gibsonm Posted July 17, 2006 Share Posted July 17, 2006 Hi, I’m trying to establish which of two G4’s is the better to keep for CMBO, CMBB and CMAK (assuming CMSF is OS X). One, a Dual G4 867MHz has a 64Mb ATI Radeon 9000 Pro which loads the files quickly but running the ATI drivers for OS 9.2.2 produces “cotton wool like” smoke and dust (other detail is good though). The other, a single G4 867MHz has a 32Mb ATI GForce 4 MX which loads the files more slowly but running the ATI drivers for OS 9.2.2 produces much better smoke and dust (other detail is not as good though). I’m pretty much resigned to using the Dual 867MHz and putting up with the smoke and dust issue, but thought I’d ask if anyone knoew of a workaround or 3rd party driver that fixed this issue? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wicky Posted July 17, 2006 Share Posted July 17, 2006 Put the 32mb (Nvidia?) in the Dual for the best compromise for CMBO/BB/AK till the specs come out for CMSF. I suspect even the fastest G4 will barely scrape running the forthcoming engine, mainly due I suspect to AGP limitations for the necessary high-end graphics cards. Originally posted by gibsonm: Hi, I’m trying to establish which of two G4’s is the better to keep for CMBO, CMBB and CMAK (assuming CMSF is OS X). One, a Dual G4 867MHz has a 64Mb ATI Radeon 9000 Pro which loads the files quickly but running the ATI drivers for OS 9.2.2 produces “cotton wool like” smoke and dust (other detail is good though). The other, a single G4 867MHz has a 32Mb ATI GForce 4 MX which loads the files more slowly but running the ATI drivers for OS 9.2.2 produces much better smoke and dust (other detail is not as good though). I’m pretty much resigned to using the Dual 867MHz and putting up with the smoke and dust issue, but thought I’d ask if anyone knoew of a workaround or 3rd party driver that fixed this issue? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted July 17, 2006 Share Posted July 17, 2006 Well, I don't have a very helpful reply but... It actually took ATI awhile to get the Radeon 8500/9000's to work at all with CMx1. It used to display an almost black screen with dark-monocolored textures (much like a beta game with graphic placeholders). When ATI finally fixed the driver for OS 9.2.x it had the "cotton wool-like" smoke and dust. Never heard from them again about another update to the OS 9/RAVE drivers. Regarding the Nvidia GeForce 4 series drivers for OS 9, everything came through Apple and Nvidia never offered any direct support for them (though I'm sure they were actually writing/updating the drivers). I also never heard of any fixes for the "softness/blurriness" of their drivers under OS 9 and RAVE. For a long time their attention has been on OS X and OpenGL. I'm not familiar with any 3rd party attempts to hack the drivers, which in the Windows world is often just registry hacks and file combinations to produce the "optimized" drivers. Andreas has said in the past that his best graphic experience on the Mac was with the Radeon 7000 series. Of course this card would probably be a little bit slower than either the GeForce 4MX or Radeon 9000, but it produced sharp textures and good smoke/fog effects. Now trying to find one is the hard part; I've seen some PCI and AGP, 32Mb and 64Mb ones on eBay for fairly cheap prices (quite possibly flashed PC parts though). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andreas Posted July 18, 2006 Share Posted July 18, 2006 I still have that 32MB card in my G4/400, and it continues to do sterling service. I must warn you however that the only direct comparison I have had were with the 16 MB standard G4/400 card, and the 8 MB card in the iMac G3/400 Graphite SE that I owned before. Compared to the PC version of the 64MB Radeon somethingorother that I was using for a few months when I had a PC, the Mac card was about the same level of quality, I think. All the best Andreas 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gibsonm Posted July 18, 2006 Author Share Posted July 18, 2006 Guys (?), Going to do some trials later this week on load times with the two cards. If there’s no difference I’ll see if I can keep both and use the 32Mb for the time being and the upgrade to the 64Mb for CMSF (or the new WW2 project mentioned in the Blog - assuming it will run on a Mac). May then need to resort to using Boot Camp on my Macbook Pro and Windows versions of CMBO, CMBB and CMAK. Will post the load times - just FYI. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gibsonm Posted July 19, 2006 Author Share Posted July 19, 2006 Before I run the opening times comparison, has anyone had any reports on the ATI Radeon 9200 PRO (128Mb) card? Its graphic acceleration doesn’t run under OS 9.x. Just wondering if buying this will fix the issue (or will I just have really, really nice “cotton wool” smoke)? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted July 19, 2006 Share Posted July 19, 2006 I'm not familiar with the specifics of the Radeon 9200's under OS 9 / RAVE. If the literature says that it "won't support graphic acceleration under OS 9", then I assume that it actually won't work for CMBB/CMAK. IIRC CMBB & CMAK require "hardware" acceleration and only CMBO supported "software" rendering (this was definitely the case with Windows, I can completely remember if this was true of the Mac also). Some Google searches came up with the following Apple Support Discussion. One user says that "OS 9 3D games end up locking up" for him at some point. These users may all be using G3's however. Anyway, I'd highly suspect that if you did get the Radeon 9200 working for CM, that the smoke/dust/fog would most likely be of the Radeon 9000 variety ("cotton wool"). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pzman Posted July 20, 2006 Share Posted July 20, 2006 The Radeon 8500 or later has that issue, the 9200 is no exception, and its a slow PCI based card. You are better off with the Radeon 9000 AGP card, IMO. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gibsonm Posted July 23, 2006 Author Share Posted July 23, 2006 OK trials results (using a Dual 867MHz G4 with 1GB of RAM to load a 144Kb CMAK PBEM file): 32Mb Nvidia GForce 4 MX took 19.16 seconds to load 64Mb ATI Radeon 9000 Pro took 11.27 seconds to load Overall the 64Mb gave better general results (apart from smoke and dust). Will see how long the 9200 takes to open and whether the improved backgrounds, etc. are worth it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pzman Posted July 24, 2006 Share Posted July 24, 2006 Both cards have a 250Mhz clock speed, although the 9000 Pro has a faster memory clock (250Mhz vs. 200Mhz). Here is a compairson on the ATI website: http://apps.ati.com/ATIcompare/result.asp In real world useage, keep in mind a AGP card will be faster because the PCI bus is slower. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.