Can you help advise re video card upgrade for my G4 MDD?

Question

Hello all. Just upgraded to Tiger from 10.2.8 a couple weeks ago. Should have done it long ago... like having a new computer! I want to get more out of the OS for mostly graphic apps like PS-CS2, Painter, Freehand, Fontographer, etc. Right now I have 1.5 GB of RAM & will probably max it out pretty soon.
No video or games (at least for near term). Have been doing homework by lurking here, studying mfr. sites & reading things like John Siracusa's great article (book) on arstechnica.com: "Mac OSX 10.4 Tiger". I spent a lot of last night digesting that. So I think I know what I want to do, but would appreciate opinions.
1. I'd like to get a graphics card that will get my G4 to Core Image-enabled. According to this -- http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/coreimage/ -- and other advice I've run across in these forums, I should probably get a Radeon 9800 (or 9600) Pro Mac Edition. The downside w this is just that they're currently not to be found at any dealers I've called or googled because of the AMD merger/backorder situation. Same goes for the 9600. Bummer. In the meantime I'm wondering if one of Nvidia models listed in the Apple page might work in my machine. Probably not... but does anyone know different? Here are the models listed:
nVidia GeForce FX Go 5200
nVidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL
6800 GT DDL
I think I've seen most of these configured for AGP 4x, as I would need. Just don't know if any would fit into my G4... or if it would support the power requirements, heat levels, and so on that these things apparently generate.
2. I have another requirement besides just running Tiger happily. I have hundreds of fairly big image files that all still need a lot of work, for a book project I've been commissioned to do. Average file size around 200MB. And more than half of them are in a "Legacy" proprietary format used by an out of print app called Live Picture. So even just to convert all of them from that IVUE / FITS format scheme I still need either classic or 9.2 for a while. I can still do some things in L.P. better than in Photoshop.
It's a pretty interesting piece of software. The IVUE file is the base bitmap image. All corrections are in Vector layers on top. When done, the layers you want to apply are turned on and the final (or workaround buildout) is rendered as a TIFF, PS or stn file. (It also has a great prepress filtering engine to optimize cmyk for specific outputs). This app is VERY monitor drawing intensive - especially for layers with textures or selective color mods. When I was an early adopter in the program years ago, the developers constantly told us to do things like use as small a window as possible; turn off antialiasing unless really needed; build out intermediate IVUE's before collecting too many complex layers, and things like that. It has it's own VM system, and it does not like another Virtual Mem. running. Of course in Classic you can't turn off the OSX VM!
Development on this app stopped the arrival of OSX, and I think even before OS9! It was crash-prone back then, and of course is even more fussy in Classic. I can boot in OS9, but for some reason prefer the "security" of protected mode, since these new-fangled machines no longer have that civilized reset button.
So if I understand things properly, I want a graphics engine that will take the load off RAM for Quartz Extreme tasks. I've come to think that maxing RAM AND VRAM utilization will let me do more before the crash. Am I right?
Not necessarily the same needs as for Photoshop in Tiger; but for me right now this is my critical/important working environment, as this is a big paid project (it will be a vintage watch coffee table book - which draws from a couple of the world's notable private collections). It shouldn't be long before I'll be getting a MacPro anyway. Am sort of holding out for the sophomore edition, and Leopard.
What would you guys do? Thanks in advance for your consideration. I will greatly value your input.
Best regards,
Mike
G4 MDD 867, G4 Q'slvr 733   Mac OS X (10.4.8)   also iBook G3 900 10.4.8 (G4 733 still running 10.2.8)
G4 MDD 867, G4 Q'slvr 733   Mac OS X (10.4.8)   also iBook G3 900 10.4.8 (G4 733 still running 10.2.8)

Answer 1

Thanks very much for the info. Kind of what I thought.
Re their price gouging - Ouch! A 66% markup from retail, and they're refurbished. I think I can wait a month or so... of course if those cards were dc'd, I might consider it. But I talked to a guy at ATI, and he didn't give any such indication.
I did find a GeForce4 Ti4600 (NOS) for a pretty reasonable figure at another site, but that's an older, slower card. I'm impatient, so I'm tempted, but I think I'd be kicking myself if I didn't wait for the better solution.
Are you saying that I won't really do any better in Classic with the ATI, compared to my stock GeForce4 32MB? Forgot to mention I'm using a 22" Cinema (ADC), if that makes any difference. And I'll be running Classic probably on top of Jaguar (I installed Tiger on a fresh new second internal drive). I thought I'd skip mixing Classic with Tiger altogether, but when I booted up the first time, there it was in Sys. Pref's. I guess it saw OS9 on the other drive during install. That's sort of funny.
I guess my question is mostly answered. Will put up the flag shortly.
Thanks again.
Mike