I don't think you'll be able to tell much difference in "speed" between any of the QuickDraw accelerated cards you've mentioned. Gaming is about the only application I know of offhand where the differences between Built-in Video, NuBus and PDS cards become noticeable IRL, as opposed to the netherworld of benchmarking. At the relatively low resolutions supported by games, MoBo and PDS bandwidth is reputed to be noticeably faster than graphics running across the 10MHz limitation of NuBus. I've not seen any info on how performance of the faster NuBus_90 implementation of cards like the GX series on your Q950 compare, but that's not really the realm of high end VidCard designs, which would be vast arrays of pixels in the deepness of true color.

. . . NuBus 90, increased the clock rate to 20 MHz for better throughput, burst increasing to about 70 MB/s, and average to about 30 MB/s.

Click to expand...

In your case, I'd make sure to hold out for a NuBus 90 VidCard that will do the resolution you desire at a refresh rate compatible with your display of choice. (1280x1024@60Hz for native VGA LCD output?) If you desire on board DSP support for Photoshop, the GX 1360 is likely the only game in town, assuming you don't luck into a GX1600 at a reasonable price the way I did.

Take the info on LowemdMac with a grain of salt. Most of it is correct, but I've spotted a few errors when checking Mac specs against info on EveryMac, which seems to be a bit more accurate, but there are errors there as well. When it comes to VidCards, LowendMac is pretty much the only game in town for quick reference. The errors there seem to have been those of omission in terms of resolutions supported and especially specs on refresh rates supported. I've not checked for NuBus_90 info.

The other source of data would be the tables on gamba2, which are a much clearer representation IMHO.

http://home.earthlink.net/~gamba2/vid-mon-matrix.html