ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Graphics in a Dual 2 GHz Power Mac G5--How Fast Is It?

We use our Power Mac, in part, to...ah...er...investigate...3D games. Now the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro that comes with the stock D-2 G5 is no slouch but we just had to get the fastest graphics card available for it, an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. ATI makes a Mac edition as well as a Wintel edition. The Wintel edition just received a speed and memory bump so it now carries the "XT" suffix, a jump ahead of Macs as usual.

The specs for the retail Mac version are:

• 128MB DDR memory
  
• Dual Integrated 10-bit per channel 400MHz DACs
  
• Integrated 165MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI compliant and HDCP ready)
  
• Integrated TV-Out support up to 1024x768 resolution
  
• Multiple display connections
  
• DVI-I port
  
• VGA port
  
• S-Video port
  
• DVI-I to VGA & S-Video to Composite adapters included
• Runs in 2x and 4x AGP slots.

Apple also sells the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro as a CTO option with the dual 2 GHz Power Mac G5. It runs only in the faster 8x AGP Pro speed slot. It has an ADC port instead of VGA along with the DVI video port so it doesn't need the $99 DVI-ADC adapter if, like us, one has a recent Apple LCD display. The other advantage is that it is only $300 as a CTO option instead of $399 so it has a $198 cost advantage unless you sell the stock 9600 Pro when you buy a retail version.

We read on a forum that Apple's CTO version has a very loud fan and its graphics chip is clocked slower than the retail version but can not confirm either. Also, the CTO version can not use the ATi Display application to enable custom settings.

The choice is yours. We opted for the retail version partly because the shipping date of our CTO D-2 G5 kept getting pushed back, partly because its 2-4x AGP connector will work in older Power Macs, partly because of the additional software features and partly because we now have a 9600 Pro as a backup or to sell alone or with our D-2 G5 in the future.

We downloaded and installed the latest (v1.1) Mac drivers from ATI's support web site. Then we shut down, replaced the 9600 Pro with the 9800 Pro and booted up. We re-ran our suite of speed tests as in our Power Mac G5 review. The salient results are posted below:

The 9800 Pro tested generally faster as expected. But it excels only in Xbench's Quartz Graphics test and in Quake III Arena's frame rate test.

There are several issues with using the Apple DVI to ADC adapter with our Power Mac G5. First, we can not startup the G5 from the static switch on our Apple LCD display. The switch glows but nothing else happens--we have to use the start button on the G5 itself. This is also true when waking the the G5 from deep sleep, a glow but the G5 does not respond. Second, we have had several instances where the monitor does not awaken when the G5 comes out of deep sleep. A reboot is required to get video.

In summary, if you are a diehard 3D gamer, then the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card is for you. If not, you might want to skip it and save $300-500.