I wanna get the ATI Radeon 9800 XT to use it with G5 2.5GHz. I was checking the ATI website, and it got me all confused.
first, most of the review is about the PRO, not XT (which is fine, coz they're almost identical, with slight difference). But then I see 2 kinds of PRO (normal, and MAC Edition). my questions are:

1) do i HAVE to buy the MAC Edition? the normal one wont work on Mac?

2) I only see PRO MAC Edition. is there XT MAC Edition?

Yes, you must buy the Mac Edition board. ATI only makes the Pro version for Mac, there is no XT version for Mac.

that's weird!
check this link:

G5 2.5Ghz on apple.com (http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/72504/wo/EE3ViIyejNia2o2CDjI2d32yshZ/0.0.9.1.0.6.25.1.2.21.3.1.1.0?41,11)

you can customize your G5 on apple.com. the 3rd pull-down menu is the graphics support. the default is 9600 XT 128Mg. you can add $300 and get the 9800 XT 256MG. how come?

Here is the list of consumer ATI products. (http://www.ati.com/products/mac.html) What is available from Apple is an OEM card made by ATI just for Apple in their G5's. To the best of my knowledge it is not available for retail sales. You might find one on ebay if someone is upgrading to the NVIDIA 6800 Ultra DDL to use the new 30 inch screens.

My understanding is the 9800 Pro Mac Edition has 128MB and the 9800 Pro Special Mac Edition has 256MB.

oh, that makes sense.

so, if i were to use the G5 strictly for video editing (FCP and Motion), am I losing anything by buying the Pro model (over the XT)?

Motion will use the extra video ram so I would either get the OEM 9800 XT from Apple or the Special Edition 9800 and have 256MB.

thanx for the help