The most advanced ATI GPUs available on a video card with an AGP interface are the Radeon 4650 and 4670. There are no 48XX cards and nothing is available with the current 5000 series. Also, the older Radeon 3850 (also available in AGP) is usually able to keep up with these cards and often bests them while maintaining a smoother fps rate in many titles.
While the X1000 will not be able to support many older GPUs that are currently supported under AOS4 (because the older GPUs are not PCIe compatible) the advantages of having a new design with a more modern expansion bus are easily apparent. The X1000 could potentially support any recent video card, while the later GPU available on AGP cards that could work in the G5 are limited and the top tier GPUs are simply not available.
Another further problem may appear in the complete lack of BIOS support for Apple computers for anything more recent than the X850XT.
While the Pegasos was designed to accept PC video cards and has a feature that can emulated an X86 to allow those cards to be used, Apple hardware has always been designed with modifications that prevent video cards from working in both PCs and Apple computers. There have only been a handful of ATI fielded cards that would work on both platforms and the prices they command are even higher than the Apple specific cards (which are invariably higher than the equivalent PC video cards).
Keep in mind that I present this information as a MorphOS user and advocate and I am not trying to present a biased point of view. It's just a fact that while MorphOS users will face a lower entry cost with the G5 than AmigaOS users will with the X1000 and that we believe that these proven fairly well built computers offer an advantage (as does our OS), that there are some advantages in the products offered by our competition (if you must think of it that way, I don't).
As I've said before, I personally think that each system is equally valid. And, both systems are actually so similar that it sometimes becomes quite amusing hearing proponents of one system over another argue with each other. Its a little like a two headed mutant arguing with itself as to which side won the nuclear war. Who the heck are you guys trying to convince and does anyone outside of our small community even know or care?
While it is unfortunate that some people will stubbornly insist on using one system over the other , I hope that most of us will weigh each systems advantages and disadvantages fairly and make their choices based on their needs, budgets, and how their system of choice will satisfy those needs.
Frankly, as a Radeon 9600XT on a G5 would provide me with a significant boost in performance and I'm not sure that the inherent complexity of today video cards is going to allow us to easily extract the performance that will be present on Mac or PC platforms (which ATI will provide proprietary drivers for), I don't feel impelled to great concern over this matter yet. I can obtain a 9600 at a low cost. Having owned one a few years ago, I'm familiar with its level of performance (which is better than my current 9250 but lower than my former 9500Pro) Frankly, I think this GPU is well matched to the capabilities of our OS and as we are apparently going to get support for a system that is more powerful than we really need (that we all asked for but douted we might get) I can accept this situation.
Finally, there may, in the future, be a work around that would allow us to install PC video cards that are only modified to mask over the pins on the card edge connector that are not Apple compatible. Consider this, if you were to have an existing MorphOS instillation on a Powermac with a supported video card and you installed the drivers for a new video card (that did not have an Apple BIOS), once you shut down and swapped your old video card with a suitably modified new card why would the prescense of a video card that the Apple would not recognise at all prevent MorphOS if the system were somehow to proceed with booting from loading a driver that would allow the card to function? Keep this in mind, the X86 emulation in the Pegasos only faciliates booting, from what I've been able to tell MorphOS completely disregards the video card BIOS after start up.
Now, I'd like to address a trend in these recent postings which, while the posters may be technically correct in making, are actually total irrelevant. Anyone who continues to use Amiga hardware and software or systems that have been designed to continue and improve our use of these ideas does so fully aware of the compromises that decision presents. Why, when Karlos, Amigadave and so many others with vastly differing systems can come to an accord about the irrelevance of our differing approaches can't some of the rest of you understand why we can still treat each other politely without feeling the need to constantly present our own choices as the real superior choice? Guys, this argument is silly and pointless. Yes we fully recognize that X86 has advanced light years beyond us and has finally overcome almost all the major faults present at its introduction.
Further as I consider this a hobby and regularly use PCs, the Powermac I purchased for MorphOS under OSX, and even recognize the value presented by Linux I don't need to be reminded that a system I'm still supporting is not likely to ever be competitive with the mainstream market again.
I accepted losing this battle to inferior systems years ago and fully understand why market forces often allow a second rate product to become dominant.
I don't blame Bill Gates or Steve Jobs for having the business prowess to adopt good ideas when they see them and slowly improve their products either. If you think what Microsoft and Apple offer today bears any resemblance to the products you used to hold in such disdain then you haven't been keeping up with how much development has been pored into this market to overcome the inherent disadvantages it had originally.
As to whether or not the people who have been successful in the computer industry stole their ideas from others, don't be naive. Everyone stole from each other and if your not aware of how all current operating systems at their core are almost identical (and remind me that we really owe a lot to Bell Labs and our nations universities for developing UNIX) then your not as knowledgeable as you think you are.
Why are so many of you willing to point to current mainstream systems as a more logical choice when we already know this?
Can't you just be happy that while we lost the battle, that our competition had to invest huge sums to become more like what we had originally? If you haven't noticed there is no other legacy system that today's personal computers resemble more than the Amiga.
And please, stop trying to convince me that PPCs are a dead issue in the personal computer market. I know this. Since Apple switched there is no longer anyone using these processors in systems designed for the general public. This does not mean that PPCs are dead. The 68060 died because it was introduced after a similar switch by Apple years ago. But there are several manufactures of PPC processors and new products are being introduced all the time. All the three major game console manufacturers use a PPC related processor. The military industrial complex, with a large investment in hardware that uses PPCs, continues to buy these processors in order to avoid the complexity of having to redesign systems for radically differ processor lines. Today, Freescale the offshoot of Motorola that inherited their processor legacy has continued to design new PPCs tailored to specific markets like communications and has just released their first 64bit processor which although it no longer supports Altivec may turn out to be the most powerful PPC processor ever designed (yes more powerful than the PA6T and the G5). So, the PPC uis not dead, it just isn't marketed for PC use and new designs favor features that are useful in other applications.
So, stop trying to convince me that my interests are futile and that all our endeavors are doomed to fail. If you think that way you have totally missed the point. Those of us left in the Amiga community continue to do this to further our own interests and build the hardware we'd like to have. None of us are stupid, its not that we don't know of the inherent advantages presented by the developments in well funded mainstream systems.
Guys, get this through your intensely thick skulls, we aren't doing this because we intend to hold up the creations we can accomplish with our limited resources and marketplace for comparison to mainstream systems. We do it because, after years of hype about products that were in reality, never going to be produced we've finally realized that with the current advances in electronics we don't need to wait for the fulfillment of promises that were never going realized. Even if it only satisfies ourselves, things have advanced enough to allow us to continue development of this without those who have for years disappointed us. Its a hobby, do you get it?