supernova777
Well-known member
trag: no offence but i hope u are wrong! the only way to know for sure is for me to get my hands on a *real* offical mac edition 7000 or 7500 card!!!
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yea the proformance card is one i was reading about but i havent seen one or had any real world experience with it.. but i did own a matrox Mystique back in the day in 1997 on my supermicro P6SBA board + pentium II 300mhz! i remember the reputation matrox had for 2d cards, im assuming that the proformance was such a type of card, offering 2d gains for working within a gui (MacOS/Windows). i was just hoping there was a repository or stash of all this related info that someone could point me in the direction of.. link me to.I have a Proformance III in my S900 Frankenmac and I'm happy with it, but I don't know how it would compare to other cards. There's not much chance of you finding one in any case.
Much of the information you want has come and gone. The video card flashers/hackers developed much of this stuff but many of their forums are now gone (themacelite) or very hard to find (maddog). Even the compatibility database and many of the older articles at xlr8yourmac.com are gone or hard to access.
As to video benchmarking in Classic, i think MacBench 5.0 is probably a good choice.
AGP is a superset of PCI. AGP consists of: a dedicated PCI bus, plus a very high throughput sideband "port" to system memory. An AGP card can share its PCI bus with other PCI devices such as TV tuner and IEEE 1394 controller (I think at least one model ATI All-in-Wonder had these). An AGP socket can be used as a conventional PCI host (unless system firmware interferes). Without driver acceleration, an AGP GPU is "just another PCI graphics controller". AGP GPU is fed instructions and data through its Accelerated Port, but it gets signalled/interrupted/notified "here comes a new load of instructions for you, open-up your mouth and get it" through PCI.PCI card into a sawtooth's AGP slot via a riser/adapter and it WORKED!!
so PCI + AGP arent that drastically different?
That's pretty much right. Those ATI cards that carried additional PCI peripherals onboard were sort of infamous for causing issues with certain PC chipsets (VIA boards in particular) because they incorporated a PCI-PCI bridge chip on them to create additional virtual "slots" that freaked out said defective motherboards because they didn't expect the full PCI functionality to be used in the AGP slot and cut some corners. But, generally, the theory is indeed sound.I posted my understanding. I think I am correct, though I am not at expect, do not believe me.
well thats just it Bunn; most people dont have time to test alot of things; which is why im making a thread asking for those special people that happen to be in the right place at the right time who feel like sharing info for the benefit of all - i would gladly test if i had one - i'll have to acquire one ani also wanted to know if my hunch was correct before i go and buy something that i otherwise would have no valuable use for but i think i shared a bunch of valuable info here to make up for my shameless personal motives. hahaYes, it supports accel in 9.2. AFAIK, all non-CI AGP GPUs do, although you may have to add extensions with certain cards.
I honestly don't have the time or inclination right now to install 8.6 on a Sawtooth and test, but given that the PCI 7000 was supported back in 7.6 I think it's probably a reasonable assumption.
another reason i made this thread; because ive had to go thru that process of "hacking them into working in 8.6" myelf a few times and id really love to get a document outlining the process together rather then finding myself blundering thru it 10 more times in the dark.Oh. I had lost track of the original question. The 7000 has drivers for OS9. You can kind of hack them into working in 8.6. The card will work in 7.6, but I'm not sure about the drivers. Hmmm, these memories are probably regarding 3d acceleration, though. When I'm at the correct computer I'll post some notes I wrote back around 2003.
cory: my personal interest is for ensured compatibility with software that has not been updated since the days of 8.6 being the current choice of os. software that was made by a company that was out of business before mac os 9 ever hit the shelves.As a side-thought: Is there a reason you're looking to do this with 8.6 specifically? On any Power Macintosh, you should easily be able to get enough resources to run a cleaned up Mac OS 9.x system. If that provides you better compatibility with GPUs that are easier to find, then why not do that?
