PM 9600/200: what are my CPU upgrade options today?

[kerobaros]

The most common boards I see on eBay are Sonnet Crescendo G3s, usually 300 MHz. Are these the best cards available now, or should I be holding out for another brand? (Newer Tech, Vimage, etc)

I most commonly see the 512K cache model, but sometimes I see a 1M cache pop up. Does the cache make much of a difference in normal usage?

Are the G4 upgrades so rare as to be unobtanium now? Are they even worth the premium I expect them to sell for?

 

[waynestewart]

Sonnet made good cards.

1mb cache does make a difference. I’d definitely hold out for that. I’d probably look for a 400mhz. They come up often enough. Faster than that is a bit harder to find. G4s don’t add much unless you’re running OSX.

 

[Unknown_K]

G3-400 or 500mhz 1MB cache Sonnets are what I use. G4's are pricey and you can get a whole G4 system for the price of the card alone.

1MB cache does make a difference over 512K. To get the most out of the 9600 you will probably want to get a decent SCSI or IDE card with the CPU upgrade and a USB card for optical mice.

 

[kerobaros]

Thank you both for the info. A G4 really doesn't help much with OS 9, huh? Could I even run OS X on a 9600 with a G4 in it?

As far as a storage solution goes: would a separate SCSI card be appreciably faster than the onboard SCSI-2? As far as bang for the buck goes, I assumed a cheap re-flashed SATA card would be my best bet, but I'm eager to learn more.

 

[Unknown_K]

Storage really depends on what you are going to run, and what parts you have on hand or can get cheap. A 68pin (or SCA drive with adapter) would be much faster then anything the unit shipped with (or 50 pin SCSI substitute). IDE cards are common and so are the drives (or they used to be anyway). SATA cards are harder to find but drives are common. I use SATA drives on newer systems and stock IDE/SCSI so I would probably just use a SCSI card and drive from my shelf of parts, but other PCI PPC systems I have do have ATA cards.

There are hacks to run OSX on a 8600 but I have no idea why you would want to. The days where it was economical and worthwhile to do that are long gone. OS 9.1 on that system would rock but so would OS7.6/8.1 which a Sonnet supports. It depends on what software you want to run and how much RAM you have.

 

[kerobaros]

Well, I have a Radeon 7x00, I think a 7200, in the machine right now, so my understanding is that I'm stuck on 9.2.2, as that's what ATI required for their drivers. I used OS9Helper to update from 9.1 to 9.2.2 already. I have 384MB of RAM in it now, I believe, and would like to eventually max it out, but I don't have any pressing need to do that, just the desire to trick it out as far as I can.

 

[Unknown_K]

384MB is plenty for anything you need to run on OS 9. Radeon 7xxx are good as well.

I keep some older video cards around that work well in OS 7/8 on early PPC PCI machines since I have quite a few (8600, couple 7500's, 8500, 3 or so 9600's, a 9500, 6400).

Reminds me I need to pull out my 9500 and check it out soon (I rotate machines off the shelf to make sure they work and to remind me on their setup). 8500 and 9500's are so fragile.

 

[trag]

Radeon 7000 works fine with OS 9.1.  And I"ve had success moving the drivers into 8.6 by hand.  The card will also work in 7.6.1 but probably without 3D support.  

Radeon 9200 might require 9.2.2. 

I don't think there was a Radeon 7200 PCI for the Mac, but I'm willing to learn that I'm mistaken.

 

[kerobaros]

I'm pretty sure it's a re-flashed PC video card. Has VGA and DVI ports, bought it off eBay. So you're probably right on there never being an official Mac 7200.

 

[nglevin]

"Radeon 7200" was a rebranded original Radeon with SDR memory instead of DDR memory, from back when ATI's number-something-zero-zero scheme was supposed to correspond to DirectX API support.

Although that was a bit fuzzy, as the 9000 and 9200 were DX9 compatible but didn't support the full set of DX9 APIs. Not sure why that was.

Mac OS 9 supports OpenGL 1.x with ARB extensions. Apple's OpenGL 1.2.1 system extension is allegedly a wrapper around their proprietary graphics API (RAVE), but the ATI OpenGL driver for the 9200 does support 1.3 and 1.4 features.

Haven't really dug in with CWP to see exactly what. I imagine it would be identical to what the ATI cards support for OpenGL on Windows.

 

[Zippy Zapp]

A G4 really doesn't help much with OS 9, huh?

It can if you have an application that takes advantage of it.  There are plugins for Photoshop 6 at the time that sped up quite a few operations.  IIRC there were quite a few apps that took advantage of the Velocity engine AKA AltiVec.  SoundJam, iTunes, many other apps I recall being much faster on G4 with velocity engine enhancement then without.

 

[kerobaros]

Well, I wound up acquiring a Sonnet Crescendo G4 450/1M and installing it, and I'll be putting it through its paces soon. Thanks for the advice, everyone.