Product ReviewsGraphics cards
Apple's total - and completely inexplicable - reliance on ATI as its sole supplier of graphics cards has been something of a problem for Mac users in recent years. It's been particularly irritating in the last year or so, as we've seen PC users enjoying powerful new 3D graphics cards from companies such as nVidia and 3dfx, while we were stuck with variations on the ageing RAGE 128 card. But, to give credit where it's due, ATI has redeemed itself in considerable style with the release of its Radeon card. The Radeon has been available as a build-to-order option on Apple's Web site for a couple of months, but it was only available if you were buying a brand new Mac. People who wanted to buy one as an upgrade for an existing machine have had to wait for the release of this retail version of the card to arrive. There are a couple of important differences between the retail version - called the Radeon Mac Edition - and the OEM version that Apple supplies with the latest Power Macs. The Radeon Mac Edition has a standard analogue VGA port for use with CRT monitors. But instead of the ADC (Apple Display Connector) interface that is included on Apple's OEM version of the card, this version has a DVI interface. This means that the Radeon Mac Edition won't work with Apple's latest flat-panel monitors, which require the ADC rather than the DVI connector used by the rest of the industry - and which Apple also used on its own monitors until very recently. Yes, it's confusing, but that's down to Apple trying to reinvent the wheel. Besides, anyone buying the Radeon Mac Edition as an upgrade for their existing Mac will already have either a VGA or DVI monitor, so this shouldn't be a big problem. The other significant difference between the two versions of the card is that the Radeon Mac Edition also has
The Radeon's real attraction, though, is its performance. Any test of 3D performance should involve Quake III Arena, as this is one of the most demanding - and visually impressive - games ever released. So we took a 500MHz Power Mac G4 with a RAGE 128 Pro card and then upgraded it with the Radeon to see what difference this made to the machine's performance when playing Quake III. We started off with the game's 'Normal' quality setting and then modified the colour depth to 32-bit colour, rather than the default 16-bit, as you really need 32-bit colour to see Quake III in all its visual splendour. All the game's other graphics options were left at their default settings. There wasn't a particularly huge difference between the two cards at 640 x 480 pixel resolution, with the RAGE 128 Pro managing 47fps (frames per second) compared with 50fps for the Radeon. But the Radeon really pulls ahead as soon as you start to increase the resolution. At 800 x 600, the RAGE 128 Pro dropped to 37fps, while the Radeon barely wavered at 49.8fps. The Radeon also held up very well at 1024 x 768, only slipping slightly to 46.8fps, while the RAGE 128 Pro slumped all the way down to 22fps. So if you've got a RAGE 128 or RAGE 128 Pro in your Mac you can look forward to a pretty impressive performance boost by upgrading to the Radeon. The card actually has a maximum resolution of 1920 x 1440, which will allow its TV output to work with high-definition TV sets. The idea of seeing Quake III running on that sort of display is tempting, but obviously you'll need more than a 500MHz Power Mac to get decent game performance at that sort of resolution. The only disadvantage with the Radeon Mac Edition is that it's currently only available in an AGP version, so owners of older Macs that have PCI slots will have to look at alternatives such as the PCI-based Voodoo5 5500. There may be a PCI version of the Radeon released early next year, but ATI hasn't made a definite decision about this yet. We weren't wildly impressed by ATI's documentation, which contains a number of errors, such as details of how to install this AGP card in a 'typical PCI Mac'. But there's no doubt that the Radeon is the fastest graphics card currently available for the Mac, and is pretty much a must-have upgrade for games fans. By Cliff Joseph
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