Hello everyone this is my first post! So I have a Power Mac G5 Quad with PCIe slots and I've been doing a lot of research for quite some time on the GPUs that have been made to work with the machine and what I've found is that there's 2 Nvidia cards, the GeForce 7800 GTX 512mb version which is much faster the 256mb model and then the Quadro FX 4500 which only the ones with the double sided VRAM chips is flashable for this machine. But after looking I've found that some people say the 7800 GTX is better and then benchmarks show the Quadro being better and so I'm really unsure. If someone had both of the cards flashed for a Power Mac G5 and could benchmark them in that same machine to see which one is objectively better, that would be really nice. Now one thing I've seen is that with people who've flashed the 7800 GTX 512 is that the G5 recognizes it as the Quadro model which makes sense considering how similar they are and that the G5 as far as I'm aware of never had the other card produced for Macs. So I'm not really sure who the clear winner would be in this case. But in addition to these cards, we also have the ATI Radeon X1950 models which I can't figure which is the best one since it's not really clear which ones are flashable. I've found that people flashed the X1950XT to work but only the 256mb model though I think they were getting the 512mb XT model confused with the XTX model which is very similar but has GDDR4 memory and is completely incompatible with the Power Mac G5s. So if it's possible to flash a standard X1950XT 512mb model with this ROM http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/x1950xt-roms-g5 that would be a wonderful additional card to compare to the 2 Nvidia cards that seem too similar to differentiate performance wise, though I want to run Tiger AND Leopard and I'm not quite sure the drivers for the ATI card would work on Tiger but I know the Nvidia cards will since the Quadro was a stock config and the GTX is very similar with the same chip ultimately. I really want to build the most powerful G5 machine ever but I want to make sure I can find out which of the cards would be the best and if the ATI one I'm looking into would even work. Also I noticed that all 3 of these cards are very difficult to find on eBay and the 7800 GTX 512 basically doesn't exist there so if you know a place to find any of the cards for a decent price that would be very helpful!
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Best PCIe GPU for Power Mac G5
- Thread starter iPhoneguy404
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I have a Quad G5 with the Mac version of the X1900 XT and I have a 2.3 DC G5 with the Mac version of the Quadro.
I don't have numbers for you because I don't use either system for anything that would push these cards to their limits.
But there is ONE physical difference that makes my preference the X1900 and that is that the X1900 takes up only one slot. The Quadro takes up two and therefore makes one of the slots useless.
On my Quad, before I retired it, I was running 6 displays (my MacPro does this job now). I can do that on my 2.3DC of course, but it would mean all my slots are filled. I still had one open slot on the Quad because of the X1900.
I don't have numbers for you because I don't use either system for anything that would push these cards to their limits.
But there is ONE physical difference that makes my preference the X1900 and that is that the X1900 takes up only one slot. The Quadro takes up two and therefore makes one of the slots useless.
On my Quad, before I retired it, I was running 6 displays (my MacPro does this job now). I can do that on my 2.3DC of course, but it would mean all my slots are filled. I still had one open slot on the Quad because of the X1900.
You might want to read this re big and beefy cards 
forums.macrumors.com
Do I Need A Better Graphics Card....
That's the question I've asked myself again and again when I've suspected I could just get that little bit more performance out of my machine..... So, spying a NVIDIA Quadro FX4500 on ebay for a reasonable(ish) price, I decided to find out. My existing card was a NVIDIA Geforce 6600 which is...
forums.macrumors.com
I've had the 7800GT in my machine for years and have been very happy with it. Most games play completely maxed out just fine. The pro apps work great with it too (and anything else that isn't a 6600).