Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

b&w g3 vid card upgrades

D

dm33186

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 3, 2003
38
0
Hi, i just got a 400mhz B&W g3 running os x. So far i love it after adding an extra 512mb of ram. Id like to upgrade from the current rage 128 pci. Could somebody please point me in the direction that I need to go to find what video cards are compatable? I tried a voodoo3 3000 32mb and it would not work :(

thanks in advance

David
 
You have 3 choices:

ATI Radeon Mac
ATI Radeon 8500 PCI Mac
ATI Radeon 7000 Mac

They're all PCI cards but the 8500 also came in AGP. The last one is the only one actively made by ATI.
 
Originally posted by bousozoku
ATI Radeon 8500 PCI Mac
Click to expand...
Eh? I don't think there was ever a PCI version of the 8500 for the Mac.


Btw, I have (and use) the radeon mac edition in my old powermac 9500 and it works fine. I even pop it in my mdd sometimes if I need vid-out.
 
I would recommend the ATI Radeon Mac Edition. The reason is it's faster then the CPU so anything faster is a waste of time and money. I know this for a fact because I have a B/W G3 400 with 768MB of RAM, 45Gig 7200RPM Maxtor, 8Gig OEM Quantum, and the ATI Radeon Mac Edition. It works wonderfully but don't expect impressive gaming speed.
 
im not looking for gaming performance, i dont game at all anymore except for console gaming. Id just like the system to respond a little faster under grpahical programs such as photoshop and illustrator. It just seems that the cpu meter jumps to full when i minmize. The pc versions of these pci cards wont work or is there a chance it would?
 
also can i interchange cdrom drives between macs and pcs or do i need to buy a special dvd burner?
 
Originally posted by dm33186
im not looking for gaming performance, i dont game at all anymore except for console gaming. Id just like the system to respond a little faster under grpahical programs such as photoshop and illustrator. It just seems that the cpu meter jumps to full when i minmize. The pc versions of these pci cards wont work or is there a chance it would?
Click to expand...

Okay here's the thing. If you're looking to go with Quartz Extreme since your system doesn't have an AGP slot you will have to use a hack. Even with the hack and off loading some of the Quartz drawing engine onto the graphics card I have seen tests showing that the hack speeds up the GUI but slows down overall system performance on those older machines.

On another note you need a very specialized graphics card to speed up photo or video editing. The cards we are talking about are made for games and that's about it. You will not see any benefit with any of these cards in Photoshop or any other photo or editing program. In fact I doubt because of the age of that machine you can even get the graphics artist designed cards anymore. In any case the biggest increase in speed you can do for photoshop or many other photo/video editing programs is to install a G4 chip. A large portion of the modern editing programs for the mac are written to take advantage of the Altivec unit on the G4 and now G5 chips. This can easily give you a 2 to 1 speed increase over your older G3 not to mention the overall increase in MHz. Also if you choose to run OSX it will also run much better as OSX as a whole has a lot of Altivec optimizations.
 
where can i get g4 upgrade chips and about how much are they? im on a very limited budget
 
Originally posted by dm33186
where can i get g4 upgrade chips and about how much are they? im on a very limited budget
Click to expand...


www.macsales.com . I wouldn't recommend anyone else. They're are other places but these people are the best. Just so you know G4 processors for the B/W G3 do not exceed 550MHz. It has to do with the model of G4 that is compatible with the ZIF socket and the motherboard of the B/W. There have been and supposedly are attempts at making more modern G4 chips compatible but no word on when or if they will ever reach the light of day.
 
Originally posted by dm33186
also can i interchange cdrom drives between macs and pcs or do i need to buy a special dvd burner?
Click to expand...

Most PC drives will work on a mac. If you want a DVD burner pretty much anything will work. I would recommend the Sony or Pioneer. As for CD burners I would get a Lite-On. They make the fastest for the cheapest but have very very good reviews and reliability.
 
I've got a Radeon Mac edition in a late Beige G3 tower with a G4/400 (OSX 10.2.6. Is there ANY way I can run a23inch Cinema display (using the Aple DVI adapter) Plug it all in but nothing.
 
Originally posted by GraphicUmp
I have a B&W G3/350 with a Radeon 7000 and a Lite-On 12x10x32x CDRW.

Both work wonderfully in 9 and X. And I use PCI EXTREME to enable Quartz Extreme.

I also recommend OWC (www.macsales.com) for anything - they're fast and they're reasonable.
Click to expand...

You might read some of the results at www.xlr8yourmac.com about Quartz Extreme hacks. The results I have seen have shown that yes it does make the GUI bearable in OSX but it can also slow the overall performance of the machine down by as much as 20%. No one knows exactly why this is.
 
Originally posted by dm33186
where can i get g4 upgrade chips and about how much are they? im on a very limited budget
Click to expand...

I've been trying to decide on a CPU upgrade for my G3/400 for over two years. Two weeks ago, I decided on a G3/800 upgrade from PowerLogix, which I got at OWC.

I chose this one because it's more in balance with the rest of the system. There will most likely be G4 upgrades in the same clock speed eventually, but they will be overwhelming to the system and may actually slow the system down at times. When the G4s were originally introduced, the new motherboards had a new memory controller with approximately 3 times the throughput.

I'm quite pleased with the speed and at $229, it was a good deal. It even slightly out-performs an individual G4/800 processor in my dual 800 on most things.
 
Originally posted by bousozoku
I've been trying to decide on a CPU upgrade for my G3/400 for over two years. Two weeks ago, I decided on a G3/800 upgrade from PowerLogix, which I got at OWC.

I chose this one because it's more in balance with the rest of the system. There will most likely be G4 upgrades in the same clock speed eventually, but they will be overwhelming to the system and may actually slow the system down at times. When the G4s were originally introduced, the new motherboards had a new memory controller with approximately 3 times the throughput.

I'm quite pleased with the speed and at $229, it was a good deal. It even slightly out-performs an individual G4/800 processor in my dual 800 on most things.
Click to expand...

I don't think the speed slow down that you describe with a higher speed G4 will be the case. If you look at the current G4 upgrades for beige box G3s that go all the way up to 1.2GHz you will see that those machines are actually quite competitive with much more modern macs with those cpus in them. The B/W PowerMacs have an even more capable system controller in them so they should be even more capable with those processors.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back