Best Video Card for Sawtooth Power Mac
From Carson Eggerding:
I was reading a recent article that told me the best video card for
the Sawtooth is the Radeon 9800 Pro 128
MB. However it is an 8x card, and I need if for a 4x unit. I read that
I can buy a pre-taped video card from you guys (I thinks that's what it
said), or if that's not true could you direct me to a store where I
could by that particular pre-taped video card?
Thanks,
Carson Eggerding
Carson,
Our friends at Bare Feats benchmarked the
ATI Radeon 9700 and 9800. They found no performance difference between
them. Buying the Mac version of these cards can be pricey, but someone
going by the name of applemacanix is
buying PC versions of these (and other) cards, flashing them for the
Mac, and selling them on eBay. You can buy the 9700 for $109 plus $12
shipping - or you can sometimes pick up a used one for a bit less.
According to The Mac Elite, the
Sawtooth is the only AGP 2x Power Mac that doesn't need to have
pins 3 and 11 taped.
Dan
Video Card Options for AGP Power Macs
From Rudy:
Hi Dan,
Thanks for the reply!
I saw this at the top of the page for the link I sent you, "Here is
a compatibility chart for Retail/OEM/Flashed cards for Power Macs G4
& G5 AGP:" and just assumed that by "Retail" they meant Mac Edition
video cards.
I do have a Power Mac G4 400 MHz
Sawtooth running both OS 9.2.1 and OS X 10.4 Tiger with a ATI
Radeon 9200 Mac Edition video
card that powers a ViewSonic VA800 LCD monitor. I specifically got the
9200 and the VA800 to be able to pivot into portrait mode. The only
problem is that there are noticeable scan lines on the VA800 in both
landscape and portrait modes.
I recall reading somewhere that ViewSonic includes cheap video
cables, so I believe their cheap video cable is causing the scan lines.
I mostly use my Pismo with a G4 upgrade
chip running OS X 10.3.9, so I haven't upgraded to a better video
cable yet to see if that will solve the problem.
Anyway, I wasn't expecting a reply or even one so quick so thanks
again for the reply!
Rudy
Rudy,
Thanks for writing. We're slowly building our AGP
video card profiles, one card at a time. Give us a month and it should
be fairly comprehensive. :-)
Anyhow, your email jogged my memory. I remembered
reading something about cheap video cables, Googled it, and came home
to Low End Mac. Andrew Fishkin wrote about it almost a year ago in
Cheap Is as Cheap Does: A Crappy Cable
Cripples a Capable Display. A $50 replacement cable solved the
problem, but he ended up returning the monitor and buying a Samsung for
less than $50 more than the ViewSonic had cost him.
I picked up a Dell
1704FPV display when I bought my used dual 1 GHz Power Mac G4 a
couple years back. It's a 17" 1280 x 1024 display that pivots, had
great reviews, and included both analog VGA and digital DVI cables. It
was $270 at the time, and it's long discontinued, but I love it to this
day. Kinda ironic I'm running Low End Mac using a Dell monitor, but
nobody ever said everything Dell made was crap.
Dan
Leopard on a PowerBook G4/667 MHz
From Jan Lukens:
Hello
The subject line says it all: I have successfully installed (using
the FireWire Target Mode trick, running the installer from my AlBook
1.5 GHz) Leopard on an old TiBook 667 MHz
(the DVI version). It has a 30 GB hard drive and 512 MB RAM. This
PowerBook uses ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 with 32 MB of VRAM, and Leopard
runs incredibly good on it. In fact, everything seems to work
(including Time Machine [yes, the graphical front-end works too], Front
Row, and DVD Player; they all work fine).
To be honest, I am quite puzzled as to why it isn't officially
supported. The only thing I would do if it were my main computer is add
more RAM, because 512 MB is barely enough. Still, I think the
performance of the TiBook running Leopard is comparable to running
Tiger on it. Which is fine, and I'd like to stress this again: Why
isn't this machine supported? It really is perfectly capable of running
Leopard, in fact running it comfortably.
