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Nvidia 6800 on a Power Mac G4?
- Thread starter TyleRomeo
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TyleRomeo said:
it would be absolutely pointless even if you could. the G4 has a hard enough time feeding the previous generation of GPU's, the 6800 would be so choked you would never see the benefits from it. I also don't think a G4's power supply could feed it, the minimum power supply is ~500 watts, most PC's will require an upgraded power supply just to use this beast.
not to mention the card costs about as much as a G4.
BrianKonarsMac said:
That would be the show-stopping reason, IMO, too.
Bare Feats showed that a G4 can't really get much of an advantage with a 9800 versus a 9000. The 6800 would be just that much more underfed.
get a 9800 pro and be happy
the power requirements would not be a problem as it gets it's power form the connector that normaly supplys power for adc the only problem would be that the card is agp pro which means it will not phisically fit in a non pro slot just like the 9800xt will not (g5 one) the 9600 pro was a agp 3.0 card so that could be used in a g4 if you taped over some connectors to force it from agp 8x mode to agp 2x/4x
the power requirements would not be a problem as it gets it's power form the connector that normaly supplys power for adc the only problem would be that the card is agp pro which means it will not phisically fit in a non pro slot just like the 9800xt will not (g5 one) the 9600 pro was a agp 3.0 card so that could be used in a g4 if you taped over some connectors to force it from agp 8x mode to agp 2x/4x
osprey76 said:
Maybe I'm looking at the wrong comparison, but this barefeats article:
http://www.barefeats.com/rad9800.html
shows among other things a dual 1.42GHz G4 PowerMac equipped with either a stock 64MB Radeon 9000, or a 128MB Radeon 9800. The 9800 improves Quake 3 Arena FPS scores from 121 to 213 (76% improvement), improves UT2003 FPS scores from 71 to 93 (31% improvement), and Cinebench 2003 OpenGL HW shading scores from 10.5 to 14.2 (35% improvement).
These types of speedups aren't exactly trivial. The other advantage of putting a Radeon 9800 into a dual G4 PowerMac over keeping the stock Radeon 9000 is that only the 9800 will be able to hardware accelerate the CoreImage features of OS X 10.4 Tiger, as demoed in the recent WWDC keynote. A Radeon 9000 is not capable of providing hardware acceleration for these routines. Upgrading to a more recent video card, even in a dual 1.25GHz G4, would be of benefit for both gaming and general OS X usage (even if that benefit is not as pronounced as it could be, due to CPU bottlenecks).
osprey76 said:
Further to what I posted previously, the advantage of adding a Radeon 9800 to a dual 1.42GHz G4 PowerMac increases if you want to game at higher resolutions than 1024x768. This article:
http://www.barefeats.com/rad9800h.html
shows:
- the Radeon 9800 scoring 170 FPS at 1600x1200 in Quake 3, versus 58 FPS for the Radeon 9000 (193% speedup)
and
- the Radeon 9800 scoring 87 FPS in UT2003 at 1600x1200, versus 36 FPS for the Radeon 9000 (142% speedup)
Something that surprised me is the ADC power connector on the 6800. Is it being used to feed the GPU or something?
I thought about doing somthing like this to power a flashed 9800 in my cube with a small power supply like this: http://linitx.com/product_info.php?cPath=24_55&products_id=342 placed between the dvd and the Hard drive but i am yet to find one that can handle 28v and outputs the 80w I need (for a dual 1.3 and a 9800)
and for all of you saying i cant put a dual 1.3 in a cube you can but only with a bloody lowd fan or wayercooling and i'm planning on doing the latter
and for all of you saying i cant put a dual 1.3 in a cube you can but only with a bloody lowd fan or wayercooling and i'm planning on doing the latter
Hector said:
How did you flash the 9800? Did you have to do any soldering or physical modifications to the board?
No, No and No
The card would not fit in because:
It uses the wrong type of AGP Slot for the G4 (AGP Pro, versus normal AGP) and there is no method of conversion.
It would not fit in the MDD G4 anyway as the MDDs AGP Slot is at the bottom rather than the top (and not upside down like the G5)
Apple have said that it doesn't work 0 why would they go on about how the 30" display requires a G5 and the New Video Card.
doc
The card would not fit in because:
It uses the wrong type of AGP Slot for the G4 (AGP Pro, versus normal AGP) and there is no method of conversion.
It would not fit in the MDD G4 anyway as the MDDs AGP Slot is at the bottom rather than the top (and not upside down like the G5)
Apple have said that it doesn't work 0 why would they go on about how the 30" display requires a G5 and the New Video Card.
doc
oingoboingo said:
all true, but you need to ask yourself, are these benefits worth the ~$350? if you've got the cash to burn, go for it by all means. the only game i play is warcraft 3, which is no graphics hog, so it wouldn't be worth my money. it's all relative.
if you do decide to ditch your 9000 for a 9800, i'd be happy to take the 9000 off your hands. PM if you're interested.
i completely forgot you can force FSAA and all that good stuff with the retail ATi 9800 (or d/l the hack from mac update for the OEM version), which would definitely increase the benefits over your 9000 drastically. the more i think about it, the better an idea it sounds (or maybe i really want your 9000) since it will crush your 9000 at high resolutions while at the same time forcing anti aliasing etc. not too shabby!
BrianKonarsMac said:
Sure, it's an expensive upgrade. It would obviously have to be a personal decision as to whether it's worth it. However, I think I've now figured out the point of your replies in this thread...to land yourself a cheap Radeon 9000!
oingoboingo said:
I'm not sure which article I looked at now, either. I stand corrected. Perhaps what I looked at was on AGP 2x (like on my Gigabit.) Either way, the graphs in the article you linked to are clearly in favor of the 9800.
Edit: Reading the article more carefully reveals that the advantage seen most strikingly at very high resolutions. So, apparently the gap widens, but looking at the old article still shows a meaningful difference between the two Radeon cards. I wonder how the 9800 would compare to my 8500 in a AGP 2x slot...