth it. They sold new for around 130-150. Get your S video that way and the field is then wide open for choices in AGP cards.

If you have a set up like I do which is pretty common for graphics work, you have a large main screen for your work where everything is important, and a smaller second screen just for application pallets ... nonsense stuff. I use a 15 for that, a 19 for the main screen.

One card running both splits the buffer it has evenly, leaving the main screen starved for buffer and the small one with more than it needs. Two cards gives both screens all the buffer each has, where its needed. Second screen doesn't need much, a 7000 doesn't deliver much.

Good luck shopping

Gary

btw ... if you are about to ask me whether I think
 

dual processors are worth it when you go to upgrade your cpu .. the answer is an unqualified and resounding yes. I'm amazed how well this thing does with two 533's. I'm having to bump my pc up a bit to keep up with it .. even with the pc running XP with a 1.5 gHz athlon .. and XP is easily the best version of vindoze I have tried.

mac gurus has the best prices on dual cpu cards lately that I have seen .. 541 for a dual 1.2 gHz

I posted this over in the coat room .. might be of some help .. might not...

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showth...787#post160787

.......
 

Radeon Pro 7000 64MB DDR AGP, is what he is selling. I dont know if this is a mistype but he swears that is's an agp card.

That
 

is a PC only card ... unless its been flashed .. in which case its problematic as well as being a low end card .. no faster than what you have now....lots of those running around for low end home use


out of date ... it went for maybe 70 bucks new when it was current .. quick check ... they fetch 30 bucks or so new over at pricewatch now

I have absolutely no idea what your budget is, but if its a single card you need/can afford and you have to have S video .. then I'd shop for the best deal on an 8500 you can find. New or used.

The 9800 also has dual monitor and S video. Don't know about you, but its out of my price league and its questionable the rest of your system can match it unless you do a major processor upgrade.

Unless you are set
 

and off beating the bushes on the net shopping with enough information in hand to be able to make an informed decision about a purchase of parts, I am going to ask a site admin to move this thread .. because its about to become another philosophy discussion

Thanks, Gary

you may find these links helpful too
 

http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/fpsdb/fpsdb.lasso
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/video.html
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/Graphics/....html#storytop