Jan Lukens
Jan,
Thanks for your report. I had a strong suspicion that
Radeon graphics would make a big difference and that 667 MHz of G4
power would supply an perfectly adequate Leopard experience. Thanks for
verifying that it works - and so well at that!
Dan
Leopard on a 450 MHz AGP Power Mac
From David Pollock:
I read your article about installing Leopard on unsupported machines
and would like to confirm some things with my experience so far. I have
installed it using Target Disk Mode from an iMac G5 onto my G4 AGP with a 450 MHz G4, 1.25 GB RAM, and a
Radeon 9800 Pro (PC video card converted to Mac). With this card in
here it appears all functions work, a bit slow, but it does work. Time
Machine makes its backups, and the interface does load properly, DVD
Player plays through a full movie okay, and Front Row works. It would
appear as long as your video card is decent enough to support Core
Animation, you can use Leopard on whatever you want.
Dave P
Dave,
Thanks for writing. Based on feedback thus far, it
looks like even old Radeon cards do a decent job with Leopard, but the
older RAGE cards don't have the power to really do the job.
Dan
Xbench Scores: Leopard on a 400 MHz Sawtooth
From Peter Brockie:
I just thought I'd give you some updates on my G4/400 running
Leopard.
So far I have had zero problems with it on my machine.
DVDs still play properly, Time Machine works perfectly (a little
slow in the GUI, as expected), everything is just as speedy as Tiger -
if not faster.
Below are Xbench results from my machine.
(note: my video card is a Radeon 9000 Pro Mac Edition, 64
MB)
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5 (9A581)
Physical RAM 1024 MB
Model PowerMac3,1
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 400 MHz
Version 7400 (Max) v2.9
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 1024K @ 200 MHz
Bus Frequency 100 MHz
Video Card ATY,RV250
Drive Type MAXTOR 6L080J4 MAXTOR 6L080J4
CPU Test 24.37
GCD Loop 38.73 2.04 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 14.42 342.61 Mflop/sec
AltiVec Basic 157.38 6.27 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 21.66 714.69 Mflop/sec
Floating Point Library 17.39 3.03 Mops/sec
Thread Test 16.90
Computation 17.49 354.29 Kops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 16.35 703.24 Klocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 21.87
System 18.62
Allocate 81.52 299.37 Kalloc/sec
Fill 14.82 720.80 MB/sec
Copy 12.29 253.80 MB/sec
Stream 26.50
Copy 27.26 563.10 MB/sec [altivec]
Scale 27.82 574.81 MB/sec [altivec]
Add 25.71 547.68 MB/sec [altivec]
Triad 25.35 542.35 MB/sec [altivec]
Quartz Graphics Test 19.43
Line 17.54 1.17 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 12.81 3.83 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 15.13 1.23 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 28.50 718.86 beziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 47.54 2.97 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 21.08
Spinning Squares 21.08 26.74 frames/sec
User Interface Test 5.49
Elements 5.49 25.22 refresh/sec
Disk Test 29.07
Sequential 51.48
Uncached Write 41.26 25.33 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 56.32 31.87 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 48.32 14.14 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 66.65 33.50 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 20.26
Uncached Write 6.32 0.67 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 58.65 18.78 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 84.09 0.60 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 97.22 18.04 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Peter,
Thanks for sharing these results.
Dan
Another Sawtooth Running Leopard
From Mike Villeneuve:
Hi! Hope you can use these infos!
Mike Villeneuve
www.macxpert.ca
- What unsupported Mac(s) have you installed it on? G4 Sawtooth (originally 400 MHz)
- How much RAM? 1.25 GB
- How fast a CPU, and what brand, if it's an upgrade? Sonnet 1.33
GHz
- What video card does your Mac have? Flashed Radeon 9200 128 MB
- Which installation method did you use, a modified installer or
installing from a supported Mac? Normal Leopard DVD, standard
installation
- What doesn't work? Especially check out Time Machine (which
requires a second hard drive at least as big as your main one), DVD
Player, Front Row, and VLC. Everything works, even front
row!
