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Geforce FX 5200 or Radeon 9600 Pro

EvanH123

EvanH123

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 6, 2016
18
0
New York
My PowerMac g5 currently has a Radeon 9600 Pro in it, but recently i found an old Geforce FX 5200 AGP video card and i was wondering if i should switch them out. Will switching to the FX 5200 provide any performance boost and if so, are there drivers for it?
[doublepost=1465968804][/doublepost]I forgot to add the pictures of each cards specs
http://imgur.com/CR8xWda
http://imgur.com/1d9GglA
 
im reading through this review and the model of FX 5200 they are comparing is a 64mb card, while the one i have is 256mb
 
The main thing I am comparing between the two is that the Radeon 9600 Pro has 64mb ram and the fx5200 has 256mb
 
I would say the current card having only 64Mb will make the UI more sluggish than having a GPU with more VRAM - the difference would be subtle.
It's widely acknowledged that the 5200 is the lowest spec card for a G5 - however, that always seems to refer to the 64Mb model.
I did a post here testing the capability of a high end card against a middle of the road one:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/do-i-need-a-better-graphics-card.1953247/

I don't think there's anything you would be able to do with the 256Mb card that you can't already do.
 
Dronecatcher said:
I would say the current card having only 64Mb will make the UI more sluggish than having a GPU with more VRAM - the difference would be subtle.
It's widely acknowledged that the 5200 is the lowest spec card for a G5 - however, that always seems to refer to the 64Mb model.
I did a post here testing the capability of a high end card against a middle of the road one:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/do-i-need-a-better-graphics-card.1953247/

I don't think there's anything you would be able to do with the 256Mb card that you can't already do.
Click to expand...
If i were to install it, would i need any software drivers? and how would it affect the system (going from a radeon card to a nvidia one)
 
EvanH123 said:
f i were to install it, would i need any software drivers? and how would it affect the system (going from a radeon card to a nvidia one)
Click to expand...

As far as I can tell it's a PC card, so it will need flashing with a Mac compatible ROM - if there is one. Can't help you there as I've no experience of doing that - but plenty of users here have - only a matter of time before they offer advice :)
 
That's a FX5200 card with PC firmware. You'd have to find mac Firmware that supports that card, then flash it.

It's a lot of bother for very little benefit. Aside from Halo stuttering a bit, I find the 9600 to be just fine in my machine.
 
Dronecatcher said:
As far as I can tell it's a PC card, so it will need flashing with a Mac compatible ROM - if there is one. Can't help you there as I've no experience of doing that - but plenty of users here have - only a matter of time before they offer advice :)
Click to expand...
can you flash a rom for the same card just with less vram? (the 64mb fx5200)
[doublepost=1465984178][/doublepost]I found a website by looking on another forum (http://themacelite.wikidot.com/wikidownloads2) and found this Rom, i have no knowledge of these roms and i dont know if this is the right one or not. I most likely wont be doing this tonight as it is almost 3 am where i am.

Modified NVIDIA PPC ROMs
For 256MB Cards (nvflash), All 256MB cards are 128-bit FX 5200/5500 2060 PCI & AGP 2x/4x/8x 250/200 MHz 64/128MB TSOP DDR 64KB Download (ZIP)
[doublepost=1465984437][/doublepost]
MagicBoy said:
That's a FX5200 card with PC firmware. You'd have to find mac Firmware that supports that card, then flash it.

It's a lot of bother for very little benefit. Aside from Halo stuttering a bit, I find the 9600 to be just fine in my machine.
Click to expand...
I guess you are right... I wanted to use it because if you have seen my last thread, my powermac g5 runs unusually slow and i wanted to put this graphics card in to see if it would make it any faster
 
The most benefit is to be gained from a graphics card which supports Core Image. Both the FX5200 and 9600 do, the 9600 being generally faster.

On PowerPC machines there's little benefit to be gained generally by fitting a better card, unless you're playing Halo or run high end software that benefits from the special workstation features on a Quadro. We didn't have HD YouTube videos back in 2003/4, so features like H.264 decode that would make an appreciable difference to modern usage patterns require an Intel Macs running 10.6 or later with a supported GPU.
 
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