Hello! I have this PowerMac G4 and I wrote about it not long ago, but now a new chapter is being made for it an that's for upgrades, but now I'm in a situation figuring out which FireGL x3 card will work in it or what to do if a FireGL x3 isn't an option. I divided this into several sections to make it easier to read.
Prior
I wrote a post earlier because I was struggling to get an ATI GPU flashed. Now that I've went through the hoops of flashing a card, I would like a few suggestions for an ATI Radeon GPU for running Leopard with QE/CI and modern Debian, the Debian SID ports of course. I've seen Linux perform better than macOS with hardware acceleration and I was able to prove this when I got GPU acceleration working on Lubuntu 12.04 LTS Remix on my iBook G4 with only a weak Radeon 9200 Mobility GPU in it, didn't even support QE/CI in macOS at all, performed extremely sluggish in macOS. Linux with hardware acceleration (and none of that QE/CI stuff, so afaik the entire GPU is supported and being utilized in the OS) allowed it to perform way better than I had initially expected.
Now
I currently have a PowerMac G4 DA (Digital Audio), runs macOS 10.4.11 server, has the latest Open Firmware as well, and I am considering upgrading the GPU as well as CPU. I'm waiting for some dual G4 CPUs to show up on eBay and then do the 12v modification to supply power and now I'll have a multiprocessor G4 machine. Then I may as well try to overclock it slightly in the future, might wanna do stuff to improve thermal cooling and that kind of thing. I've read the FireGL cards are a good fit being the second fastest GPU you can put in a PowerMac G4. Apparently you can do some other modifications and bring the performance up even higher. At this point I may as well get an eeprom reader just to be sure. I read on the Mac Elite Wiki and saw that the FireGL x3 AGP can be indeed flashed, but searching by the specific part number, I could not find one at all or at least one that was reasonably priced. I've seen other FireGL x3 cards that are practically identical apart from the part number, some of for instance having "002HP" instead of "001" on the end, very slight difference but would they make a difference between it being compatible or not?
I don't really have money to toy or waste trying to experiment though, I'll post a few links below. I've also read someone has gotten a FireGL x3 to work with Debian SID until accidentally breaking it. Apparently the FireGL x3 is a buggy and unstable mess but the second alternative for a powerful ATI GPU is even worse because some of them want even more than the FireGL card. I am not going to touch NVIDIA because I have an iMac G4 and it performs poorly on nouveau on PPC. Nouveau on x86 of course probably better supported but still in most cases less than half of the performance of an NVIDIA proprietary driver. Open source ATI drivers apparently running way better on PPC Linux, and I as well want to run macOS Leopard as well on here.
eBay
Here are the eBay links for the cards that do not share the same part number as the Mac Elite Wiki shows.
First Link
Second Link
Third Link
Fourth Link
This is the link to the overpriced FireGL x3 card that has the identical part number to the one that shows on the Mac Elite Wiki as well as the link to the eBay listing.
Fifth Link
Mac Elite Wiki - FireGL x3
Suggestions?
Well, I have no clue if the fairly priced FireGL cards would work, I know the fastest Radeon 9800 is overpriced and I would have absolutely no telling if any of those would work being flashed, apparently some do and don't work. If only NVIDIA GPUs were well supported, certainly would use one, I think I even know someone with one of the last high end GeForce AGP GPUs that may work but do to the state of NVIDIA support in Linux, NVIDIA won't be an option. I have that Dell machine to flash the card with an old PCI Matrox, I've read about VNC'ing into the machine and I may do that to flash the card unless someone advices me not to. I haven't read that much about people doing it, I know DosDude1 has and it seems straightforward. I believe I have macOS X Panther on the other drive of the machine which is what some people recommend I believe. I probably will stick to the PC with DOs flashing route to be on the safe side. Anyone have any suggestions or confirmations? Thanks and I hope you people have a great day!
Prior
I wrote a post earlier because I was struggling to get an ATI GPU flashed. Now that I've went through the hoops of flashing a card, I would like a few suggestions for an ATI Radeon GPU for running Leopard with QE/CI and modern Debian, the Debian SID ports of course. I've seen Linux perform better than macOS with hardware acceleration and I was able to prove this when I got GPU acceleration working on Lubuntu 12.04 LTS Remix on my iBook G4 with only a weak Radeon 9200 Mobility GPU in it, didn't even support QE/CI in macOS at all, performed extremely sluggish in macOS. Linux with hardware acceleration (and none of that QE/CI stuff, so afaik the entire GPU is supported and being utilized in the OS) allowed it to perform way better than I had initially expected.
Now
I currently have a PowerMac G4 DA (Digital Audio), runs macOS 10.4.11 server, has the latest Open Firmware as well, and I am considering upgrading the GPU as well as CPU. I'm waiting for some dual G4 CPUs to show up on eBay and then do the 12v modification to supply power and now I'll have a multiprocessor G4 machine. Then I may as well try to overclock it slightly in the future, might wanna do stuff to improve thermal cooling and that kind of thing. I've read the FireGL cards are a good fit being the second fastest GPU you can put in a PowerMac G4. Apparently you can do some other modifications and bring the performance up even higher. At this point I may as well get an eeprom reader just to be sure. I read on the Mac Elite Wiki and saw that the FireGL x3 AGP can be indeed flashed, but searching by the specific part number, I could not find one at all or at least one that was reasonably priced. I've seen other FireGL x3 cards that are practically identical apart from the part number, some of for instance having "002HP" instead of "001" on the end, very slight difference but would they make a difference between it being compatible or not?
I don't really have money to toy or waste trying to experiment though, I'll post a few links below. I've also read someone has gotten a FireGL x3 to work with Debian SID until accidentally breaking it. Apparently the FireGL x3 is a buggy and unstable mess but the second alternative for a powerful ATI GPU is even worse because some of them want even more than the FireGL card. I am not going to touch NVIDIA because I have an iMac G4 and it performs poorly on nouveau on PPC. Nouveau on x86 of course probably better supported but still in most cases less than half of the performance of an NVIDIA proprietary driver. Open source ATI drivers apparently running way better on PPC Linux, and I as well want to run macOS Leopard as well on here.
eBay
Here are the eBay links for the cards that do not share the same part number as the Mac Elite Wiki shows.
First Link
Second Link
Third Link
Fourth Link
This is the link to the overpriced FireGL x3 card that has the identical part number to the one that shows on the Mac Elite Wiki as well as the link to the eBay listing.
Fifth Link
Mac Elite Wiki - FireGL x3
Suggestions?
Well, I have no clue if the fairly priced FireGL cards would work, I know the fastest Radeon 9800 is overpriced and I would have absolutely no telling if any of those would work being flashed, apparently some do and don't work. If only NVIDIA GPUs were well supported, certainly would use one, I think I even know someone with one of the last high end GeForce AGP GPUs that may work but do to the state of NVIDIA support in Linux, NVIDIA won't be an option. I have that Dell machine to flash the card with an old PCI Matrox, I've read about VNC'ing into the machine and I may do that to flash the card unless someone advices me not to. I haven't read that much about people doing it, I know DosDude1 has and it seems straightforward. I believe I have macOS X Panther on the other drive of the machine which is what some people recommend I believe. I probably will stick to the PC with DOs flashing route to be on the safe side. Anyone have any suggestions or confirmations? Thanks and I hope you people have a great day!