- How does performance compare with Tiger subjectively and
objectively? I think mostly Leopard is faster, more
reactive
Mike,
Thanks for sharing your findings. Sawtooths
(Sawteeth?) seem to be a popular choice.
Dan
Leopard on a Blue & White G3?
From Joseph Burke:
I just read the article by Leo Titus LeBron V, concerning the G3
B&W [Why the Blue and White G3
Is the Workhorse of the Mac World]. He says that he is going to
spend the money for a 1 GHz G4 upgrade and use the machine for
another 5 years for the same price as a Leopard supported G4, and he
thinks it will be faster.
It will not be faster.
First you have the bus speed of 100 MHz in the B&W compared to
133 MHz in the 867 MHz Quicksilver.
This difference in the bus speed alone is a big equalizer. Even though
the G3 with the 1 GHz upgrade might seem faster on the surface, it
really isn't.
Another big equalizer is that the Quicksilver comes with 4x AGP
video compared to the PCI video on the G3. If he thinks he is going to
install Leopard on that G3, he is going to be disappointed when most of
the graphical bits either don't work or are glitchy because the video
card he is using cannot support Core Image/Core Animation.
If he finds he needs more CPU in the future, the G3 will be maxed
with the 1 GHz CPU, where the Quicksilver can be upgraded to dual
1 GHz using Apple parts or dual 1.8 7448 or dual 2.0 7447A
processors using aftermarket upgrades.
The Quicksilver will also support newer, bigger, faster hard drives
better than the G3. The Quicksilver also uses PC133 memory compared
with PC100 in the G3, for faster memory access.
I believe that Mr. LeBron would be better served into the future by
making the move up to a Quicksilver machine if he is going to be
spending the money anyway. A Digital
Audio would be an even better value if a faster G4 isn't a priority
right now, since apart from external appearances and CPU speeds, it is
more or less the same machine as a Quicksilver and can use all Apple
Quicksilver CPUs with a one wire mod - and all aftermarket CPU upgrades
with no mods at all.
Joseph,
I can't argue with that. The G4 supports a faster
memory access system than the G3, but only on a motherboard that's
specifically designed for it. Bare Feats benchmarked the 400 MHz G4
Power Macs with PCI video and AGP video (a.k.a. Yikes! and Sawtooth)
and found that the faster memory access and AGP video made the Sawtooth
model 24% faster overall than the Yikes!, which is essentially a Blue
& White G3 with a G4 upgrade.
Geekbench
results put the AGP Power Mac at 232 (350 MHz) and 245 (400 MHz)
vs. 223 for a 450 MHz B&W Power Mac G3. No Yikes! results, but it's
pretty impressive when a 350 MHz G4 can so handily outperform a 450 MHz
G3. (Geekbench doesn't really test graphics, but mostly CPU and memory
access.)
Xbench results
for the Yikes! top out at 16.88 for the 350 MHz model, 19.62 for
400 MHz. The AGP Power Mac has
maximum scores of 18.11 at 350 MHz and 21.06 at 400 MHz, 7.3%
better.
Every benchmark measures something different, which is
why results from Bare Feats, Geekbench, and Xbench are all different -
but they are consistent in demonstrating that the Sawtooth with a logic
board optimized for the G4 processor and AGP video is 7-24% faster than
the Yikes! model.
With you, we would strongly recommend a Power Mac with
AGP video over a Blue & White G3 or PCI G4 - and not just because
it's faster. You also have a lot more powerful video upgrade options
with the AGP slot, such as the Radeon 9700 and 9800 Pro, while the
Radeon 9200 seems to be the latest Mac PCI video card.
However, in Leo's case, he already owns the Blue &
White G3, so he isn't going to be investing $100+ in a used computer.
Assuming he can get Leopard running on a G4 upgraded Blue & White,
he may be happy with it, especially if he's put in a better PCI video
card. No, it won't be as snappy as an AGP Power Mac, but it will be a
big improvement over the G3 CPU he's currently using.
