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Yes, but you never tested the 8500 128MB 128bit (a "mythical" beast), that is the fastest card currently supported in MorphOS, nor the 8500LE/9100 (different names, same board) which is the second one. If you look at the performances on paper there is some difference, and there was in MorphOS as well up to the relase 1.4.5. With 2.0 the drivers for the 92x0 gained more in performance than the 8500, so the gap was almost closed. But still, if the 8500 was exploited in MorphOS as much as the 9250 is, you would see some difference...

Kind regards,
Andrea

@guruman
I think the same, 8500 is better than 9000 but It's very difficult to find a 8500 with 128mb vram, and also there are problems to find the right ROM for Macintosh to use it with 128Mb (ROM Mac for these cards are for 64Mb version)

So my idea is that at the moment It's better to find a Radeon 9200 or 9250 with 128 or 256Mb and flash it for Mac.
Also find now a 9800 for use in a future version of MorphOS: these cards are dramatically powerful (few of these cards are also usable with Pegasos I and II)

ciao

[ Edited by Divinity on 2010/9/12 21:03 ]

The 9000, 9200, and 9250 are missing some of the features present on the 8500 (we've covered this before).
Whether or not these missing features would have a significant affect under MorphOS is debatable.
The 8500LE and the 9250 are clocked lower, so they would be slower.
I was under the impression that the only variant with a 64bit memory bus was the 9200SE, but I could be wrong.

> I was under the impression that the only variant with a 64bit memory bus
> was the 9200SE, but I could be wrong.

There're also 9250(SE) cards with 64bit memory bus.

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That was originally the case but they eventually began labelling the 9250SEs as 9250. Some of these false 9250's don't even have the actual memory interface written on the box or the card itself. These cards were only made by third parties not ATI themselves. I believe Diamond Multimedia and Sapphire had 9250s that were actually just the SE card. The majority of the time you will see something like "Radeon 9250 128MB 64-bit" written on the sticker on the card or on the box. I'm sure most of the new ones that are still sold in stores are these neutered 9250s.

So the only card we can be 100% sure of having a 128bit memory interface with 128MB (that will re-flash correctly) is the Radeon 9000?
Looking at available cards on the internet, I'm finding 9000s that are labeled as 64bit as well.

You'd need a Radeon 9000 Pro 128MB with the little "Mac switch" on the upper left section of the card. That narrows it down to pretty much only ATI branded cards. Not too many of those running around at a decent price.

There isn't a huge difference in real world performance between all of these cards. Under OSX the Mac branded 9000 pro performs within 1FPS of the 8500 while playing RTCW. At the higher resolutions it actually begins to, ever so slightly, outperform the 8500.

Tomorrow I'll test a 9250 64-bit vs a 9250 128-bit card and see if there is any difference. I bet it will be minimal if at all.

Here is the comparison between the cards. I didn't expect such a difference between the 9250 and the 8500/9000 Pro. I can graph the higher resolutions too if anyone wants them.

The 7000 actually beats both 9250's by 5 to 9fps if we were to look at outdoor scenes only. Overall if the fancy lighting is disabled the 7000 begins to pull away from the 9250 64-bit even more so.

There does *seem* to be some impact from the 64-bit memory interface of the lower end 9250. Wish I still had a 128MB 64-bit 9250 to be sure.

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