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Flashing A Quadro FX 4500 For Power Mac G5 Compatibility

There you go. The heatsink shroud and the fan also have a sparkly matte texture I haven't seen on any FX 4500 cards before and the bracket is PC-like, i.e. missing the usual Mac symbols.
 

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Betonmischer_86 said:
Regardless, it works in a PPC Mac despite having VRAM on one side, which is supposed to be impossible according to the first post. That's the point.
Click to expand...
Maybe try going into Maya 2008 and rendering some big scene? See if it uses all of the VRAM properly, although I don't know how you would track it tbh. Not many applications or programs for doing that on Mac OS X this old but there's probably something on MacPorts.
 
Popping in late to say that I managed to do this with a QFX I got from ShopGoodwill for a whopping $17!

It's nice for gaming but is unfortunately rife with issues trying to run Linux or BSD. I'd like to pick up a top-line ATI card to see how it compares.
 
jktwice said:
Maybe try going into Maya 2008 and rendering some big scene? See if it uses all of the VRAM properly, although I don't know how you would track it tbh. Not many applications or programs for doing that on Mac OS X this old but there's probably something on MacPorts.
Click to expand...
Sadly, I couldn't figure out a way to monitor VRAM consumption on Leopard. But Prey launched in 1600x1200 with maxed-out settings and 4x AA. The framerate was about the same as on my other FX 4500 with double-sided VRAM.

I dumped the ROM of the "mystery" card in case someone else is willing to play with it.
 

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Betonmischer_86 said:
Sadly, I couldn't figure out a way to monitor VRAM consumption on Leopard. But Prey launched in 1600x1200 with maxed-out settings and 4x AA. The framerate was about the same as on my other FX 4500 with double-sided VRAM.

I dumped the ROM of the "mystery" card in case someone else is willing to play with it.
Click to expand...
I made a version of that ROM that should make the card work on Old World Macs (with a PCI to PCIe adapter) in Mac OS X. Mac OS 9 might be able to use the Open Firmware framebuffer (no depth or resolution changing, no acceleration).
Such modifications are discussed in the thread at:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ll-work-in-a-beige-power-macintosh-g3.2303689
I haven't tested it. I use a nvflash.v5.95.0.1-win in Windows 10 to apply modified ROMs to my Nvidia 7800 GT Mac Edition.
 

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I wonder what's supposed to happen when you take a PC version of the FX 4500 with single-side VRAM and flash it with the Mac ROM for the dual-side version. Will the card refuse to function at all or will it crash when accessing VRAM above 256 MB? Knowing that, it'll make it easier to confirm if the ROM I dumped is "legit" or not.

Can anyone check whether the ROM of my single-sided FX 4500 any different from the dual-side Mac ROM? Unfortunately, the link to the archive in the original post is dead.

I'm also a little confused about the physical design of the Mac versions of the FX 4500. Before the "mystery" card I had a FX 4500 variant which was sold by third parties back in the day as an upgrade, and it has a matte bracket with Mac-style display symbols (like the stock GeForce 6600). In the Apple service manual for the PowerMac G5, the FX 4500 has a regular smooth bracket. Another one of my FX 4500 cards, which came from Apple in a sealed box, also has a smooth bracket with number markings instead of the display symbols. Does that mean Apple never bothered to make the bracket of the FX 4500 consistent with the design of the G5 and only third-party vendors did?
 
A bit off topic. I was able to flash one for my G5 and it is my daily drive GPU in it. Works like A charm on Tiger and Leopard. Getting any use out of it in Linux has been very difficult, though. Anyone have insight into that issue? Assuming it is nouveau being itself. :/
 
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Smithwick’s said:
A bit off topic. I was able to flash one for my G5 and it is my daily drive GPU in it. Works like A charm on Tiger and Leopard. Getting any use out of it in Linux has been very difficult, though. Anyone have insight into that issue? Assuming it is nouveau being itself. :/
Click to expand...
I'm wondering the same thing. For me, Adelie Linux booted just fine, but hardware acceleration wasn't available in KDE and I assumed it wouldn't work in 3D applications either.
 
Smithwick’s said:
A bit off topic. I was able to flash one for my G5 and it is my daily drive GPU in it. Works like A charm on Tiger and Leopard. Getting any use out of it in Linux has been very difficult, though. Anyone have insight into that issue? Assuming it is nouveau being itself. :/
Click to expand...
I looked up my notes for when I used to run Ubuntu Mate 16.04 PPC and had acceleration working on my G5 DC 2.3Ghz with the Quadro FX 4500 (512MB PCIe)...

add to yaboot.conf append parameter "nouveau.config=NvMSI=0"

Not sure if this is still relevant, but could be worth a try.
 
