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Posted
5/31/02
by rob
ART morgan,
Bare Feats Mad Scientist
This week,
PowerMax.com
put some GeForce4 Titanium "pulls" up for sale for
$399. They were sold out in one day. I was blessed
to snag one for the Bare Feats lab.
6/20/02
FLASH!
Buy
a GeForce4 Titanium from PowerMax.com
before July 4th, tell them BARE FEATS sent
you, and get a FREE copy of my
favorite game, 4x4
Evolution!
So the question
can now be answered: Is the GeForce4 Titanium the
ultimate graphics accelerator card for the Power
Mac G4? And in combination with the Dual G4/1000,
is the Power Mac the ultimate game
system?
3D PERFORMANCE
ANALYSIS
If you run your
3D games like Quake3 at maximum texture and
geometric detail, the GeForce4 is head and
shoulders above any of the other contemporary
graphics accelerator cards. Is it worth $399? A
bean counter would say no. But I'm not a bean
counter.
I got mine. Good
luck getting yours...
ONE LITTLE
PROBLEM...
When I first
tried to run Quake3 Arena X and Unreal Tournament X
under OS X.1.4, the apps crashed or quit saying "no
OpenGL hardware present." Turns out that the
GeForce extensions installed from the OS X 10.1.3
CD are a later version that those installed by the
10.1.4 update. So I reformatted one of my drives,
installed OS X.1.3 and it worked like a charm. Even
then, the drivers used are GeForce2 MX and
GeForce3. Apple still hasn't released GeForce4
drivers.
2D PERFORMANCE
ANALYSIS
If you are NOT a
gamer and do NOT do OpenGL 3D "walk throughs," then
you should think twice about coughing up $399 for
the GeForce4 Titanium. The standard GeForce4 MX is
just as fast for scrolling, panning or screen
redraw.
HOW DOES THE
POWER MAC COMPARE TO THE WINDOWS PC'S for 3D
GAMING?
Comparing apples to blueberries or plums is a
questionable endeavor but I'm foolish enough to
try. As you can see, a "2000MHz" G4 beats a 1600Mhz
Pentium 4 but not a 1600Mhz Athlon.
Legend for
graphs above: GeF4 Ti = Geforce4 Titanium 4600,
GeF3 = Geforce3, Rad8500 = Radeon
8500.
The Dual 1GHz G4
Power Mac with a GeForce4 Titanium is no slouch but
it can't brag about being the ultimate game
machine.
If you are a
hard-core Quake3 jockey, there's a page on Sharkey
Extreme that will give you pause. The
2.5GHz Pentium 4 with GeForce4 Ti 4600 runs at 293
fps in High Quality
1024x768.
That's faster than the Dual "2000MHz" G4 Power Mac
with a GeForce4 Titanium running at Low Quality
640x480 (250fps)! Apple doesn't seem to be gaining
enough ground in the race for creating the ultimate
3D Professional Modeling and, uh, er, Gaming
machine. We need Quartz Extreme, dual G5's, DDR
memory, and GeForce5 Titanium... and we need it all
NOW!
DUAL DISPLAYS?
EASY!
I'm a dual
display nut. One Cinema display is just not enough.
I love the fact that I don't have to use a spare
PCI graphic card to hook up dual ADC flat panels
thanks to the GeForce4 Ti. Why? Because you get
128MB of VRAM and DUAL DIGITAL ports: one ADC and
one DVI. That's a first. Yay, Apple!
Using the new
Apple DVI to ADC adapter ($150), I can hook up
various combinations of ADC displays... like dual
17" Apple LCD Studio displays... or dual 22" Apple
Cinema LCD displays... or a 17" Apple CRT display
on the ADC port and a 22" Apple Cinema LCD on the
DVI port (using the DVI to ADC adapter).
Why is this a big
deal? Because when you are doing heavy duty analog
sound or video capture or playback, you don't want
a PCI video card sucking up bandwidth on the PCI
bus. Ask the guys in Hollywood.
DOES A
GRAPHICS ACCELERATOR CARD UPGRADE MAKE SENSE IN A
SLOWER G4 POWER MAC?
Let's get real
for a minute. Many 3D apps don't even utilize 3D
hardware acceleration. OS X doesn't even use the 3D
hardware capabilities for things like transparency
and overlay. Expect that to change with
"Jaguar"
and "Quartz Extreme."
Quake3 definitely
uses OpenGL hardware acceleration but if you are
getting 50+ frames per second at your favorite
settings, you won't see any improvement during
actual play. Some users mistakenly think that
graphics apps will render faster with a graphics
accelerator but that's just not the case. Rendering
is a strictly CPU function. Where the graphics
accelerator helps is with panning, scrolling,
redraw, walk through, etc. Okay. The minute is up.
Back to the insanity....
RELATED
LINKS
AccelerateYourMac
has test results for the GeForce4 Titanium on a G4
Power Mac.
There are at
least two Windows PC sites I watch for interesting
test data on graphics cards.
AnandTech.com
has test results for the GeForce4 Ti 4600 versus
others).
SharkeyExtreme
has a GeForce4 Ti 4600 review.
MacGamer
has a review of the Radeon 7000 PCI. They say it's
slower than the Radeon Mac Edition PCI (the model
that preceded it).
WHERE TO ORDER YOUR APPLE PRODUCTS
When ordering products from Apple Store USA, please click THIS TEXT LINK or any Apple display ad as your "portal" to the online store. In so doing, you help to support Bare Feats.
TEST
HARDWARE
Apple
Power Mac G4/1000MP running OS 10.1.3. Why 10.1.3?
Because the 10.1.4 GeForce OS X Extensions don't
"see" the GeForce4 Ti as OpenGL
hardware.
Graphics
Cards included in test:
ATI
Radeon 8500
AGP
Apple GeForce3 AGP (no longer available)
Apple GeForce4
MX AGP
(standard on current Power Macs)
Apple GeForce4 Titanium (BTO option -- equal to
the 4600 on the PC)
TEST SOFTWARE
& PROCEDURES
QUAKE3 ARENA
1.3.0b5
GRAPH
#1: "Max" 1024x768
GL driver ON, video mode 1024x768, color depth
32 bit, Full Screen ON, Geometric Detail HIGH,
Texture Detail HIGHEST Setting, Texture Quality
32 bit, Texture Filter TRILINEAR, Sound Quality
HIGH
GRAPH #2:
"Max" 1280x768
GL driver ON, video mode 1280x768, color depth
32 bit, Full Screen ON, Geometric Detail HIGH,
Texture Detail HIGHEST Setting, Texture Quality
32 bit, Texture Filter TRILINEAR, Sound Quality
HIGH
GRAPH with
Pentium 4 and Athlon: "High Quality" 1024x768 32
bit
GL driver ON, video mode 1024x768, color depth
32 bit, Full Screen ON, Geometric Detail MEDIUM,
Texture Detail MIDDLE Setting, Texture Quality
32 bit, Texture Filter TRILINEAR, Sound Quality
HIGH
These console
"tweaks" were the only exceptions to default
settings:
s_chunksize
2048
s_mixahead .07 (.03 setting made it run faster
but it turned sound off. No fair.)
cg_scoreplums 0
r_smp 1 (turns on MP mode; for single CPU's,
should be set to zero)
The DEMO
file run is the one that comes with version
1.30b1 that was unZipped, put in a folder called
DEMOS,and renamed to
FOUR.DM_67
© 1995-2007 Rob Art Morgan
"BARE facts on Macintosh speed FEATS"
Email
, the webmaster
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