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Mac Radeon 7000 64MB...anyone using it?


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My impression on this is that you should be fine, despite having more memory. To my knowledge it is the drivers that are the source of the problem and the Radeon 7000 with either 32Mb or 64Mb should be the same. Each Radeon (chip) model has a slightly different driver (and potentially different bugs). As mentioned the 9x00 series (which is closely related to the 8500's) had a major color bug that has recently been corrected (but not all desired corrections were possible, leaving smoke and dust as opaque objects).

However there is a chance that I'm wrong regarding what you'll see (a great help, eh ?). Some of the downsampling that occurred in the CM series (most notably with the Mac GeForces) occurred with cards that had quite a bit of VRAM. It seems that the video drivers weren't allocating that VRAM properly (or more likely weren't telling the game that 32+Mb of VRAM was available). That could happen here. Most likely I don't think it will and you should be OK. Most of the Radeon 7000's had 32Mb of VRAM, so not many people here probably have a 64Mb model.

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One caveat. ATI doesn't sell a 64Mb version of the Radeon 7000 for the Mac. I believe that these 64Mb models are originally PC videocards that have had their ROMs flashed with the Radeon 7000 for Mac video BIOS code. I'm not aware of any problems with this (since the ROMs seem to autodetect the amount of memory onboard the videocard), but I thought you may want to be aware of this. Some of the ATI card manufacturers can vary a bit in quality compared to the products most Mac users may be accustomed to (not that every Mac product was sterling quality).

People listing this item on eBay indicate that it works fine with OS X (of course they're trying to sell it too...).

And one other detail provided by an eBay lister:

"There is an odd issue which affects some Radeon 7000 cards with 64Megs of VRAM for the Macintosh. Under some systems/setups, when that system/setup is put to sleep--and then awoken--there is scrambled video on the display hooked up to a Radeon 7000 card. This occurs with all Radeon 7000 cards for the Macintosh; manufactured by ATI and otherwise. The solution to this issue is to disable deep sleep on such systems via the energy saver panel. And if you simply set your display to go to sleep--or go into screensaver mode--like many Macintosh owners commonly do, all will be well too. Otherwise, the card functions flawlessly! And as mentioned above, this issue affects all Radeon 7000 cards for the Mac regardless of whether the card is converted from a PC version or not."

[ January 14, 2004, 03:08 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]

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Now, after some great insights from Schrullenhaft I've done some research. The card that I've purchased is probably a PC video card flashed with a Mac Rom. I've just spent an hour reading about it. From numerous posts in several forums the majority have no problems. Only if you are using a beige G3 or using OS Ten. I'm using neither so I think I'm okay. I paid $99 american for the card ( brand new ) but if you've got some computer savvy you could just spend $50 and do the flashing yourself. I've read its called "piracy" which seems to be in a grey area for me ( whatever ). Mac vid cards are 3 times the price of windows cards.

Mac users are not allowed to save money tongue.gif

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 year later...
Originally posted by Hoopenfaust 101:

Received my card last nite. Installed with no problems. Excellent card. I'm used to my iMac G4 card with blurry skies and downsampled graphics. This card is great. FPS have increased dramatically.

Thats good to hear (good dragging up an old topic here) because I just made the same move to get a card with more VRAM, and like you off ebay. Alhtough for a lot less than you paid for a year or so ago. smile.gif
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