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G4 Digital Audio graphics upgrade?

N

Navare

macrumors member
Original poster
Hello folks

Ideas please?..I want to upgrade my standard 32mb graphics card to something better (not hyper sonically fast) just a marked smoother upgrade to handle output to my Sony LCD TV basically upgrading it to a media server

Thanks in advance

N.
 
If you can flash a PC card then you have lots of options. Probably the most popular upgrade is Radeon 9800 which you however need to tape mod to force it to AGP4X speed. Radeon 9800 is a serious overkill in performance, meaning that no Digital Audio G4 can take full benefit of its performance.

I had Digital audio machine once and upgraded the graphics card to Radeon 8500, it was easy upgrade, just change bios and plug it in. The most difficult thing in some cases is to find right type of card since for some cards there are several different layouts, versions, of the card and not all versions have Mac bios available. For example Radeon 9800 is available with many different layouts.

This is a good place to start, it also contains bios files and tools:

http://themacelite.wikidot.com/
 
Hmm

I don't have the ability to flash only having a windows laptop as a second machine....but I'd be willing to exchange beer tokens for someone who could and good Karma of course.....I take it once this is done any of the recommended cards will handle the output to the TV? In a nutshell I want to ditch the laptop and use the G4 as a media serve running 720/1080p film files in good scale/speed

Cheers

N.
 
Navare said:
Hmm

I don't have the ability to flash only having a windows laptop as a second machine....but I'd be willing to exchange beer tokens for someone who could and good Karma of course.....I take it once this is done any of the recommended cards will handle the output to the TV? In a nutshell I want to ditch the laptop and use the G4 as a media serve running 720/1080p film files in good scale/speed

Cheers

N.
Click to expand...

HD video and a DA don't really go together well, regardless of the GPU.
 
Hello again

Would a Radeon 9600 card work I'm my G4 below is what the eBay listing says:

Stock graphics card from a 2005 Dual G5 Powermac, early 2005 - M9747LL/A.

Working well when machine last used, I removed it under antistatic conditions.

Many thanks
 
You can buy pre-flashed ones online. They're generally a bit more expensive than a regular Windows card of the same model and slightly less than a Mac card of the same model.
 
I had a 466MHz DA with an ATI Rage Pro 16MB card. It sucked.

I got a G5 with a Radeon 9600 XT 128MB, which became free when I upgraded to my FireGL X3.

Unfortunately due to the different AGP bus speeds, the 9600 wouldn't work in the DA [failed to boot.]

The way to solve this [google it, its around somewhere...] is to put a small piece of tape over the single golden contact [it's very small] that makes the card revert back to AGP 4x that the DA can use and boot fine, work well, with.

It's an amazing upgrade. Everything is smooth on a 23" monitor at 2048x1152. It runs Quake perfectly fast, and even faster with GLQuake [GLQuake wouldn't even start with the old Rage card due to it not supporting much more modern OpenGL features.] Whole OS runs more fluidly.
 
I flashed a NVidia Geforce 3 Ti 200 with 64MB RAM. It supports Quartz Extreme and works perfectly. No issues with using tape etc. But I am planning to do away with the machines' componenents and use it as ornement in the house.

It really is a great update; the whole system runs smoother because of QE.
 
Jethryn Freyman said:
I had a 466MHz DA with an ATI Rage Pro 16MB card. It sucked.

I got a G5 with a Radeon 9600 XT 128MB, which became free when I upgraded to my FireGL X3.

Unfortunately due to the different AGP bus speeds, the 9600 wouldn't work in the DA [failed to boot.]

The way to solve this [google it, its around somewhere...] is to put a small piece of tape over the single golden contact [it's very small] that makes the card revert back to AGP 4x that the DA can use and boot fine, work well, with.

It's an amazing upgrade. Everything is smooth on a 23" monitor at 2048x1152. It runs Quake perfectly fast, and even faster with GLQuake [GLQuake wouldn't even start with the old Rage card due to it not supporting much more modern OpenGL features.] Whole OS runs more fluidly.
Click to expand...

Ah but was this a "Mac version card" to start with or a PC version flashed?...I have no way of flashing a PC Card you see

Regards

N.
 
Navare said:
Ah but was this a "Mac version card" to start with or a PC version flashed?...I have no way of flashing a PC Card you see

Regards

N.
Click to expand...
Yep it was an original Apple-issued 9600, as was the Rage Pro it replaced.

The FireGL in my G5 tower though is a flashed PC card, flashed with Radeon X800 XT/Pro ROM.
 
I'm not 100% sure, but I think you can flash Nvidia cards in a PowerMac. You'll have to do it via VNC as you won't have a screen though.
 
Navare said:
European mail is always an option....I'd pay via PayPal? What do you want for the card my friend?

N.
Click to expand...
If you could just pay for the shipment costs, I wouldn't need a lot more. Something like £10 (+/- €11). I'd just be happy to get rid of it so I can use the computer case as a bedside table or something similar. It's the only part of the computer that's rather exceptional.

So feel free to send me a PM.

btw: It only has VGA (not ADC or DVI). It has always worked flawlessly with OS X and QE, but it doesn't work with Mac OS 9.1 (that a non-issue really because you can easily upgrade the installation to 9.2).
 
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