Beige G3 Mini Tower W/Radeon 7000 PCI

05-28-2003, 10:40 PM

I am currently getting 2 FPS using a G3 Mini Tower with a 533Mhz G4 Zif accellerator and a Radeon 7000 PCI card. I am running OSX 10.2.6 with QT 6.2. The system is stable and runs great other than my screen savers. Games like Airburst seem to work OK. I have tried the ATI 7000 Firmware update with no luck. Is it just this machine? The finder speed is fairly quick. I will say that the Radeon does not seem any faster than the built Rage II. Both give around 2 FPS.

Michael Babin · 05-29-2003, 08:20 AM

Sounds like you're getting the software renderer for some reason (instead of an OpenGL hardware-accelerated renderer). First, try running the Aquarium application (instead of the screen saver) in a window and try it on either monitor (I'm assuming a multi-monitor set-up based on your comparison of two video cards) to see if the problem occurs on both monitors or only one. If the problem occurs on only one card, then I'd suspect a driver problem. You might check the ATI site for any driver updates for your system.

Also, what size monitor(s) do you use? At what resolution? How many colors? To eliminate the possibility of lack of VRAM causing the problem, try using thousands of colors at a resolution of 1024x768 or less. If the Radeon 7000 has 16MB or more of VRAM, it shouldn't be a problem.

05-29-2003, 10:16 PM

I reinstalled OSX 10.2.6 from scratch and did not load the ATI Retail drivers and the system flys. I agree that it must have been using the SW renderer but I could not see how to check it. The standard OSX drivers (I heard they were written by ATI orignally - before going opensource)

thanks.

Michael Babin · 05-30-2003, 09:52 AM

Great to hear that your problem is solved!

Sorry to hear that it took a fresh system install to do it.

05-28-2003, 10:40 PM	#1
Unregistered Guest Posts: n/a	Beige G3 Mini Tower W/Radeon 7000 PCI I am currently getting 2 FPS using a G3 Mini Tower with a 533Mhz G4 Zif accellerator and a Radeon 7000 PCI card. I am running OSX 10.2.6 with QT 6.2. The system is stable and runs great other than my screen savers. Games like Airburst seem to work OK. I have tried the ATI 7000 Firmware update with no luck. Is it just this machine? The finder speed is fairly quick. I will say that the Radeon does not seem any faster than the built Rage II. Both give around 2 FPS.

05-29-2003, 10:16 PM	#3
Unregistered Guest Posts: n/a	All is working now I reinstalled OSX 10.2.6 from scratch and did not load the ATI Retail drivers and the system flys. I agree that it must have been using the SW renderer but I could not see how to check it. The standard OSX drivers (I heard they were written by ATI orignally - before going opensource) thanks.

05-29-2003, 08:20 AM	#2
Michael Babin Mac Development Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Rowlett, Texas Posts: 199	Sounds like you're getting the software renderer for some reason (instead of an OpenGL hardware-accelerated renderer). First, try running the Aquarium application (instead of the screen saver) in a window and try it on either monitor (I'm assuming a multi-monitor set-up based on your comparison of two video cards) to see if the problem occurs on both monitors or only one. If the problem occurs on only one card, then I'd suspect a driver problem. You might check the ATI site for any driver updates for your system. Also, what size monitor(s) do you use? At what resolution? How many colors? To eliminate the possibility of lack of VRAM causing the problem, try using thousands of colors at a resolution of 1024x768 or less. If the Radeon 7000 has 16MB or more of VRAM, it shouldn't be a problem.

05-30-2003, 09:52 AM	#4
Michael Babin Mac Development Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Rowlett, Texas Posts: 199	Great to hear that your problem is solved! Sorry to hear that it took a fresh system install to do it.