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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Imac G3 & Gaming

sw - Aug 25, 2005 - 5:49 am

I have a imac G3/500 DV 2000 special addition (snow). I think it has a 8mb graphic card. Can I replace the card with a 16mb? If so can you advise where to purchase?

philippe99 - Aug 25, 2005 - 7:01 am

Sally, welcome to macosx.com

I'm quite sure that you cannot upgrade the videocard (or video ram) on this machine. (I have the tangerine DV model)

The quantity of Video ram is not the only factor that makes a good card or a better cumfort for playing games. The processor of the video card also plays an important role.

My G3 DV -your G3 snow- can play basic games, even the Sims1, but is completly outdated for recent games (Simes2, ZooTycoon, ...)

Modern games requires at least a ATI 9600 like in Emac or an ATI 9800 128MB Ram like in the G5

So I woukd advise you not to spend money on this G3 and keep it in use for basic Web/emails/simple games

I would not also advise you to buy an new iMac or eMac for gaming purposes only.
Buying a PS2, Xbox or GameCube is a better choice if you plan to play intensive games: these machines are dedicated for gaming only and the prices of the games are the same that the equivalent (when available) on macs

regards
Philippe

sw - Aug 25, 2005 - 7:18 am

Thanks Phillip. I thought so. Too bad, it's a great little machine anyway. We have PS2, Xbox and Gamecube but my kids bought Age of Mythology while we were at the mac store recently and opened the box before I could check out the system details. We have 3 macs. 500mh z imac G3 DV, 350mhzPowerPC G3 tower, and 350mhz PowerPC G4 tower. I've got plenty of memory on each and all are running OSX10.2.8 or greater. Any way I can soup one up enough to play games?

By the way. When I look on the system profiler on the imac I can't even tell what vidoe capacity or card I have. Is it built in the motherboard?

philippe99 - Aug 25, 2005 - 7:41 am

(1) Yes, if your "Snow" is like my "Tangerine" the video card is built in on the motherboard
(2) Well, I have two girls and they are more interested in the Sims, SuperMario than to AgeOfMythology other war games; so a GameCube is sufficient ;-)

(3) Well, it is not evident to me when I have to answer "No" to someone who came here to have an answer to a problem.
It is also not evident to people that a machine they bought for 1000$ three years ago is now too old to fit youth's requirements.
But this the true. I give my G3 to my daughter (she needs for school purposes) and bought a G5; this machine will be out of date in 2008 !
But I have to accept it !
On the other hand, I cannot say to someone she has opportunity to upgrade a machine I will not do the operation if I have myself this machine.

The only thing you can do is to install panther on the 500 DV (bought the retail discs form ebay for instance), but this will not solve the gaming problem, this will just give it a little gain in speed (panther is quicker on slow machine than Jaguar is)

A good site for games on mac is
http://www.insidemacgames.com/

About AgeOfMythology, this kind of games must run on your DV, while beeing not so choppy ? Do you try it ?

Philippe

sw - Aug 25, 2005 - 9:14 am

The good news is I only bought one (snow) of the three machines. Two were hand me downs from my husbands company. I'm thinking I should just buy a G5 at this point. I'd also like to get iLife up and running, make movies, burn discs, etc. I can't do this with the processors I have. Advice on which G5 I should get?

philippe99 - Aug 25, 2005 - 9:58 am

If you plan to add one day additional cards in your G5 (tv tuner, additional sound card), the Powermac G5 is the one.

I personllay bought two months ago an iMac G5 20'' with 1GB of RAM, a SuperDrive and a 250 GB hard drive. It is equipped with a Radeon 9600 128 MB card which is a very good one, even if this graphic card is nearly one year old
The machine is fantastic, even if I can hear sometimes the fans, mainly when I play intensive games. Yes, I moderatly play on this machine, so games like UnrealTournament...say it to your childs ;-)
This machine can play modern games, if not in full resolution, most of the time in middle resolution, which let the game fully functionnal, but some details of the scene/wall/ are not finely visible
Please, allow at least 1 GB of RAM to have a certain cumfort with all the iApps !

Beside surfing, I use it mostly for preparing my wife courses and for ripping DVDs (ripping means selecting some chapters/titles and related soundtracks from an DVD and reburning them onto a new blank DVD): it is a pleasure to rip a full 4.6 GB DVD in less than 20'

And the 20'' screen is fantastic for watching movies !

But remember that, as was your Snow, this imac G5 is not internally expandable (okay, you can external hard drive, external TV tuner, ... but these external stuffs are more expensive than the internal equivalents)

Regards
Philippe

sw - Aug 25, 2005 - 10:35 am

Thanks, you have been very helpful! Great chatting with you.

philippe99 - Aug 25, 2005 - 11:24 am

Happy also to have chat with you. Hope your future machine will give all of you family the great fun mine G5 is giving to all my family.
Thank you again for using macosx.com and be sure that we tech guys of macsox.com are always here to help you in your daily of use of the mac machines.
regards
Philippe