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ADC Graphics Card Upgrade

A

Aperturexs

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 30, 2014
22
0
Hi everyone!

I am new here, but I have been to this site many times before. Anyhow I have a love for PPC macs and Intel ones. I acquired a PowerMac G4 QuickSilver in late July last year (I found it on the side of a road alongside a Sawtooth keeping it company, lol) and since then I have been doing a lot of upgrades to it. I got the original keyboard and mouse for it, along with a 17" Studio Display. So I have been upgrading it since, and I put in a 250 GB Maxtor HD, 1.5 GB of RAM, a ATI Radeon 9000, a Wireless 802.11-n card pulled from a Dell with the broadcom chip (because who needs airport, right?), a USB 2.0 card, and finally a sonnet tempo ATA-133 controller I had laying around so I could use a larger drive. It is a 867 MHZ Model, and I love the machine to pieces! However I need a better graphics card for it that will also support ADC for my studio display. Does anyone know a card that supports Core Image and has ADC?

Thanks!
 
Intell

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
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The best ADC card for a G4 is the ultra rare ATI 9700 from built to order MDD models. The next best option is to modify a G5's ATI 9600 card buy taping off pins and adding a ADC power tab for the G4's different ADC power location, see here: http://pistolerapost2.com/viewing/96002g4.html. The next best is the expensive GeForce4 Ti, then the ATI Radeon 9000 Pro and NVIDIA GeForce4 MX. Of all those cards, only the ATI 9700 and 9600 have CoreImage support.
 
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A

Aperturexs

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 30, 2014
22
0
I think I will go for the Radeon 9600 modification, as I cannot find a 9700 anywhere. Would you guys recommend the 9600 pro or the 9600XT?

Thanks!
 
Intell

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
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The XT, it has more memory than the Pro and performs slightly better. Make sure you get the one with the ADC port and not two DVI ports.
 
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Intell

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
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Dave H said:
Some 9600 cards won't work in certain models of G4.
http://themacelite.wikidot.com/compatibility
AFAIK, it's trial and error.
I used to have a G4 Digital Audio, and tried two 9600 cards.
One worked fine, but the other one gave a black screen on startup 9 times out of 10.
Click to expand...

That list is for the retail ATI 9600, not the OEM ATI 9600 that was only in G5s. The G5 9600 cards work very well with extremely high compatibility when used in AGP 4x G4s.
 
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Aperturexs

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 30, 2014
22
0
Ok, I have found an 9600XT on Ebay for about $20 USD. I should be able to mod it to use both AGP 4x and ADC. I tried to mod a 5200FX from a G5 into a QuickSilver once, but I could not get it to physically fit into the AGP slot. I will post pictures of the process once I get the card. I wish I had a later model MDD and a non-ADC studio display, so I could actually take advantage of higher spec cards. But for what I need the 9600XT for (Hardware Accelerated Core Image, and better Quartz Extreme performance) I believe it will fit my needs quite nice.
 
Intell

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
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Quicksilvers and MDDs both have the same AGP 4x slot. Neither is better than the other.
 
H

harrymatic

macrumors 6502
Dec 30, 2013
331
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United Kingdom
Aperturexs said:
I wish I had a later model MDD and a non-ADC studio display, so I could actually take advantage of higher spec cards. But for what I need the 9600XT for (Hardware Accelerated Core Image, and better Quartz Extreme performance) I believe it will fit my needs quite nice.
Click to expand...

The 9600XT is actually a very capable card, especially in a G4 system. I was running one in my MDD G4 for a while (later upgraded to an overclocked 9600 Pro 256MB and recently a 256MB 9800XT). It made an enormous difference from the very pedestrian GeForce 4MX that came stock.

It seems that not all of the OEM 9600XTs are comparable with G4 systems - if you read the comments on the article mentioned by Intell, it seems that some cards have a different ROM version and do not work at all. That said, my one worked fine. I didn't get any video during the boot process until I installed the ATI Utilities program though (I still don't see any video in Open Firmware however).
 
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