By Gildas BIZEUL (Elmstreet) (212.198.0.93) on Thursday, January 09, 2003 - 02:53 pm:

Hi everyone,

I downloaded today the winning file for the lightwave mascot contest and opened it in my LW 7.5 modeler.
When I tried to move the thing in the preview window (flat shaded) it was very slow...
I ha ve a PowerMac G4 733, GeForce 2MX, OS 10.2.3 and 1.5 Go RAM...
I consider buying a better graphic card, a GeForce 4 Ti 4600 for instance, will I see an improvement in manipulating complex objetcs in modeler with such a card (or a Radeon 9700 if it comes one day...)

Thanks in advance for your answer.
Gildas.

By Ted Lee (Tedlee) (66.156.16.163) on Thursday, January 09, 2003 - 07:39 pm:

I don't have the same model, but on a Powerbook G4/1ghz with 1GB of RAM and a ATI Radeon 9000 the winning file previews just fine in flat shaded mode - subpatch mode and all.

When I had a G4/400, I upgraded the 16MB video card to a Radeon AGP Card, and it made little difference in OpenGL previews.

My recommendation - sell the G4/733, get yourself a G4/867DP. The GeForce4MX will be sufficient, but if you can afford it, replace it with the Ti4600 card.

By Michael Linde (Mlinde) (4.64.198.127) on Friday, January 10, 2003 - 10:57 am:

Gildas, if you don't have $3k to buy a new Mac, look into the $1500 option. Spend the $299 on a newer card (ATI 9000 or GeForce Ti4), and then an additional $900 on a 1 or 1.2 GHz processor upgrade from Sonnet Tech. You can't do more for your RAM, but these two upgrades can bring you close to current HW, and none of the benchmarks available cost-justify a whole new computer if you have at least the "Quicksilver" HW architecture.

By Gildas BIZEUL (Elmstreet) (212.198.0.93) on Friday, January 10, 2003 - 11:03 am:

Thanks Michael, That was exactly what I had in mind...
I plan to buy a new card and then, when prices are lower, an upgrade for my processor.