OpenGL issues after Video card upgrade

[zer0army]

I recently acquired a Radeon 9800XT that I replaced my stock GeForce FX 5200 Ultra card with in my G5 2x1.8GHz. Now When I do simple things like move a finder or Safari window around it's very choppy. The Genie effect or opening finder windows is also not as smooth as it used to be. Playing .mov or any other video files results in serious frame dropping and trying to play a DVD just crashes the player right away.

Wolfenstein will no longer launch and gives me this message
"aglChoosePixelFormat Failed" & "Couldn't start OpenGL"

So it seems to me like an openGL issue. I also got a program called "OpenGL Extensions Viewer" which has an OpenGL testing feature. It crashes about 2 seconds into the test. Tried putting back the stock GeForce FX 5200 Ultra card and all is fine again.

I thought maybe I was missing a driver but since this is a OEM card all driver updates should come with system updates I believe, and I'm running 10.3.7

 

[MacsRgr8]

Let's hope it's a driver issue.

You can do two things:
1) Download and install the ATi Displays Control Panel
2) Download and install the Mac OS X 10.3.7 Combined update

Good luck!

In theorie you've got an excellent grfx card upgrade

 

[zer0army]

Thanks for the feedback MacsRgr8, I tried installing the ATi Displays Control Panel and already was running 10.3.7. No Luck

To update from my previous post, I have now also tried creating a new user account which didn't help. I also had a spare 20GB drive that I put in an external Firewire Case and did a fresh install of panther and booted from. Still the system has the same issues. I then tried updating to 10.3.5 and then finally 10.3.7 all on a fresh install of panther. I guess I can try reinstalling panther again on the external drive but with the stock GeForce FX 5200 Ultra card. update to 10.3.7 and then swop in the 9800XT.

Another reason I believe this is an OpenGL issue is when Screen saver comes on (Flurry) it runs extremely slow (looks like it 5–10 fps maybe) Same with iTunes visualizer. Very slow and choppy.

 

[zer0army]

I just tried reinstalling panther again on the external drive but with the stock GeForce FX 5200 Ultra card, updated to 10.3.7 and then swopped in the 9800XT which failed to produce any better results. At this point it seems like it must be a hardware issue with the card. Does anyone know if it's possible that since the 9800XT is an OEM card that was available starting with Rev B. PMG5's that it is incompatible with my Rev. A G5 2x1.8GHz ? or is there anyone out there currently running an OEM 9800XT in a Rev A. PMG5 ?

Another interesting thing I noticed regarding OpenGL. For those familiar with Adobe After Effects, there is an "OpenGL info" section in prefs which usually gives the videos cards OpenGL info. When I check it with the 9800XT installed it reads "No applicable OpenGL video card found."