I have a PowerMac G4 (Sawtooth) that came with the ATI Rage Pro 128. I am thinking of taking advantage of ATI's Trade-Up program. Can someone tell me the differences between the Radeon 8500 and the Radeon 9000?
The Radeon 9000 is a newer chip based off of the Radeon 8500 core. The main difference is that the 8500 has two texture units for each of its four pixel pipelines and the 9000 only has one. The Mac Radeon 8500 has a core clock speed of 250MHz and uses 250MHz 128-bit DDR memory. The Mac Radeon 9000 Pro has a slightly faster 270MHz core and uses 275MHz 128-bit DDR memory. Despite it's core and memory speed advantage, the Radeon 9000 Pro is not quite as fast as the 8500 since it has only one texture unit per pixel pipeline. The Radeon 8500 is faster, but costs $50 more than the 9000 Pro. Both cards are dual display, but the 9000 Pro comes with two digital connectors, one ADC and one DVI. The 8500 has one digital connector (DVI) and one VGA connector. The 9000 Pro also comes with a DVI-to-VGA convertor if your worried about it not working with CRT monitors.
My personal advice is if you're buying this card for gaming purposes, you can't go wrong with the 8500. If you intend to use this card for 2D and desktop publishing, save a few bucks and go with the 9000 Pro.
If you have two digital displays you want to hook up, you'd also want to go with the 9000 Pro. Even if both are DVI, an ADC-to-DVI connector costs $40.
Have an Apple flat panel with ADC? Going with the 9000 Pro will save you ALOT of money. The last time I checked, DVI-to-ADC connectors cost $150. That's the full price of a 9000 Pro.
Kecksy, Thank you for your thorough answer. I am thinking of dual displays (CRT type). It sounds like I will go for the Radeon 9000 Pro.
While on the subject of ATI, I am wondering if you would know the differences between the XCLAIM? TV USB EDITION and the XCLAIM? TV? I am reading the differences on the ATI web site, however, I am not sure I understand "External TV tuner with Universal Serial Bus (USB) connection."
<strong> the differences between the XCLAIM? TV USB EDITION and the XCLAIM? TV? I am reading the differences on the ATI web site, however, I am not sure I understand "External TV tuner with Universal Serial Bus (USB) connection."</strong><hr></blockquote>
Those products are both without OS X support and, for practical purposes, discontinued. ATI says they will not write OS X drivers for the USB model. The other one is even older and really shouldn't even be on their site.
This is really quite tragic as I think ATI has done a better job of providing TV into Mac than anyone else. I still don't see anyone else providing real time Closed Caption capturing to text files and Hot Word Auto Activation like those two products do in OS 9.
Comments
<a href="http://mirror.ati.com/products/builtdesktopmac.html"; target="_blank">http://mirror.ati.com/products/builtdesktopmac.html</a>;
My personal advice is if you're buying this card for gaming purposes, you can't go wrong with the 8500. If you intend to use this card for 2D and desktop publishing, save a few bucks and go with the 9000 Pro.
If you have two digital displays you want to hook up, you'd also want to go with the 9000 Pro. Even if both are DVI, an ADC-to-DVI connector costs $40.
Have an Apple flat panel with ADC? Going with the 9000 Pro will save you ALOT of money. The last time I checked, DVI-to-ADC connectors cost $150. That's the full price of a 9000 Pro.
While on the subject of ATI, I am wondering if you would know the differences between the XCLAIM? TV USB EDITION and the XCLAIM? TV? I am reading the differences on the ATI web site, however, I am not sure I understand "External TV tuner with Universal Serial Bus (USB) connection."
<strong> the differences between the XCLAIM? TV USB EDITION and the XCLAIM? TV? I am reading the differences on the ATI web site, however, I am not sure I understand "External TV tuner with Universal Serial Bus (USB) connection."</strong><hr></blockquote>
Those products are both without OS X support and, for practical purposes, discontinued. ATI says they will not write OS X drivers for the USB model. The other one is even older and really shouldn't even be on their site.
This is really quite tragic as I think ATI has done a better job of providing TV into Mac than anyone else. I still don't see anyone else providing real time Closed Caption capturing to text files and Hot Word Auto Activation like those two products do in OS 9.
[ 09-30-2002: Message edited by: Multimedia ]</p>