Confessions of a confused mac owner
Posted by: garyi on 24 August 2004
Well, I have never had the desire to 'upgrade' and exisiting computer beyond the ram and the occasional harddrive.
However since ownig Unreal Tournment and other games I feel a bit of a boost from the standard graphics card in my G5 would be of great benifit.
I appriciate there is not a lot out there for Macs when it comes to these types of upgrade choice, but I toook myself off on my merry way to Mikro Avika in London to purhcase said card.
I walked away with an ATI 9000 pro mac addition and toddled my way home all excitable like. It specifically said for AGP equipped macs with 10.2 and above, well chuffed I thought.
Gets it home and the connectors are physically different to the card thats in there, around a CM shorter.
I am well pissed off. It would appear the AGP changes? Or something weird has gone on, so now I have to pay to go back into london to return this card.
I am looking on the apple store where the same card is for sale only it sayf for G4s or G5s well now I am confused because it appearsd to be precisely the same card, so do I buy it??
Well I phoned apple America, because its too late for UK and I am keen, they sent me to four different people, no one even got to asking what my problem was, I just think they didn;t understand me LOL.
I really want to purchase a better graphics card, but I really don't know what to get! Anyone here know anything more than me, specifically somewhere other than apple uk, so I can compare prices.
I notice ATI website says they have a 9200 mac addition, I can't find any info on this care, I am guessing apple has them because you can upgrade G5s when purchasing, but they don't sell them separately.
I look forward to the inevitable piss taking
However since ownig Unreal Tournment and other games I feel a bit of a boost from the standard graphics card in my G5 would be of great benifit.
I appriciate there is not a lot out there for Macs when it comes to these types of upgrade choice, but I toook myself off on my merry way to Mikro Avika in London to purhcase said card.
I walked away with an ATI 9000 pro mac addition and toddled my way home all excitable like. It specifically said for AGP equipped macs with 10.2 and above, well chuffed I thought.
Gets it home and the connectors are physically different to the card thats in there, around a CM shorter.
I am well pissed off. It would appear the AGP changes? Or something weird has gone on, so now I have to pay to go back into london to return this card.
I am looking on the apple store where the same card is for sale only it sayf for G4s or G5s well now I am confused because it appearsd to be precisely the same card, so do I buy it??
Well I phoned apple America, because its too late for UK and I am keen, they sent me to four different people, no one even got to asking what my problem was, I just think they didn;t understand me LOL.
I really want to purchase a better graphics card, but I really don't know what to get! Anyone here know anything more than me, specifically somewhere other than apple uk, so I can compare prices.
I notice ATI website says they have a 9200 mac addition, I can't find any info on this care, I am guessing apple has them because you can upgrade G5s when purchasing, but they don't sell them separately.
I look forward to the inevitable piss taking
Gary,
There are different types of AGP and the cards can be incompatible, but generally this is becuase the cutouts in the connector do not match the slot rather than a difference in size.
The various types of connector are shown at http://www.ati.com/support/faq/agpchart.html but your card should look like this:
which is a universal connector and should fit all AGP slots. So I am as confused as you.
The other issue is that the 9000 is quite old and might not be that much better than what you currently have. If you are looking at games like UT2003 and beyond you should really try to stretch for a 9800. Not so much because you must have the latest card to run these games but if you are going to upgrade you need to jump a few generations to really notice a big difference.
BTW 9800s should get a lot cheaper very shortly as Mac versions of the new gnerations ATI and nVIDIA chipsets come out.
Matthew
There are different types of AGP and the cards can be incompatible, but generally this is becuase the cutouts in the connector do not match the slot rather than a difference in size.
The various types of connector are shown at http://www.ati.com/support/faq/agpchart.html but your card should look like this:
which is a universal connector and should fit all AGP slots. So I am as confused as you.
The other issue is that the 9000 is quite old and might not be that much better than what you currently have. If you are looking at games like UT2003 and beyond you should really try to stretch for a 9800. Not so much because you must have the latest card to run these games but if you are going to upgrade you need to jump a few generations to really notice a big difference.
BTW 9800s should get a lot cheaper very shortly as Mac versions of the new gnerations ATI and nVIDIA chipsets come out.
Matthew
Garyi,
Tinkering with your graphics card eh? You'll be buying a PC next.
Actually, now that you've discovered the proper use of a home computer i.e. killing stuff, I don't see how you can go on with this Mac obsession.
S
Tinkering with your graphics card eh? You'll be buying a PC next.
Actually, now that you've discovered the proper use of a home computer i.e. killing stuff, I don't see how you can go on with this Mac obsession.
S