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Powermac G4 533mhz Digital Audio - adding a better graphics card help

D

denial

macrumors regular
Original poster
I still love my aging Powermac (Digital Audio 533mhz, 1gig Ram,stock model) and I want to keep going with it (it's reliable and does the job for me). However I can get hold of a Radeon 9000 pro 128mb graphics card very cheaply and was wondering what benefits (if any) I would see if I replaced my Rage128 pro (16mb) with this new card? And as a complete novice is the fitting of it as simple as removing a screw, taking out the old card and fitting in the new one?

Or should I just leave well alone?
 
crap freakboy said:
It's just sooooo easy. Pull out the crappy RagePro and pop in the new one.
It'll make a world of difference.
Click to expand...

Sounds good. I'm one of these people that find putting in memory a world challenge so I'm glad it's straightforward!!.
 
If you would like to have Core Image support in Tiger I'd recommend getting Radeon 9600 instead. As far as I recall they are also pretty cheap 🙂
 
I second the 9600.

I have a dual 533 and swapped the rage pro for the 9600. Was a nice move and kept me occupied untill i got my G5.

Last time i checked you can get a modified one from www.macsales.com.

Well worth it.
 
I third the 9600. 😉

I have a Dual 533 Digital Audio, so I'm running a similar computer.

A piece of advice: I have upgraded my Mac with a 250GB 7200RPM SATA hard disk, 1GB RAM and the 9600 Pro 64MB @ $129 from OWC. In my experience, the hard drive upgrade made a BIG difference in performance - the biggest of the three upgrades. Boot time is faster, and next to getting a CPU upgrade it is the best performance upgrade you can get. OWC sells an SIIG brand SATA card (the one I bought) and a variety of SATA hard drives all the way up to 500GB.

The 9600 Pro 64MB made a big difference too, but I was running a Radeon 7500 32MB before that, so you'll likely notice and even bigger difference.

Good luck, and happy upgrading!
 
you can get a 9800 pro for a hundred bucks off new egg and then flash it, if your not up for it i'd get a 9800 off ebay, those new 9600's are expencive.
 
Hector said:
you can get a 9800 pro for a hundred bucks off new egg and then flash it, if your not up for it i'd get a 9800 off ebay, those new 9600's are expencive.
Click to expand...

A lot of people go this way and it can save a bundle, but I just don't trust ebay. To be fair a number of people on the forums have gone this route with no problems.
 
as mentioned there are alot of people on ebay who flash the PC cards to mac then sell them and you can save yourself a bundle, if you ask me thats the way to go but if you don't trust it go to a mac specialist card maker,

ShadOW
 
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