iBook - 16Meg vs 32Meg video difference

phil

With the new iBooks announced, I'm ready to buy my iBook and put Gentoo on it. The only difference between the two that I really care about is the video. The 'new' 800Mhz comes with the ATI 32M cards, while the old 700Mhz only has the 16M cards. Is there a diff if I'm just going to run Gentoo with Gnome2? I'm wondering if the 32 has some 'can't live w/o' feature when running Linux; is there something that XFree supports only on a 32M card? Better AA fonts? Better 2D? More colour depth?

I'll only be doing web/email/unix admin-y stuff on it (maybe a little movie making, but only clips of the family, and even then, rarely, so not a big concern) but I like nice fonts. Still, I can't believe there's really a diff, so I'm leaning towards getting a (now old) 700Mhz for 896$US, but would like some comments to guide me. If there's even a small difference I'd prob just go the xtra 100$, but if it's not needed, I love the 700 idea, with 640Megs of RAM natch.

This is my first (of prob many) posts to this forum, so thanks in advance for the help.

P

zojas · Posted: Wed May 07, 2003 10:34 pm Post subject:

don't they have 900 MHz ones now? I think they stopped selling the 700MHz in fact.

I think the amount of video memory would make more difference in OS X than in linux, but I'm really just guessing.

you'll want to buy that extra 512mb ram from 18004memory.com rather than apple, way cheaper.

I wrote down everything the day I installed on my 700:
http://www.desertsol.com/~kevin/ppc

phil · Posted: Thu May 08, 2003 1:56 am Post subject:

Right, that's what I'm thinking, that the extra video RAM won't be noticed unless I'm in OS X.

As for the iBooks, yeah (Apple) stopped selling the 700/128/12.1/16 vid/20G/cdrom iBooks, now the bottom of the line books are the 800/128/12.1/32 vid/30G/cdrom at 999$. But, there are 700s left to be had at places like Macmall for 896$. I'm just wondering which would be better for what I want to do. Looking at it tonight though, with shipping the 700 would be more like 930$, instead I could get the 800 for 999$ and free shipping from Apple. For ~60$ more I'd have 10Gig more HD, more vid ram, and an extra 100Mhz. So tonight I'm leaning that way.

Thanks for the tip on RAM, I'll likely do that. RAM and an Airport will all that top will need to be complete. Oh, and Gentoo natch.

Also, thanks zojas, those tips look very helpful, I will be reviewing them once all of this purchasing drama ends.

P
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stimuli · Posted: Tue May 13, 2003 10:19 pm Post subject:

18004memory.com <- NO!!!!! They are EVIL! I bought Ram from them, which was faulty and crashed my TiBook repeatedly. When I returned it for a refund (minus shipping, etc, ultimately getting 50% of what I paid for it), it took 6 weeks to get a the refund on my Visa.

Go to eshop.macsales.com. I bought my first 500MB SODIMM from them, and wish I'd immediately bought my second one from them, instead of trying 18004memory.com.

I now have 1GB of hella stable, fast, small ram, bought at very competitive prices.

Edit: re: topic at hand, unless you plan on playing Armagetron a lot (like me), you will see no difference between 16MB radeon 7000 vs. 32MB 7500. All GFX processors plow through 2D like nobodies business. I had a Wallstreet w/ 4MB Mach64, and it worked great.