The new April 2005 'speed bump' of G5 Power Macs was received with a collective yawn by the Mac aficionados. But the inclusion of the Radeon 9650 with dual-link DVI port peaked everyone's interest. 'Is it just a Radeon 9600 XT with more memory and dual-link added? Or is it something special?'

As you know, dual-link is a magic word because it means you can run Apple's gigapixel 30' Cinema display. We decided to compare the 9650 to other dual-link video cards for the Power Mac such as the Radeon X800 XT and GeForce 6800 Ultra. We were able to use the new G5/2.7GHz Power Mac with a 30' Cinema display as our test 'mule' courtesy of ProMax. Here's what we learned:

Legend of Graphs:
GeF 6800 UL = nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra (256MB, Dual Dual-Link DVI)
Rad X800 XT = ATI Radeon X800 XT (256MB, Dual-Link DVI + ADC)
Rad 9800 SE = ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Special Edition (256MB, DVI + ADC)
Rad 9600 XT = ATI Radeon 9600 XT (128MB, DVI + ADC)
Rad 9650 = ATI Radeon 9650 (256MB, Dual Link DVI + DVI)
All five cards tested on a G5/2.7GHz Power Mac

That's 3D OpenGL Games. There are two 'professional' applications that rely heavily on the graphics card. The first is Motion. It not only uses up to 4GB of system memory but hands of OpenGL effects to the graphics card's processor and memory. We just got our copy of Motion 2 this week so we rendered the RAM Preview of 'Fire - Mortise 2,' the template that is sensitive to what graphics card you use.

As you can see, the variance between these five cards is minimal but if you compare them to something like the GeForceFX 5200, you'll see a big gap in render time. By the way, we were able to get our copy of Motion 1 working. We discovered that Motion 1 renders our test template 20% faster than Motion 2. Ruh roh.

How about some results from a true Tiger Core Image application like iMaginator? Your wish is our command:

The iMaginator 'Test One' referred to above was created by Daniel Kottmair for MacWelt.com, a German Mac site. He combines various effects and then times how long it takes to playback 200 frames of the resulting morph. As you can see, Core Image 'aware' apps 'like' fast core and memory clock speeds and mucho pipelines. Memory capacity isn't the issue here. The Radeon 9650 has as much as the Radeon X800 XT and GeForce 6800 Ultra, but they are four times faster.

CONCLUSION
If you expect the Radeon 9650 (standard equipment on the G5/2.7GHz Power Mac and $50 option on the other G5s) to perform OpenGL and Core Image 'miracles' just because it has 256MB of DDR and dual-link circuitry, you will be very disappointed.

If you must have dual-link, I recommend the ATI Radeon X800 XT as the best alternative, even though it's not offered direct from Apple. It's much faster than the Radeon 9650, supports the 30' Cinema on its DVI port, and takes up only one slot.

The GeForce 6800 Ultra is a full length, double wide monster. It was faster running some 3D games but slower running the Motion 2 and iMaginator. Unless you have two 30' Cinema displays and don't mind giving up one of your PCI-X slots, you should consider the Radeon X800 XT instead.

Notice we added results for the Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Special Edition. If you can't afford the X800 XT or 6800 Ultra and don't need a 30' Cinema display, then you might consider a Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Special Edition in place of the Radeon 9650. It's almost $300 less than the Radeon X800 XT or GeForce 6800 Ultra.

The Radeon 9650 does support the 30' Cinema display with its one Dual-Link DVI port and has 256MB of DDR memory, but it is actually clocked slower (and runs slower) than the Radeon 9600 XT with 128MB of DDR and a normal DVI port.

CORE CLOCK SPEEDS
Out of curiosity, we used ATIccelerator II to check the actual core and memory clock speed of the ATI Radeon cards. Here's what we learned: