It’s hard to argue when it’s time to work, that 15.2 display is a thing of beauty. Regardless, very few of us play games all day long. This is great for running palette-heavy image editing software, but when the PowerBook displays graphics in a conventional aspect ratio (as it would for games), the screen displays rather jarring black borders on either side of the image. The 1152 x 768 is a 3:2 aspect ratio, wider than the average screen, which sports a 4:3 aspect ratio. The PowerBook G4’s 15.2-inch screen sports a native widescreen resolution of 1152 x 768 pixels, and snaps to other lower resolutions without incident. Alas, ATI’s next-generation mobile graphics solution based on its Radeon chip is not yet ready for production. The RAGE 128 Mobility offers playable performance for 3D games at lower resolutions, and should be able to handle just about any game without a problem. The RAGE 128 Mobility chip is a proven design that offers terrific 3D performance for a laptop configuration.
And the frame rates can usually be tweaked a bit by the user through adjusting in-game detail and quality settings. PowerBooks generally render 3D graphics in games slower than their desktop counterparts, resulting in lower frame rates - but as laptop systems go, the PowerBook is damn nice. The PowerBook G4 comes equipped with ATI’s RAGE 128 Mobility chip, configured with 8MB of SDRAM video memory on a 2x AGP interface - this aspect of the PowerBook’s design is unchanged from the previous iteration.
#15 POWERBOOK G4 SPECS FOR MAC#
Should that happen, the PowerBook G4 would be the only game in town for Mac gamers looking for bleeding-edge games that push the hardware’s limitations.
#15 POWERBOOK G4 SPECS CODE#
If Devine and company can show that there’s an appreciable performance benefit by optimizing code for G4s, it’s possible that other developers may follow. Graeme Devine has indicated that he’s readying the release of a Velocity Engine-optimized version of Quake 3 Arena (which should be out soon), and Devine is certain enough of the G4’s capabilities that he’s said Id plans to make future builds of Quake 3 Arena for OS X and other new products for G4-equipped machines only.
Outside of some technology demos, game developers have been slow to take advantage of the benefits of the “Velocity Engine” architecture which makes the PowerPC G4 chips special - the technology is also known by it its Motorola-dubbed nomenclature, “Altivec.” The heart of the PowerBook G4 is the PowerPC G4 processor, operating at 400 or 500MHz.