Should I upgrade from Radeon 7500 to Radeon 9000? Options Menu

[Pablo]

I have been following a step by step upgrade route for my cube, generally putting in the stuff YMS sells or sold. It's all in my signature. For comparison, the Giga 1.4 ghz processor and Radeon 7500 together did Xbench tests of around 50 with Tiger and 43 with Leopard, which was my last upgrade. I use the cube mainly for web surfing, but I'm able to watch hdtv broadcasts at 97 to 99 percent of processor with the Elgato 500, and I'm able to watch downloaded movies from iTunes in regular resolution. Downloaded movies in hd are too much for my cube.

My present question is regarding streamed web videos. Most of them play well, but the processor is pegged at 100 percent to do it. Videos from ABC that use something called "Move" hardly work at all, even though my internet downloads speed average 1 Mb/sec.

I'm wondering if going to the Radeon 9000 would make a real difference? Would that one step faster card take better advantage of the processor upgrade to play these media? Or is the processor and motherboard just too slow? If I did the upgrade, I'd use the established route of getting a clear cube with VRM relocation to fit the card, and try to fit the Spirica extended heatsink to the new card or get a fan. They don't list an extended heatsink for 9000 any more. I'm pretty sure the 9000 would not use substantially more power than the 7500, so the Apple VRM with heatsink should handle the power. And yes, I'm sticking with ADC because I like it, and for me an ADC card with core image would be too complicated and expensive.

[hansjacobsson@telia.com]

Hi.

I don't know if the R 9000 will improve the video streaming, but as I can read in your profile, you run a 20" monitor. The R 7500 works fine for a 15-17" but the 20" requires at least a R 9000!

So go for a Radeon 9000 Mac eddition! 64MB or 128MB doesen't matter!

[Fangsuede]

1. I'm wondering if going to the Radeon 9000 would make a real difference?
2. And yes, I'm sticking with ADC because I like it, and for me an ADC card with core image would be too complicated and expensive.

Regarding the video cards only:
ATI 7500=270GPU/200MemDDR w/64MB VRAM @23W
ATI 9000Pro=275GPU/250MemDDR w/64 or 128MB VRAM @28W

The speed differences are not the only changes between these two cards, it gets complicated.
The 9000 is a slightly faster card than the 7500. Strangely, an 8500 is a better overall card than a 9000 but not offered in ADC.
1. In a nut shell, I would not expect the difference to be so noticeable to justify the cost of the video card and the PLX case (unless you could recoup some money by selling your old parts).
2. Requiring an ADC connector will keep you in the video card slow lane with video card technology over 8 years old. The ATI 9700 Mac Edition was the last, best Mac ADC card - and hard to find.

[Pablo]

The ATI 9700 Mac Edition was the last, best Mac ADC card - and hard to find.

I just saw one of those for sale on the unnamed auction site for $165. They are MDD pulls. I think I remember someone saying that they had success with one by using a special external power supply for the card. 12 volts x how many watts? I think I'm tapped for power, with two firewire devices and upgrades. Well, would that card make a substantial difference, if cost were not an issue?

[Fangsuede]

I just saw one of those for sale on the unnamed auction site for $165. They are MDD pulls. I think I remember someone saying that they had success with one by using a special external power supply for the card. 12 volts x how many watts? I think I'm tapped for power, with two firewire devices and upgrades. Well, would that card make a substantial difference, if cost were not an issue?

That is one expensive card but I'd sure like to have one to try it out.
Peak power for the 9700 is about 34W., which is just about the same as what the Cube's Video Riser provides. The external power needed is minimal.
The only way to know how much juice you use is to plug the Cube's PSU into something like a 'Kill-a-Watt', which is what I do.

[Pablo]

Thanks for that link. If I read correctly, the maximum watts would be 15 for the Rage 128, 23 for the Radeon 7500, 28 for the Radeon 9000, 34 for the Radeon 9700. I think I'm right in assuming this is budgeted from the 12 volt circuit, and that the hard drive and optical drive also use that. So my upgrade to a 9000 from a 7500 would add five watts to that circuit, or an upgrade to a 9700 would add eleven on average. Put it another way, an upgrade to a 9000 from a Rage would be 13 watts extra. It would be nice to know the peak and average capacity of that circuit, but I also know no one has experimented in destroying VRMs to find out. I specifically didn't get a larger hard drive to keep the peak current draw at wake from sleep down in that circuit.

[Fangsuede]

Thanks for that link. If I read correctly, the maximum watts would be 15 for the Rage 128, 23 for the Radeon 7500, 28 for the Radeon 9000, 34 for the Radeon 9700. I think I'm right in assuming this is budgeted from the 12 volt circuit, and that the hard drive and optical drive also use that. So my upgrade to a 9000 from a 7500 would add five watts to that circuit, or an upgrade to a 9700 would add eleven on average. Put it another way, an upgrade to a 9000 from a Rage would be 13 watts extra. It would be nice to know the peak and average capacity of that circuit, but I also know no one has experimented in destroying VRMs to find out. I specifically didn't get a larger hard drive to keep the peak current draw at wake from sleep down in that circuit.