Dan
But the point was that he said he was going to buy a G4 1 GHz
upgrade, not that he had it already. He also mentioned that his case
was a little beat up and needed repairs, which is going to cost even
more. He also mentioned upgrading the motherboard to a revision 2
board. The G4 1 GHz ZIF upgrade is going to cost him in the
vicinity of $175, and if he intends on upgrading anything else to take
better advantage of the faster CPU and AltiVec, the money would be
better spent towards a Quicksilver or Digital Audio machine.
Joseph,
I have to agree with you. From an economic standpoint,
it would make more sense to pick up a nice used G4 Power Mac with AGP,
but there's no accounting for the passion some people put into
upgrading their Macs. (Witness the world of Color Computer
modders!)
Dan
Leopard on a Power Mac 7500?
From Patrick Fitzmorris:
Possible?
I'm guessing that with XPostFacto, a
100+ GB SCSI hard drive, 1 GB RAM, and a 1.2 GHz g4 upgrade card from
Sonnet, it will be possible. (Wonder if I'd need a discrete graphics
card.) Unfortunately, the 7500 I have is currently at original spec
(100 MHz for the win!).
Now, to get into the realm of the affordable, do you think that I
could upgrade it to say, 700 MHz (G3 or G4), with 384 MB RAM and 40-60
GB hard drive with USB {FireWire?} for less than 250 USD?
Patrick,
It's been a couple of years since I looked at G4
upgrades for PCI Power Macs, but Sonnet has a couple of incredible
values: 500 MHz for $50 and 1 GHz for $100. The Power Mac 7500 has 8 sockets for RAM, so you
could bring it to 1 GB for $112. The Sonnet Tango 2.0 card can
give you FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 for $50. You can pick up a PCI Radeon
7000 for the Mac for $40, and the much newer 9200 for $85. Ultra ATA
hard drives under 80 GB are cheap, but SCSI ones aren't, and by the
time you add a 40 GB SCSI drive or an Ultra ATA controller plus hard
drive, it just isn't economical.
Total cost to bring a Power Mac 7500 into the G4
realm: $150 minimum (500 MHz G4, 512 MB RAM, Radeon 7000), $350 maximum
(1 GHz, 1 GB, FW/USB 2.0, Radeon 9200).
With used AGP G4 Power Macs starting at $100, I'd
hesitate to drop that much money into such an old Mac, especially one
with a 50 MHz memory bus and PCI graphics.
Dan
Booting a PowerBook from a PCMCIA Card Reader
From Michel Alarie:
Hi,
I'm a big fan of LEM. I have a Pismo
(which came back to me after a short escapade with a younger, faster,
but unreliable iBook G4). I wanted to
stretch battery life. I have read your article about booting on flash
drives. I have bought a PCMCIA type 2 adaptor and tried my Canon
1 GB CF card. I installed OS 9 and OS X 10.2, but it did
not work. I even tried some Terminal sudo lines to bless the System
Folder and fixed permissions, but it never wanted to boot on the CF
card. I always tried to select the CF's system in the startup
prefpane.
I have just reread an article about IDE adaptors. I am surprised
that PowerBook 150s had an IDE bus. Are you
sure about this? I thought they had SCSI hard drives. Could this mean
my old PowerBook 520 could be modified with
one of those adaptors?
Thanks,
Mike
Mike,
I've had spotty results booting from CF in a PC Card
adapter. It works with some CF cards, not with others - the same thing
I found with the internal IDE adapter. That was true with both the
PowerBook 1400 and my PowerBook G4/400, so it should be true for your
Pismo as well. Look for a CF card with UDMA support, and you should be
set. See Compact Flash Hard Drive
Options for more on that,
Yes, the PowerBook 150 (1994) used an IDE hard drive.
It was the first PowerBook to do so. The PowerBook 500 series was
introduced two months earlier and uses SCSI hard drives. You might be
able to locate a SCSI/IDE bridge card for 2.5" notebook drives, but
they're getting hard to come by. The only one I can find is the
Century 2.5" IDE>SCSI Internal Converter Kit (¥11,000, about
US$95).
For your PB 520, I'd suggest you try a PCMCIA Compact
Flash adapter and a CF card with UDMA support.
Dan
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