AphoticD said:
I looked up my notes for when I used to run Ubuntu Mate 16.04 PPC and had acceleration working on my G5 DC 2.3Ghz with the Quadro FX 4500 (512MB PCIe)...

add to yaboot.conf append parameter "nouveau.config=NvMSI=0"

Not sure if this is still relevant, but could be worth a try.
Click to expand...
Will definitely try! I’m using grub but it should hopefully work as well. Currently traveling so I’ll have to report back in about 2 weeks as to whether I had any success.
 
Betonmischer_86 said:
There you go. The heatsink shroud and the fan also have a sparkly matte texture I haven't seen on any FX 4500 cards before and the bracket is PC-like, i.e. missing the usual Mac symbols.
Click to expand...
So my card looks identical to this but is rev A02 though my bios number looks lower.

You're saying this card works in your G5? With the firmware you posted? Is that stock? Or the firmware posted on this page?

I have no idea the origin of my card. I think I had used it in a Mac Pro before, not sure if it's Intel flashed. Both my PPC Macs (dp labelled r9800 but might have an nv? Dc labelled 6600 but thought it had a 6200?) I'm actually gonna have to check that now cuz I thought they both had their oem cards haha..

But I would love to use this 4500 in my dc. I have a 4600 too but IIRC that's newer and definitely intel only. My pro is running the alphadog xfx 8800gt I bought when I was like 21. Found a mac bios for it, works great. Also had my 2060 in it for a bit but as it ages, I use other systems for windows and rather use this just for osx DAW work, which is also why I wanna setup the g5.
 
Betonmischer_86 said:
Sadly, I couldn't figure out a way to monitor VRAM consumption on Leopard. But Prey launched in 1600x1200 with maxed-out settings and 4x AA. The framerate was about the same as on my other FX 4500 with double-sided VRAM.

I dumped the ROM of the "mystery" card in case someone else is willing to play with it.
Click to expand...

holycrapholycrapholycrap thank you!!

I have a single sided card exactly like the one you pictured - mine is A02 though, yours I think showed A00?

Anyway, I just flashed it (after days of pain trying to boot DOS with USB on my Mac Pro 3,1 and have a working keyboard..) and was about to give up with a cry when.. BAM.. I have video on the G5 (which, nothing previously)

Now I wish I had an extra mini6 to 6pin.. but sata->6pin will do for now..

Woo! Not like I had any other use for the card.. Think the bottom DVI port's analog side is a bit meh since I got a red screen with a VGA adapter but top one works, dvi works, dual screen works. Just wish my mac would stop being finicky about booting from it's HD..

QE: Supported
Rotation: supported
Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
Chipset Model: Quadro FX 4500
VRAM: 12 MB
Device ID: 0x009d
rev id: 0x00a1
rom rev: 2149

w00t
 
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joevt said:
I don't think you can boot DOS from USB. You mean DOS from HD with USB support for keyboard? I think FreeDOS has that?

But you should be able to flash from Windows 10 using nvflash.v5.95.0.1-win
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...er-mac-g5-compatibility.1991875/post-34409689
Click to expand...

AFAIK nvflash on windows requires drivers, I didn't want to deal with that.

I was able to boot a DOS USB no problem, not directly from the Apple boot loader mind you, but anytime I did, I lost keyboard.

I was able to boot a DOS image from my NTFS partition, but doing that (initially) didn't give me anywhere to write the original firmware, which I wanted to save (note to self: copy that off the usb and put it somewhere) but I found a way to mount a USB as C:\ when booting from the image.

USB MBR drives wouldn't show up. My Windows10 is an MBR partition, but does show up - it might be some kind of hybrid, I set it up years ago, I forget, it works.

I used bcdedit/easybcd to boot neogrub to do it. Probably would've worked off a CD, but I only have blank DVDs and that felt wasteful, and didn't help the "I need to save the firmware somewhere" part.

Tried booting Linux too, figured maybe that could do it without drivers, I read about a workaround that says you can without but didn't have luck.

Could have probably tried adding a USB keyboard driver, I did try freedos at some points but those were all points where I was unsuccessful booting in the first place.

I think the most annoying part is the first post in this thread where the OP is like, "here's everything you need to flash it from a pc *OR MAC PRO*", not sure if the 1,1 or 5,1's would boot from that image, but my 3,1 definitely wouldn't - at least from the Apple picker.

Anyway, still super happy to have my SINGLE SIDED, PC-SPECIFIC, Rev A02 FX4500 up and running in my G5. 😀 (and I almost typed fx5200 again, haha, was one of the first gpus I bought as a kid, I typed fx5200 when saving the firmware and was so confused when I went to flash it at first)

Now I just wish I had more ram, 3.5gb is odd in this thing.
 
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