For reference, the total wattage draw for a stock Cube is in the range of 40-50w maximum.

My Dual 1.7GHz/9800 Cube (without external power) runs at an almost unbelievable 160w (or a little higher) at peak usage (without an optical Drive). I tend to not run this Cube at the maximum for long periods, I used to play Halo on it though and that reading was about 140w. This Cube would not run reliably until I added the Giga C-VRM.

My Dark Star has about a 108w upward limit, mostly runs about 60-80w, with one printer and one FW external drive attached. This Cube is a daily driver and works like a charm for most normal and mid level tasks, which is all I expect/ask of it.

I think I'm close with these figures, maybe not exact - YMMV.
Firewire slots use 10w max, ea.
Cube USB are 5w, each.
Large HDD's (500GB) can be 30w or so.
RAM is 1w per 32MB.
AGP slot is supposed to be around 35w max output.
Slimline Optical Drive can be 10-15w.

[hansjacobsson@telia.com]

The ATI 9700 Mac Edition don't work in the Cube. It don't run AGP*2!

[Pablo]

So go for a Radeon 9000 Mac eddition! 64MB or 128MB doesen't matter!

I think I will! What I have learned from comparing the specs at ATI, is that the 9000 has features that the 7500 does not have. The GPU is programmable, with programmable vertex and pixel shaders. It supports OpenGL commands. It uses plug-ins, like Flash, in the card itself. This means the Radeon 9000 Pro Mac Edition must be able to support Core Image. It has most or all of the features that Core Image supported cards have. I don't know why it isn't on Apple's list of Core Image supported cards, except maybe that it shipped before OpenGL 2.0 was published, and it's not as fast as the other cards that use a lot more power. This card should help me because it will be able to decode more video in the GPU, thus taking some of the burden off my CPU. The ones with 64 MB of memory are reasonably priced now too.

[Hoild]

{...}What I have learned from comparing the specs at ATI, is that the 9000 has features that the 7500 does not have. The GPU is programmable, with programmable vertex and pixel shaders. It supports OpenGL commands. It uses plug-ins, like Flash, in the card itself. This means the Radeon 9000 Pro Mac Edition must be able to support Core Image. It has most or all of the features that Core Image supported cards have.{...}

Wrong.

CoreImage hardware acceleration and full Aqua/Quartz acceleration requires at least PS2.0 support and render-into-arbitrary-size-texture capability. It lacks both. Only v1.x shaders and render-into-n^2-size-texture are supported on the Radeon 8500-9200.

No "Flash, in the card itself", either -- in fact Flash does not, and likely will not support any GPU acceleration on the OS X / PPC side. Maybe for OS X / x86 Adobe will release a version that will provide hardware scaling, H.264 acceleration and GPU shader support.

[Pablo]

Wrong.

Hmm. I think you are not shutting the door completely, but leaving it cracked open just a little.

The ATI 9700 Mac Edition don't work in the Cube. It don't run AGP*2!

The one I saw was green, with ADC and DVI, and AGP2x4x. I think it was available only on special order from the Apple store, so there would only be a few in existence.

[Fangsuede]

The ATI 9700 Mac Edition don't work in the Cube. It don't run AGP*2!

Having never seen one, nor ever interested in one before I stand corrected.
Upon closer inspection I found that the 9700 Mac Edition w/ ADC-DVI was a very odd card.
The 3.3v slot was filled in, it may appear in some pictures of the card that the bare key area is really a cut slot. Look right at the point where older G4 2X systems have a plastic bridge.
This card was made for the MDD tower and there is no external power Molex connector on the 9700's PCB. A special AGP slot on the MDD picked up extra necessary power for this Mac Radeon 9700 Pro from an extra pin (key) on the cards AGP connector, right where the 2X slot used to be.
This physically prevents the card from fitting in older G4 2X AGP slots.

BTW, AFAIK the ATI 9000 does not have Core Image, the 9700 does.






This post has been edited by Fangsuede: Jan 17 2010, 05:12 PM

[Pablo]

This physically prevents the card from fitting in older G4 2X AGP slots.

http://www.cubeowner.com/forums/index.php?...amp;#entry52931

According to this thread, putting that card in a Cube has been done before. The riser slot was modified to fit the card, and an external power supply was used in parallel with the VRM. Sounds like a fun project.

[Fangsuede]

http://www.cubeowner.com/forums/index.php?...amp;#entry52931

According to this thread, putting that card in a Cube has been done before. The riser slot was modified to fit the card, and an external power supply was used in parallel with the VRM. Sounds like a fun project.

That's what we're here for, to fix the unfixable, do the unusual and sometimes create the impossible.

[darkchylde]

http://www.cubeowner.com/forums/index.php?...amp;#entry52931

According to this thread, putting that card in a Cube has been done before. The riser slot was modified to fit the card, and an external power supply was used in parallel with the VRM. Sounds like a fun project.

The MDD PSU was used in place of the VRM, not in tandem with it. Basically since there was no way to supply extra power to the card itself, they figured that swapping out the 205W brick for something in the 300-400W range from a MDD tower would do the trick and, in some cases, apparently worked.

-Doug