Radeon 9800 Pro

[Alexbt]

My preliminary research shows no luck, but is there no way to get 3D acceleration working in OS 9 for a Radeon 9800 Pro?
I guess it was BTO in the 2003 MDD G4 I'm using. This was supposed to be my dual boot gaming G4. :/

ATI Video Accelerator of course hangs the system on startup and must be force quit/disabled.
My 3D accelerated games do detect the extensions but hang on launch.

I found some drivers from October 2002 but they didn't do anything.
I did read somewhere there is a driver update from 2005 that works in OS 9--hoping I might be able to track that down.
Also curious if there's a non-exact but compatible driver from something that uses the same chip.

[DieHard]

We have other topics about this card...

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=2438.0

From Nova:
ive just compared this once more to the 8500 radeon and it no comparison -- the 8500 is much better as its properly supported... so the radeon 9800 pro is basically only usefull for mac os x.
its really too bad that they couldnt have extended support for these cards.. given they were released in 2004 and mac os 9 was still very much being used at that point... cheap companies..

[NamelessPFG]

The gist of it is that if it's new enough to support Core Image (which a Radeon 9800 definitely is), there are no OS 9 drivers for proper acceleration, as much as I hate to admit it.

I can think of a potential workaround, but it complicates things by adding a PCI graphics card to the system just for OS 9 use, while the AGP slot continues to pack something powerful with Core Image support for OS X.

This hinges on different vendors for the AGP and PCI cards, too; word is that enabling the ATI extensions with a R300-series card or later really bogs things down compared to just leaving them off.

[DieHard]

Just to reiterate, the best Mac OS 9 card is the TI4600... hands down

[MacOS Plus]

  I'd like to know if there's any potential for at least enabling 2D acceleration on this card by adding the device ID to the ATI ROM Extender file.  I have one of these cards that I only recently got to try out after replacing a broken component.  I don't do any gaming or other demanding video stuff in OS 9, so this card seems like a decent middleground for a 9/X dual-boot system.  Using the latest drivers, it's working fine for me in OS 9 and surprisingly quick without acceleration on.  It would be nice though if 2D acceleration could be made to work.  I know there's been some progress made recently on adding other cards to the ATI software.  I just don't know how far the 2D support can be stretched.

[macStuff]

it works fine if u are tolerant of hte "Roll up" graphics when u move a window
its not properly supported but it is so fast that to some they may deem it usable
but the graphics rollup thing is a deal breaker for me

[MacOS Plus]

it works fine if u are tolerant of hte "Roll up" graphics when u move a window
its not properly supported but it is so fast that to some they may deem it usable
but the graphics rollup thing is a deal breaker for me

  Ya, that's the lack of 2D acceleration.  It would affect scrolling too, which is more where it would bother me in my workflow.  For most of what I do it won't matter.  I'm still hoping we can fix it though.

[macStuff]

but ive just read in another thread a user that claimed to have changed soem device ids in some extensions to get 2d accell working on a 9250 variant???

can we talk more about this guys??

important info there
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,2458.msg25311.html#msg25311

[reader50]

The early-9000 GPUs (9000-9250) are all derivatives of the 8500, which we have OS9 drivers for. The R300 chips (9500 and higher) are the ones without drivers.

Here's a breakdown of specs on the compatible ones (8500-9250). Note that a higher number doesn't indicate a more powerful card - the 9250 is the weakest for example.