ATI Radeon 9800 Pro for Mac (OEM) 128MB Version
Other World Computing recently put on sale an OEM 128MB version of the card for $179. I sprang for it so I can improve rendering in Motion 2 (which I have yet to buy).
Recent ATI video cards have been noisy, and this card is no exception. Its fan has an irritating whine that is very noticeable when running my dual 2GHz G5 PowerMac. There are two solutions on the market to deal with it; an Artic Cooler ATI Silencer and a replacement fan from Verax. I’m currently leaning toward the latter, even though it is grossly overpriced. The fan costs $79, almost half the cost of the card.
Accelerate Your Mac is a good website to find information on this kind of thing. They have instructions for using the cheaper Artic Cooler VGA Silencer to cool this card. But one has to mod a bracket to get it to work, and that was something I did not want to do. I saw an ATI Silencer at MicroCenter this weekend, but I am not sure whether this specialized version of the VGA Cooler would be easier to install that the original. I haven’t been able to find anything on the web about installing this new card.
I think I ran Cinebench with the new card and did see an improvement, though I’m not sure what I did with that data. If I can find it, I’ll post it and data from runs that used my older Radeon 9600 Pro card. For the moment, since I haven’t bought Motion 2 yet and still have to get the Verax fan, I pulled the card out of my dual G5 PowerMac and am running using the original 9600. I’d rather have a quiet machine if I really don’t need the extra performance; by the time I do, I hope to have the quieter Verax fan installed.
Recent ATI video cards have been noisy, and this card is no exception. Its fan has an irritating whine that is very noticeable when running my dual 2GHz G5 PowerMac. There are two solutions on the market to deal with it; an Artic Cooler ATI Silencer and a replacement fan from Verax. I’m currently leaning toward the latter, even though it is grossly overpriced. The fan costs $79, almost half the cost of the card.
Accelerate Your Mac is a good website to find information on this kind of thing. They have instructions for using the cheaper Artic Cooler VGA Silencer to cool this card. But one has to mod a bracket to get it to work, and that was something I did not want to do. I saw an ATI Silencer at MicroCenter this weekend, but I am not sure whether this specialized version of the VGA Cooler would be easier to install that the original. I haven’t been able to find anything on the web about installing this new card.
I think I ran Cinebench with the new card and did see an improvement, though I’m not sure what I did with that data. If I can find it, I’ll post it and data from runs that used my older Radeon 9600 Pro card. For the moment, since I haven’t bought Motion 2 yet and still have to get the Verax fan, I pulled the card out of my dual G5 PowerMac and am running using the original 9600. I’d rather have a quiet machine if I really don’t need the extra performance; by the time I do, I hope to have the quieter Verax fan installed.
posted by Andy Foster at
5:40 PM
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