Apple Power Mac G5 - Manual (Page 13)

Superfast Graphics
and All-Digital Displays
The Macintosh is the premier platform for processing digital media of all types.
The Power Mac G5 features a powerful AGP 8X Pro graphics interface and the latest
in high-performance graphics cards from NVIDIA and ATI. For crystal-clear viewing,
Apple’s gorgeous all-digital displays are the perfect complement to the G5. And sup-
port for dual displays—including two Apple LCD displays—is built into every system.
6
AGP 8X Pro Graphics Options
3D graphics, modeling, animation, visualization, and the latest generation of games
require the fastest graphics cards available. That’s why the Power Mac G5 includes
AGP 8X Pro, the industry-leading specification for high-bandwidth graphics and high-
powered graphics cards.
Every Power Mac G5 system is built with a graphics card installed in the 533MHz AGP
8X Pro slot. Standard configurations feature the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra or the
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro, both with 64MB of video SDRAM. The GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
uses the CineFX engine and NVIDIA’s advanced Lightspeed Memory Architecture II
for photorealistic 3D graphics in today’s games and design applications. The Radeon
9600 Pro kicks performance up a notch with a quad-pipe architecture, SmartShader
2.0 technology, and the HyperZ III+ memory architecture—for ultrarealism in gaming
and visualization applications.
For the ultimate graphics experience, you can order a system with the ATI Radeon
9800 Pro with 128MB of SDRAM. This advanced card has the industry’s first 8-pixel
pipeline architecture and a superfast 256-bit memory interface—enabling incredible
3D rendering, sophisticated real-time effects, and unsurpassed image quality. A gen-
erous 128MB frame buffer supports large textures in the latest games and design
applications, delivering a truly cinematic visual experience.
Graphics card options
NVIDIA GeForce ATI Radeon ATI Radeon
FX 5200 Ultra 9600 Pro 9800 Pro
Memory architecture Lightspeed II HyperZ III+ HyperZ III+
Memory interface 128-bit 128-bit 256-bit
Effects engine CineFX 2.0 SmartShader 2.0 SmartShader 2.1
Frame buffer memory 64MB 64MB 128MB
Triangles per second 75 million 185 million 350 million
Fill rate (texels per second) 1.2 billion 1.5 billion 3 billion
Memory bandwidth 8.8 GBps 9.6 GBps 21 GBps
13 Technology and
Performance Overview
Power Mac G5