Worth: I was one of the nay-sayers about how you wouldn't get your socks kicked off by the speed of 3d games on the 6500 even with a G3 and video card upgrade, but I didn't mean at all to discourage you from doing it! Don't let forum posters get 'ya down. ;-)
Matrox: I've been wanting to get my hands on and flash a Matrox Millenium II for the longest time, but they always slip by me. Glad I'm not the only one thinking about them for PCI PowerMacs.
6400/6500 vs 604e Towers: I disagree. Sure, 50MHz trumps 40MHz but they're both pretty slow. 12 RAM slots is no better than 2 if the 2 allow you to install the amount of RAM you need, and most people aren't using dual-604 cards in 9500s anymore. I say, if you like the 6500, you're not missing out on anything by using it instead of a 9600. "Better" isn't very well defined unless you use "high performance" as the definition... which would tell you to throw all your PCI PowerMacs away to make room for a $250 PC from NewEgg! Let's not do that, let's instead just follow what's enjoyable to use.
Voodoo3 as a 2d card: Voodoo3 cards are quite common and easy to flash to the Mac. In addition to having what's probably the best 3d performance relative to cost of any PCI card for old Macs, the 2d performance is quite respectable. 16MB of VRAM lets it drive gigantic monitors easily, too. The drawback is that there's no QuickTime or DVD acceleration, so the Voodoo3 isn't a good choice for playing back QuickTime movies on fullscreen zoom.
Matrox: I've been wanting to get my hands on and flash a Matrox Millenium II for the longest time, but they always slip by me. Glad I'm not the only one thinking about them for PCI PowerMacs.
6400/6500 vs 604e Towers: I disagree. Sure, 50MHz trumps 40MHz but they're both pretty slow. 12 RAM slots is no better than 2 if the 2 allow you to install the amount of RAM you need, and most people aren't using dual-604 cards in 9500s anymore. I say, if you like the 6500, you're not missing out on anything by using it instead of a 9600. "Better" isn't very well defined unless you use "high performance" as the definition... which would tell you to throw all your PCI PowerMacs away to make room for a $250 PC from NewEgg! Let's not do that, let's instead just follow what's enjoyable to use.
Voodoo3 as a 2d card: Voodoo3 cards are quite common and easy to flash to the Mac. In addition to having what's probably the best 3d performance relative to cost of any PCI card for old Macs, the 2d performance is quite respectable. 16MB of VRAM lets it drive gigantic monitors easily, too. The drawback is that there's no QuickTime or DVD acceleration, so the Voodoo3 isn't a good choice for playing back QuickTime movies on fullscreen zoom.