A number of you, like me have wondered about the ATI cards in our PCI Macs,
and the low benchmarks, etc. I got an ATI Radeon card, and finally resolved
all the issues (Can't open ATI display control panel) and also did my own
testing, using Nortons, Throughput, MacBench 3.0 a stopwatch, and my eyes.
First off, let me say that my expectations were obviously way to high. For
most stuff, I see no speedup. However, I can run some games I couldn't run
before. Plus, it will use Extreme in OSX. That, and it's the fastest card for
a PCI Mac, means I'm as satisfied as I can be, given the machines
limitations. I was curious about all the reports of "built in video",
benchmarking faster than vitually any card put in a PCI Mac. So, here's what
I saw. (My system specs listed at the end)
I ran the tests 1) using the ATI with acceleration off, 2) Accel on, 3)built
in video (disconnected monitor from ATI and plugged into built in card) I ran
video at 1152x870 @ 75Hz
I ran Nortons Video benchmarks without running the CPU, Disk or FPU tests.
Results:
ATI off 1:00:95 (stopwatch)
ATI on :58:44 (stopwatch)
Built in :58:36 (stopwatch) notice that it was indeed quickest
This was simple. I timed how long it took for Nortons to run the video tests.
Here's what Nortons reported for overall scores:
ATI off 75.7
ATI on 390.0
Built in 537.0
Interestingly, when I looked at the individual test items, It seemed that ATI
was faster in 6 of the 11 tests, and on three of them a whole lot quicker.
(Rectangles, Round/Rect & Scrolling) It would be interesting to see how they
weighted each test, and what each test actually was.
Just because, I ran the Video tests in MacBench 3.0 Results:
Graphics Mix Publishing Graphics Mix
ATI off 27.53 17.66
ATI on 96.23 63.72
Built in 63.59 69.07
The program didn't give individual test results, so could draw no conclusions.
Then I used Throughput, which test, well video throughput, I suspect. It
seems to time how long it moves data from Ram to Vram using 4 different
methods. Results:
CPU FPU AltiVec CopyBits
ATI off 23.6 43.9 43.7 43.3
ATI on 23.6 43.9 43.7 78.7
Built in 57.0 112.8 112.6 110.0
Well, what do you make of this?
So, here are my conclusions. The benchmarks may not be taxing the video
system hard enough to show the ATI cards potential. Everybody agrees that you
can really see the difference in 3D mode. Secondly, I think that the PCI bus
may be really limiting the cards potential. It's really too bad we can't
somehow hook up the card to the VRAM slots. I think it would really scream
then. (Maybe that's what an AGP port really is) Obviously the built in video
is pretty darn good. Look at how much faster it moves video to and from the
VRAM, vs. the ATI. I'm impressed with Apples stock video system. Comments
anyone?
STeve
My system:
8600 w/XLR8/G4/450, Sonnett Tempo Trio, ATI Radeon, 20" SuperMac monitor, 1
Gig ram, OS9.1, QT 6.02, CarbonLib 1.6, ATI update 2.10
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