upgrading AGP PowerMac G4

[supenguin]

I've been considering upgrading my Powermac G4 so I can use it nicely a while longer until I can get money saved up for a brand new Mac.

Mostly, watching videos in Quicktime 7 and flash on web sites look like a slideshow. I've got a 400 mhz Powermac G4. It has the ATI Rage 128 Pro AGP card it came with, but I am using a Mac edition Radeon 7000 PCI with 64 megabytes of RAM. I've been thinking about upgrading to a Radeon 9200, but the only ones I can find are PCI, and I think AGP would be much better. The problem is the only AGP Radeon 9200 I've found for sale has a ADC connector and a VGA connector. I love my dual monitors, so I'd need one with DVI-I and VGA.

Other specs: I've still got the 400 mhz processor in there and I'd upgrade that but it seems a bit pricey. And I also have 512 MB of RAM.

The only things keeping me from selling this system and buying a Mac Mini are it doesn't seem very upgradeable and I don't think there's any way to get dual monitors working on it...

 

[NightCrawler]

hope this helps:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/video/hardware/

 

[chouk]

do you really need the upgrade?...
i would just save the money instead and get a new mac.
or you can just buy a second hand gfx card...

 

[supenguin]

video cards and other upgrades

Nightcrawler: that's the main site I've been looking at for upgrade options. As far as video cards go, everything they have (with the exception of the Radeon 9200) has the same problems. They are either too expensive or the ones that aren't have one VGA connector and the other connector is either DVI-D or ADC - both of which would require a $100+ adapter to use a regular VGA monitor!

chouk: I haven't really found any good place that sells second hand Mac graphics cards. Maybe I don't know where to look, but it seems everywhere, including ebay, that sells Mac graphics cards is selling anything better than what I have is selling them for $60 or more. The best bet right now if I do upgrade looks like ATI's trade in program. $50 off if I send in my old ATI card... That makes the Radeon 9200 sound tempting, especially if I can send in both cards I have!

I really don't need to upgrade, but it would be really nice.

 

[Dilieto]

3 years later the same questions

Does anyone know which card I should use to upgrade my dual 1.25 G4?

I found a Radeon 9200 Mac edition in both 64 and 128 to use for a second monitor. Will I get any speed difference out of the faster card, or does the motherboard limit me?

THanks!

 

[Chilbear]

Still the same answer IMO but the bar has moved up. If you want speed you need onboard RAM and the ATI 9600 or 9800 is the best shot and yes a faster video card will prevent it from being the bottleneck. 9600 is the min IMO and make sure it has the DVI.