From: "Andrew McCall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: New Mac IIci User! Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 11:24:27 +0100
I have also read that I can get the most out of my machine if I add an internal NUBUS video card, again, I might as well look out for "the top of the range" card for my machine - so what card should I be looking for?
I should save this to my Notepad so that I can just paste it in every so often. :-)
The best NuBus video card made was the Radius Thunder IV GX line. Before I go any further let me warn you about confusing names. There was also a Thunder II line and a SuperMac Thunder 24 line and various similar names. Very minor differences in the name can denote a very different product with radically different performance and characteristics.
Anyway, there were four cards in the Thunder IV GX line by Radius, the 1600, the 1360, the 1152 and the Radius Thunder 24/GT. Notice that the last card has a radically different name, yet it is the same card, turning the earlier paragraph on its head.
The first three cards are identical except for (respectively) decreasing amounts of VRAM. The number is the first number in the highest resolution which the card supports at 24 bit color. They all support resolutions up to 1600 X 1200, but the lesser models won't manage millions of colors all the way up to that monster resolution. These three cards also all come with an attached daughter board which sports four DSP coprocessors meant to speed Photoshop operations. This daughter card had the product name of PhotoEngine.
The Thunder 24/GT is identical to the Thunder IV GX 1152, except that it lacks the PhotoEngine daughter card. Pull the daughter card off of an 1152 and you have a 24/GT. That's the only difference.
The PhotoEngine software doesn't work with PowerPCs and doesn't play well past about OS 7.6 or maybe 7.5.5 so pulling the daughter card off to save power and reduce heat in the machine is a good idea anyway--except if you're running a stock IIci and plan to use Photoshop.
All that said, you'll be lucky to find one of these cards. They have entered the realm of rare and expensive. Prices, the last time I saw one sold, were between $100 and $200. Although I did find one at Goodwill for $5 within the last two years... They originally retailed for thousands of dollars. When they were discontinued, Radius's clearance price on the "low-end" Thunder 24/GT was $495.
Almost as good or maybe as good is the Villagetronic MacPicasso 340. The 320 is nothing to write home about, but the 340 gives the Radius card a run for its money. This card might still be available from Sonnet. They were selling them when all other NuBus products had vanished from the Earth.
The above cards were considered "professional" cards which gave the very best Photoshop performance and commanded thousands of dollars in price because it was worth it to professionals for the time saved. In the affordable realm, there were contemporary cards which were considered "consumer" cards. These were much less expensive and yielded somewhat lesser performance.
The first card to consider is the Radius Precision Color Pro 24 line. These included the XP, XK and something else, X?. You can find these kicking around for $10 - $15 and they're pretty decent cards. Note that there was a Precision Color, without the "Pro" which is an earlier, slower and much longer card. Avoid the non-Pro. The Pro is a 6.75" long Nubus card. Again, the difference in the models (XK, XP, etc.) is the amount of VRAM.
Similar in performance was the E-Machines Futura II card. This came in SX, LX and MX varieties. Again, there was a Futura without the II and it should be avoided--actually many Futura's without the II. If you get the latest Futura II SX/DSP card there is a connector on board which can take an Ethernet daughter card. This will let you put video and ethernet in just one NuBus slot. However, the ethernet portion freezes the machine if Open Transport tries to load, so it's Classic networking only if you want the Ethernet daughter card. The video card by itself is fine.
There was a guy on Ebay (may still be) going by the name of Macmetex. I suspect that he ended up with the CRA Systems/Radius Vintage stock and was clearing it out. He had and may still have a bunch of the Futura II SX cards and some of the ethernet daughter cards.
SuperMac didn't really have a card in the same generation as the ones mentioned above, because Radius bought SuperMac before that generation of video card. Later Radius also bought E-Machines.
Another big player was Raster Ops, but I'm just not familiar with their products. They probably had a card or cards comparable to the above cards but I don't know what it was. It is also possible that Focus Enhancements/Lapis had something in the same ballpark, but again, I don't know about it.
There is also a bewildering array of video cards which came out before the above mentioned cards, but the ones I mentioned above are probably the best performers you'll find.
Jeff Walther
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