Expanding a PowerMac G5 on the el cheapo. [EFFORT REQUIRED]

[TommyLee]

i've done the ram (3 gigs!) and the hdd (400GB!), now i'm ready to stick some cards in my mac. since i ran out of usb ports 3 years ago, let's start there:

1
6 Ports USB 2.0 PCI PCI-X Card For All Mac G3/G4/G5
the seller says it works on my G5, but what's the catch? will it slow down my machine? if it sucks, whats a good alternative?

2
i need to connect a second VGA monitor for business purposes, so i don't need any power gfx. will any of these cards work?

• Geforce FX 5200 256MB PCI Graphics Card
• Apple MAC G3 G4 G5 ATI RAGE 128 16 MB PCI Video Card
• ATI Radeon 7000 64MB DDR VGA DVI-D AGP card

if not, cane you recommend something?

3
Pro Tools recommends i buy a FW HD for audio recording, but i already have a 250GB IDE HD. can anyone recommend an enclosure with 2 firewire ports?

thanks and more to come...

 

[disconap]

1--You can do this, but why not just get a powered hub? Costs about the same AND you'd have easier access to the ports.

2--The Rage will. Doesn't your stock card have a second port? You can just get an ADB or DVI --> VGA adapter for around $20 or so on ebay.

3--No on that, sorry. But I suggest FW800 if possible for ProTools, you'll notice a difference.

Also, if your G5 is one of the first gen, you might want to consider picking up a SATA 300 card, as the originals only had SATA150. To be honest, with the bus speeds on the G5 you won't really notice a huge difference, but they're not too expensive if you can find them.

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

1) Get a powered hub & be done with it

2) Do NOT buy a Rage card, period.....they were crap when they were new (11yrs ago) and still are
Look around for Mac Radeon 9200. Not a high-end card by any means, but light years ahead of the Rages........

2) FW800 or SATA II w/ pci card.....not only way faster than IDE, but also offloads the bus mastering, which frees up the cpu to do other things, like, maybe, encode your audio

and using an IDE HD in a FW enclosure won't give you the spppeeed you're looking for

 

[OMFG HAXX!]

1) Get a powered hub & be done with it

2) Do NOT buy a Rage card, period.....they were crap when they were new (11yrs ago) and still are
Look around for Mac Radeon 9200. Not a high-end card by any means, but light years ahead of the Rages........

2) FW800 or SATA II w/ pci card.....not only way faster than IDE, but also offloads the bus mastering, which frees up the cpu to do other things, like, maybe, encode your audio

and using an IDE HD in a FW enclosure won't give you the spppeeed you're looking for

I will second this. My PC desktop is running an ATi Rage because I was too cheap to buy a real graphics card, and I regret the decision every time I try to do something as simple as watching a Flash animation.

 

[iMpathetic]

I will second this. My PC desktop is running an ATi Rage because I was too cheap to buy a real graphics card, and I regret the decision every time I try to do something as simple as watching a Flash animation.

Thirded.

... Considering Intel graphics can barely handle Flash sites....

Dedicated non-crap graphics are a must.

 

[Firefly2002]

Unnnless you're doing RAID, I don't see the need to upgrade from SATA, as it doesn't bottleneck any single drives yet, not even the Velociraptor (although that's pushing it).

Even ATA/100 is just fine as long as you're got only one drive per channel, and the HDDs you have in there won't come close to saturating it (however, the ATA port on your G5 is actually meant for the optical drive, not for HDDs).

As mentioned, stay away from the Rage 128... you at least want Quartz Extreme support, and the Rage 128 won't run it even with the PCI Extreme hack as the Rage5 core doesn't support arbitrary texture sizes, which is used by Mac OS X's OpenGL-based QE.

The Radeon 7000 AGP is for a PC... they only made R7000 PCIs for Mac, though you could get one of those if you wanted.

Do you have AGP slots in there, or is it a later PCI-E G5? If it's PCI-E, you don't have any PCI-X slots to speak of, and you can't use any PCI or PCI-X cards anyway.

Speaking of flash, the last post reminded me... early Radeon cards like the Radeon 7000/7500 etc. don't handle flash well at all... something about little/no support with flash overlays, so I might actually steer away from that. I'm using an original Radeon Mac Edition and it absolutely blows for Flash sites... used to be you could run a Dual 1 GHz G4 next to a 300 MHz Celeron and the Celly would kick the G4's ass when it came to sites with flash because of issues with the Mac's graphics cards that were available at the time.

I'd go for a GeForce 6600 or better.

 

[OMFG HAXX!]

Thirded.

... Considering Intel graphics can barely handle Flash sites....

Dedicated non-crap graphics are a must.

Very true iMpathetic.

 

[TommyLee]

Even ATA/100 is just fine as long as you're got only one drive per channel, ? and the HDDs you have in there won't come close to saturating it ? (however, the ATA port on your G5 is actually meant for the optical drive, not for HDDs). i have an ata port?

The Radeon 7000 AGP is for a PC... they only made R7000 PCIs for Mac, though you could get one of those if you wanted.

Do you have AGP slots in there, or is it a later PCI-E G5? it's a Dual 2 GHz PowerMac7,2 - PowerPC 970 (M9032LL/A) so... PCI-X? If it's PCI-E, you don't have any PCI-X slots to speak of, and you can't use any PCI or PCI-X cards anyway.
I'd go for a GeForce 6600 or better.

and THAT'S where is get's confusing... i went to ebay and punched in GeForce 6600 and each one is different. (1) (2) (3)

btw, very useful information in this thread. thanks

 

[zmttoxics]

1) Get a powered hub & be done with it

2) Do NOT buy a Rage card, period.....they were crap when they were new (11yrs ago) and still are
Look around for Mac Radeon 9200. Not a high-end card by any means, but light years ahead of the Rages........

2) FW800 or SATA II w/ pci card.....not only way faster than IDE, but also offloads the bus mastering, which frees up the cpu to do other things, like, maybe, encode your audio

and using an IDE HD in a FW enclosure won't give you the spppeeed you're looking for

Ha! The rage 128s weren't that bad. I remember upgrading to one because I needed a card with at least 16 meg video to play tribes 2 (might be 1, I cant remember).

But I agree, it would be silly to spend money on one now.

 

[OMFG HAXX!]

Ha! The rage 128s weren't that bad. I remember upgrading to one because I needed a card with at least 16 meg video to play tribes 2 (might be 1, I cant remember).

But I agree, it would be silly to spend money on one now.

Your Rage had 16MB of VRAM? Mine only has 8

 

[zmttoxics]

Your Rage had 16MB of VRAM? Mine only has 8

Ya man! I had a couple 8 meg cards too. They were great for HalfLife 1 and Quake 2, it was Tribes2 that killed the fun for me. I miss the days of buying video cards based on vram requirements...

 

[iMpathetic]

Your Rage had 16MB of VRAM? Mine only has 8

That's because....... God hates you.

So, they were the same model Rage? I think there were like 5 different versions.

 

[tuxtpenguin]

Does the current video card in the machine have 2 ports for monitors?

 

[TommyLee]

Does the current video card in the machine have 2 ports for monitors?

Yea, but one's ACD

 

[iMpathetic]

Yea, but one's ACD

One's hooked up to an ACD?

If you have two ports and only have one in use, you're fine on the video card front.

 

[slughead]

the ATI 7000 works GREAT, but is super slow, I even had some playback issues with it.

the 9200 is better, but slightly more

 

[TommyLee]

One's hooked up to an ACD?

If you have two ports and only have one in use, you're fine on the video card front.

no, it's hooked up to the VGA :/