G4 MDD Video Upgrade: I'm so confused!

I just scored a really clean 1.25 MDD G4 tower for a song on eBay.
I basically want to "hot rod" it for cheap, and use it for a secondary machine & "family" computer.

I have two little girls, and they like to pay video games. They are *not* gamers, but they & my wife like to play things like The Sims 2 and a few others. So I thought that upgrading the video card in the tower might help their game experience a bit.

When I went to OWC (macsales.com) , the cheapest video card upgrade for this tower was $200. I do *not* want to spend that much on upgrading the graphics.

I'm basically looking for some ideas of cards that will fit the tower, but can be had for used/cheap on eBay. In other words, what is an older model graphic card that's "better" than the ATI Radeon 9000 that's in there?

Just looking for a few suggestions, because it gets really confusing when looking at various video cards online. Mainly because it needs to be Mac compatible, and I'm a bit confused on weather to get PCI or AGP.

Thanks for the help & suggestions!

The card must be AGP I believe and you should be looking for a used 9200 or 9600 (best). This is the best bang for the buck other than maxing the RAM. Last option is to increase the HD to 120GB and enjoy Tiger as your last OS. This combination is exactly where i have my last G4 and my son uses it and it is adequate for the internet and light gaming. You can add a PCI (not a PCIe) and add another monitor and this combo works very well.

All said and done - total up these add ins and compare that to the new Intel iMacs and make your call. I have done both - maxed out the G4 to get over the G5 series and bought the 24 inch as the replacement to my faithful G4 from 2002. I still use the G4 because it can start in OS 9 for those finicky clients who are still using it.

Looks like yo shouldn't have to pay over the odds as well

ATI RADEON 9600 PRO Graphics adapter - 128 MB - DDR SDRAM

Thanks for the tips!

As far as the cost goes... I literally only have $150 (shipping included) in the tower. I have extra RAM & hard drives from the various Mac tweaking I've done over the last couple of years. Plus I have Tiger & Leopard that I can load on it, and may do so with either dual drives or a partitioned single drive (a 160 gig Seagate that I have.)

Plus, we have a nice LCD widescreen monitor, so I was basically just looking for a cheap way to make the G4 run smoothly with light games & work well with light home picture & video editing with Photoshop and/or iMovie.

My only question about the 9600 is... Doesn't it have to be Mac specified?
I thought there were "Mac versions" and "PC versions." But if either will work, $38 is about perfect!

In short the 128MB VRAM card yes it does need to be a Mac Pro. There is a dearer 9600 256MB card that is PC/Mac compatible out of the box but it is much dearer. For $38.00? Tiger and Leopard really do work best with Quartz and Core Image compatible cards and don't think you will get one for $38.00 alas.

Here is a link for the 256MB card which will run at about 10-15% faster than a 128MB:-

ATI RADEON 9600 PRO AGP 4X/8X 256MB Dual DVI... (100435065) at OWC

An ATI Radeon 9600 card is preferred for the MDD as it has no fans, is silent and cool. The slightly faster 9800 has many adverse posts about fan failure and overheating.

Isn't there a 9800 Pro Mac and PC Edition that would work too?

Either it is an ATI Radeon 9800 Mac Pro or a flashed PC 9800. The 9600 in the 256MB VRAM version is the Mac/PC which works on either type of machine right out of the box. Do a Google for 9800 fan failures to see the overheating problems which is the last thing one needs with a MDD.

http://www.techsupportforum.com/har...upport/33826-radeon-9800-pro-cooling-fan.html