I just got my powermac G4, but what do I need to buy in order for my PC monitor to...

[Alacres]

work with it? Would a standard VGA to DVI (ADC is on the mac also, but I wasn't sure which was better - I just assumed DVI) from radioshack work correctly, or is there some special "mac only" type of adapter I need to buy? I didn't really want to spend a whole lot of money on this since I used a good portion of what I had saved for the mac itself. The adapter at radioshack is around 14 bucks, and I was planning on getting it today once I find out if it's compatible or not.

Thanks in advance for any info .

 

[agentphish]

A VGA>DVI adapter should work.

If your "pc" monitor is an LCD, check to see if your monitor will support a DVI cable though, that'd be even better. Adapters can SOMETIMES cause bad connections/interference resulting in poor image quality.

 

[gonyr]

A regular adapter should work. There's nothing special about the video ports on a power mac.

 

[Alacres]

Thanks for the input .

I actually found an old DVI adapter laying around (that I had completely forgotten about) and it seems to be working ok. The only thing I'm a little conerned about is the picture quality. I was watching an episode of one of my favorite shows (one that I've watched numerous times on my PC) and I noticed that the picture quality was much worse, even moreso when I went into fullscreen. Conversely, when I had my mac mini (which came with a different adapter - it wasn't a DVI, so I'm guessing it was an ADC adapter?) I used this same monitor and I didn't have any problems with quality.

So, I'm not really sure what to do now. Should I try buying the same kind of adapter that my mini came with? Or is there some type of driver I can upgrade to help with my visual quality?

 

[Alacres]

I was wondering about something... I've realized that I've never heard anyone mention anything about video drivers for mac graphic cards. Why is that? Do companies like ATI and Nvidia simply not make mac compatible graphics drivers or are they just not needed? I've done all the auto software upgrading through the mac interface, but I didn't see anything in there about graphic drivers of any sort.

The powermac I just got has an ATI radeon 9000 64mb DDR card in it vs. the intergrated chip that was in my mini, so is there anyway to upgrade the drivers of it, or is that simply not an option on a mac?

Edit: After googling a bit, I found this, but I wasn't sure if it was a legit driver - http://www.opendrivers.com/driver/2...staller-1.0.0-for-mac-os-x-free-download.html. Anyone ever tried this one before?

 

[ravenvii]

I was wondering about something... I've realized that I've never heard anyone mention anything about video drivers for mac graphic cards. Why is that? Do companies like ATI and Nvidia simply not make mac compatible graphics drivers or are they just not needed? I've done all the auto software upgrading through the mac interface, but I didn't see anything in there about graphic drivers of any sort.

The powermac I just got has an ATI radeon 9000 64mb DDR card in it vs. the intergrated chip that was in my mini, so is there anyway to upgrade the drivers of it, or is that simply not an option on a mac?

Apple supplies the driver updates in their regular OS updates.

 

[Alacres]

Apple supplies the driver updates in their regular OS updates.

Ah ok, that explains it. Thanks

I still can't figure out why my videos are running with such crappy quality though. I tried playing Diablo II to see if games were affected too, and aside from horrid framerates (in OpenGL mode) the picture quality didn't look too bad. In software mode, the game ran great. I guess maybe this cheapo video card is to blame. It seems even the integrated mini video processor has this thing beat, unless I'm just missing something here.

 

[KingYaba]

What specific monitor do you have and what resolution are you running it at? You said it though, could be the graphic card. Can always buy another one if you're willing.

 

[Alacres]

What specific monitor do you have and what resolution are you running it at? You said it though, could be the graphic card. Can always buy another one if you're willing.

I'm using a Gateway VX900 (it's an older monitor), but it's no problem; I finally figured out why I was getting such choppy video performance. I use the Opera browser and for some reason it doesn't seem to like streaming video. So, just out of curiousity, I tried playing the same vid through Safari and it worked perfectly.

Funny how the smallest issue can sometimes be what causes the problem .