ATI Radeon 9200 and Mac OS X 10.5?

Hi-

The 9200 has a core clock speed of 250mhz. Since it resides in a PCI slot, there is no multiplier, and the results are less than spectacular (as you found out). The 9200 is really meant more for adding multiple monitors, rather than adding performance.

The FX 5200(?) that came in your G5 also has a core clock speed of 250mhz, but with the 8x AGP slot, it benefits from the multiplier of the AGP, and operates much faster (though the 5200 isn't really a performance card). More on AGP.

If you are really serious about your gaming, you will need the ATI Radeon X800XT. Here are some Benchmarks. More OEM Benchmarks.

You might want to consult with OWC as to the possibility of exchange of the 9200 for an X800..... The 9600 may also be a consideration, though it is only a mid range performer.

Quartz Extreme: graphics processor (GPU) acceleration for the Quartz Compositor, which is responsible for placing image bitmaps into the graphics memory. This is then processed via the Graphics processor, rather than the CPU.
Quartz Extreme requires a graphics card connected to an AGP 2X or faster bus. Since the 9200 is a PCI card, it does not have the bandwidth to support Quartz Extreme.
Quartz Extreme is supported in 2x, 4x and 8x AGP, as well as PCIe, with cards that have a minimum of 16mb VRAM.