Display Card Purchase Advise

Hello,

I recently got given a G4 PowerMac 400mhz. I have spent the last few months playing around with it and have done some upgrades:

cpu: 1600mhz PPC
2gb pc133 ram (4x512mb)
sata1 controller
seagate 160gb sata1 hdd
usb2+fw2 combo pci card
osx 10.4.9

most of the stuff was gotten from www.macsales.com, xcept the ram.

However I am wanting to buy a new AGP display card as it still has the original 16mb ATI RAGE in it. I just want a card with DVI and core image supoprt, games are not important, cs3 suite is what this is only used for. My options are basically:

Powercolor ATI Raderon 9550 128mb (64bit)
Biostar Nvidia Geforce 6800xt 128mb (64bit)

These cards are very closely priced, I think the Geforce is marginally more expesive - my concern here is will these just plug and play - or would I have to do some firmware upgrades in order to get them to work, and also which should I go for? On the Apple site it mentiones the 9550 as having core image support, I just think that the 6800xt is a newwer generation card and there is no reaqson why it wouldn't have support for it aswell - sure the 6800xt is the better option.

Thank you in advance.

I can't answer your question, but I would like to expand it. Do either of these cards have a fan on them? If so, you should also consider how much noise they make. Cheap video card coolers are frequently one of the major noise sources in a computer these days - them and CPU fans and case fans, not to mention power supplies. So, be careful that you are not adding a major noise source to your machine.

I would say the 6800XT is the better choice. It should "plug and play" without any firmware updates as long as you get the mac edition, read more expensive, of the card from an authorized apple dealer. You could always buy the pc version of the card and flash the firmware to the mac edition but I would not recommend this unless you know what you are doing. As for the fan noise I would not worry about it. The fan on 6800xt is very quiet. Don't know about the fan on the ATI card. I had the pc version of the 6800xt in one of my previous computers and I could not hear the fan. As far as core image support I can't imagine it would not have it. Hope this helps!

I love these forums. I was scrolling to post about the ATI 9600 which I have and read the above recommendation.

I run CS2 and found the 256MB ATI9600 was the ticket 2 years ago. I cannot detect any noise.

One thing to note from another forum - the video cards with fans can get clogged with dust and overheat. I never thought about this so I will crack my case at weeks end and clean out things.

As for you decision any ATI or Geforce with 128 or above probably will do. If you can afford more RAM do it. CS will respond much faster on the G4.

Thank u so much for the advice to everyone here. These are both pc version cards - tbh I don't have much to spend on these so I'd have to firmware upgrade them. Seems they both have fans:

Biostar Nvidia Geforce 6800XT



Powercolour ATI Radeon 9550



Does anybody know where I can find mac firmwares for ATI/Nvidia cards? I managed to find the nvFlash utility and there is a lot of different firmwares for cards here at MVKTechNet, but I didn't see any Mac ones. All I found on Apple's site was the Nvidia Graphics Firmware Updater 1.0.

I will be back home Friday night and see if I can find the info you need. I have never done this for a mac but I have done it on a windows pc(on an ATI card to unlock additional features and better performance.) I have an article at home that describes in detail how to do this for mac. Just be aware that this is guaranteed to void the warranty and may ruin the card if done incorrectly.

That's great, will be awaiting your response - i'm not too worried re the warrantee - I could buy 3 cards for the price of 1 mac enabled card. Let me know your findings.

Quick question. What is your budget, if you don't mind me asking. I may have a better solution for you. By the way I just got home and I am looking for that article. Also are you in the USA/Canada or somewhere else?

Here is an article I found for older macs. The article I have is only for the new Mac Pro. This should tell you almost everything you need to know. I am still looking to see if I can find the rom image for the 2 cards you are considering.
http://www.cybercoment.com/macgeforce.htm

It seems that some nvidia cards will work on the G4 Mac without a firmware flash. I will try and get you a link to a list of all known working cards without a firmware update. Hope this helps! If I find a rom image i will post it here.

Hi thanks for this - am busy reading it. To answer your question my budget is pretty low, about $60 - the cards I mentioned will cost me $48 for the radeon and $58 for the geforce. And I am in South Africa .

PS. Just a quick update, I got my hands on a Geforce 5200 (for testing) and the mac didnt even switch on - worked fine when I put the original Rage card back in. And bbarnette, you mentioned that you may have a better solution for me - what do u have in mind?

If you can order from newegg.com, you may be able to buy a much better card for about $100 u.s. I don't know if they will ship to South Africa though. I have a pc version of the ATI 9800pro that I will give you, just pay the shipping. It will still have to have the firmware flashed but it should be easy to find a rom image on the internet. Just want to give you some options. BTW the ATI card is from a Dell that I upgraded for a friend.

Hey bro - I would gladly pay for the shipping for a nice card like what you are offering me, but the mac rom compatability issue still stays for me and I'm not too clued up on the Mac scene - is there any way u can try sort it out for me and I'd rather pay you the $60 (I know it's not much but it's what I can afford) - let me know.

PS. been meaining to say this, but ****, nice specs on your home uber mac!!

I've been looking on the net for a ROM image that will work. Once I find one I'll email it to you, along with instructions on how to do the flash. I can't flash the card myself b/c I don't have any computers that use AGP. I won't charge you anything for the card because there is no guarantee that the ROM flash will work. This way you still have money for another card if needed. I can't use the card for anything anyway and my wife has been on my case about getting rid of my old computer parts anyway. Just let me know what you want to do. I'm new to mac myself, only been using it about a year now. I picked up on OS X really fast though, I was a network administrator before I joined the military. I also build all my own windows/linux boxes.

daclina said:

PS. been meaining to say this, but ****, nice specs on your home uber mac!!

Click to expand...

Thanks, my wife almost killed me when I bought it though;D . I'm about to upgrade to 16 GB of RAM and either dual quad core 2.66 Ghz or dual quad core 3.0 Ghz(if intel will release it to the general consumer!) processors. Hopefully I will get a direct x 10 compliant video card soon. But with 8 cores and 16GB of ram it should really be smoking fast.

Ok well that is v kind of you, thank you bbarnette and I have sent you a pm. Re the rom, I found http://themacelite.wikidot.com/ which is v detailed and hopefully helps somebody else too. They have step-by-step instructions + tools + roms for flashing different types of PC display cards into Mac format.

bbarnette, I'm struggling to send you any more pm's, not sure why though. Just wanted to ask that if you can plz make sure when that it's sent with a tracking number as sometimes shipping to South Africa isn't 100% reliable. I mean it's not something that happens often, but it has been known to happen at times, that items just dont arrive @ their destinations - tracking numbers at least help in finding them is such a thing occurs. Thanx.

hey, my other account stopped working so I had to make a new one. I can still read your previous pm's but I can't send or receive new ones. Don't know what happened to old account but oh well. I will send the card out via fed ex on Thursday and send you a pm with the amount and paypal/tracking info. Hope this works out for you.

Yay

Ok bro just let me know.