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VanneDC

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 5, 2010
860
92
Dubai, UAE
I just acquired (bought) a new to me Dual MDD 1.42ghz box. I haven't collected it yet due to the lockdown. But its pretty much maxed out.


1.42GHz PowerPC G4 Dual CPUs (Big copper heatsink, CPU's repasted with Kryonaut)
2GB (4 x 512MB) DDR
Sonnet Tempo PCI SATA card (bootable!)
160GB Intel SSD
ATI Radeon 9650 (Dual-link DVI, can output 2560x1400)
DVD SuperDrive

Machine has been cleaned/serviced. Running the more reliable A.C. Bel 360W PSU. Historically far less likely to have any issues compared to the Samsung unit.

Comes with a set of Lacie FireWire speakers.

I am not sure about the vid card if ill leave that in there as i have a bunch of others to choose from, but it should be a good box. whats the fastest card the G4 can run?

Anything i should do when i get it? probably needs a good clean out.
 
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I would be interested to hear your experiences with this - I am trying to get a similar machine and want to max it out (within reasonable ££). Jealous you got one with a 9650, I haven't even seen the card by itself anywhere, let alone a PowerMac with it!
 
Jealous you got one with a 9650, I haven't even seen the card by itself anywhere, let alone a PowerMac with it!

If you can find a cheap FireGL X3 you can flash it to an X800 and get dual-link DVI that way I think.

Or go further...

 
If you can find a cheap FireGL X3 you can flash it to an X800 and get dual-link DVI that way I think.

Or go further...


This sort of thing? Can it be flashed on a Mac, even via remote desktop, SSH or something? I don't have a PC to use.
 
the top end, cream of the crop video card for a g4 mdd is the BFGTeK 7800 GS OC flashed with a macintosh rom. its fast enough to run pretty much any game that you can throw at a powerpc mac, even world of warcraft and call of duty 4, at pretty much high or even max settings depending on the resolution.
 
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the top end, cream of the crop video card for a g4 mdd is the BFGTeK 7800 GS OC flashed with a macintosh rom. its fast enough to run pretty much any game that you can throw at a powerpc mac, even world of warcraft and call of duty 4, at pretty much high or even max settings depending on the resolution.

Does it have a working dual-link DVI output after flashing?
 
Does it have a working dual-link DVI output after flashing?
I'm not sure about that, I don't actually have a 7800 GS yet (I'm in high school with no job so moneys tight :p)
I just know it's top of the line as far as performance goes, and works in both tiger and leopard.
 
For long time I have looked for a good bargain on the mytical BFG 7800 GS and some weeks ago I received mine, I have done the usual quick test on a PC to see that everything was OK and then I flashed the card with the appropriate firmware grabbed from the MacElite site.
I was really excited to see the benchmark results and how better it would perform against my FireGL X3 and after I was really disappointed in discovering very little difference. I am talking about a card that runs at half AGP speed (4x instead of native 8x) so it can be true that on a G5 the performances would be greater but since I use an MDD FW800 I had to tape pin 3 and 11 of AGP connector to be operational and runs the AGP slot at 4x speed.
I have also discovered another 7800GS card (a SEGA Lindbergh spare part) that has the same 7800GT GPU like the also mythical Gainward Bliss Golden Sample and I was lucky enough to discover that the BFG Mac Rom was almost fully compatible (if booted in OS9 the screen is garbled but under OSX it is OK) but also in this case I was disappointed about the performances, only slightly better than the regular 7800 non-GT.
Then I flashed back to its original SEGA firmware and put it on the shelf.
Now in my MDD runs the FireGL X3 and I found it very well supported both from OSX (we also do have an ATI control panel for tweaks and other nice settings, the nVidia 7800GS didn't) and OS9 (loading the Radeon 9200 HotFix extension give at least the control over colour depth and screen resolution) where obviously you have no 2D or 3D acceleration but for a basic usage the speed sensation is good enough.
Also, as Amethyst1 said, on the ATI you have full double DVI-I ports so it is desireable also for a more serious use than gaming.
Of course I am talking about my personal experience but other users could say the opposite, it is not a matter to prove who is right and who is wrong, different machines, different setups and different needs will lead different results.

For those curious to see the Gainward competitor with 7800-GT processor under the heatspreder, it is the following:
7800GS_LINDBERGH_NEW.jpg

and also it has a 128k EEPROM so if a full Mac ROM (not reduced) existed it could be written with minimal modifications.
 
Does it have a working dual-link DVI output after flashing?

I realise I didn't add this link to my last post - do you think this would work?
 
Do you know if the card has dual-link DVI (not dual DVI ports!) and if so, if that functionality is still intact after flashing?

Honestly I have not verified this feature, I have no more a monitor to drive to a Dual-Link resolution. In the past I had a 2560x1440 27" display and I remember that one of the X800XT port was able to display that resolution while the other was locked to 1920x1200 but for the 7800GS I have no more the opportunity to try, I am sorry...
 
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Reading about PPC Macs got me to try and hook up my own MDD yesterday - only to discover that the PSU has most likely failed since I last booted it in 2017 - it didn't smell good then, so I'm pinning that as the issue. It happens to be on its second PSU, so I'm not surprised.

Anyway, I figured I could mention one more thing that might be useful - I have a USB2 card, in addition to the SATA card. Something like that might be handy for plugging in a thumb drive for easy file transfer. I plugged a thumb drive into the onboard USB ports and quickly remembered how slow those were for anything beyond transferring a Word doc or two.

I have a Radeon 9700 Pro and a Radeon 7500 in mine, I think these were set up to run 3 monitors when it was my main machine until early 2012. If you have the Airport card, that's handy, but I would recommend sticking with the wired ethernet if you can, as 802.11b isn't much these days.

Good luck with the MDD!
 
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