If the Rage128 series cards do what you want in 8.6 specifically, if you have a reason to run it, then why not just use those cards? Especially if you're not gaming and you don't specifically need DVI out, etc.
Even with Quickdraw acceleration in Apple-bundled/supplied cards, windowing on Classic Mac OS was never that great. It was always my experience on my iMac G3 (Rev A) that it worked but that it was slow. 9 on my blue-and-white G3 may have been better by way of the Rage128, but Mac OS X was a huge step up in that aspect, even unaccelerated or not-very-well-accelerated.
thanks for sharing - thats realy cool i vaguely remember those days 1997 etc i had a performa 6400 back then i was kind of clueless then and probably didnt even understand that i could upgrade the video or add a sound card.I run an ATI XClaimVR 128 in my beige G3. Its basically a PCI Mac version of the ATI All-in-Wonder 128. Uses ATI driver extensions for both QuickDraw and QuickDraw 3D acceleration. It might even support OpenGL, never tried it.
``ATI's Xclaim VR 128 turns any Mac into a multimedia powerhouse,'' saidMichael Litt, Mac product manager, ATI Technologies Inc. ``By adding the
Xclaim VR 128, Mac users now have the ability to capture and edit video tapes,
play the latest video games, use interactive TV and full-screen Quicktime
video, or output a presentation or video game to a large screen television.''
With use of the Xclaim VR 128, it is no longer necessary to add a
dedicated video compression board, which can cost upwards of $700, to obtain
high-quality video capture. The ability to perform real-time video capture up
to a resolution of 640x480, at 60 fields per second or 30 fps on an Apple G3,
makes the Xclaim VR 128 ideal for high-quality home video editing, as well as
adding video material to presentations or web page designs.
The Xclaim VR 128, and state-of-the-art video
The Xclaim VR 128 uses ATI's RAGE Theater video decode/encode chip,
to provide high quality video-in and TV-out display. The RAGE Theater video
decoder produces crystal clear computer digital video images from analog
sources, such as cameras, VCRs and tuners, while the video encoder delivers
the highest quality flicker-free images to the TV, raising analog television
to near-digital quality.
The Xclaim VR 128 is ideal for the education market because it delivers
crisp and flicker-free computer images on TV screens, including text display,
and empowers users to display multimedia presentations on large-dimension TVs,
or classroom projection screens.
The TV-out quality of the Xclaim VR 128 is also enhanced by use of the
RAGE Theater's exclusive signal noise reduction circuitry, which results in
significantly less high frequency vertical and horizontal noise. The Xclaim VR
128 also accepts S-Video and Composite inputs, in NTSC, PAL and SECAM formats,
and for TV-out flexibility supports Composite, S-Video and SCART-RGB (for the
European market), NTSC and PAL standards.
The Xclaim VR 128 accelerates QuickTime playback capability, which
optimizes full-screen, full-motion viewing of QuickTime and MPEG movies. With
QuickTime 3.0, and new features such as a 4 tap filter, even reduced format
movies retrieved from the Internet can be scaled to full screen size with no
compromise of the original frame rate. With the Xclaim VR 128, QuickTime
movies and presentations can also be output to video tape or the latest
QuickDraw 3D game played on any TV screen.
The no-compromise 2D and 3D performance of the Xclaim VR 128
Based on ATI's next-generation accelerator chip, the RAGE 128 GL, the
Xclaim VR 128 features advanced 128-bit 3D architecture and 16MB of graphics
memory. The extensive feature set and raw performance of the Xclaim VR 128
takes real-world 2D and 3D business graphics, gaming and design applications
on the Mac to a new level of interactivity and quality.
The Xclaim VR 128's innovative architectural features results in stunning
visual effects such as alpha blending, fog, video textures, texture lighting,
reflections, shadows, LOD biasing and texture morphing.
Pricing and Availability
Xclaim VR 128 will be available in the first quarter of 1999 and is
priced at $229 SRP. Education pricing is available through distributors for
institutional and bookstore orders.