The new video card for my PowerMac G4 arrived, but ...

[HawaiiMacAddict]

Aloha everyone,

I went on eBay and successfully bid for an nVidia GeForce 6200 AGP video card, for what I thought was an outstanding price. It was listed as a new Mac card, and it arrived only three days after I won it - from Hong Kong to Hawaii in only three days! If only companies on the US mainland could do the same thing.

Anyway, I pulled out the old video card, inserted the new card, powered up and heard the gong, but ... Even after a couple of minutes, I had no video. I checked the accompanying paperwork and found out that not only was it not a new video card, but it is a flashed PC card.

I bought this card from local338 - has anyone else bought a video card from this eBay user? If so, what was your experience? After receiving the card in only three days, I was really hoping that it would work, but apparently not. I'll be getting a refund on my purchase price, at least. Bummers.

HawaiiMacAddict

 

[bigbird]

That's one of the biggest downsides to eBay. Caveat Emptor.

 

[aibo]

there has never been a GeForce 6200 card made for mac. they're all flashed.
that being said, I've got one in my Digital Audio G4 and it works pretty well. It can't compare to the Radeon 9800 I had in there previously, but the 6200 i got off ebay is fanless which is a big plus.

 

[Kosh66]

Yep, you gotta be careful when buying off of eBay. Alot of scams going on there.

 

[Firefly2002]

Probably should have paid more attention to the 6200; since they never made one, it's a good bet it mightn't work. Granted, Radeon 7000s are flashed all the time for Mac, and I suppose so are 9200s.

And.... I guess the other guy in this thread, which surprises me.

But what are you replacing? The Rage Pro 128, or the Radeon? If you've got a Rage, then you'll immediately benefit, as you can enable Quartz Extreme, which offloads much of the GUI work onto the GPU, making things much smoother. It even makes it perfectly smooth at 1440x1080 on my Beige with the Radeon PCI.

If you're replacing the Radeon AGP, then I'm not sure you'd even get a real improvement... in the GUI, you really won't, though I suppose the 32MB framebuffer can run out fairly quickly if you run at high res with lots of windows open in 32-bit color (using 16-bit color can effectively double your VRAM, with no noticeable degrading in image quality in Tiger- though obviously not for gaming).

If you're gaming, then yeah, you'll notice an improvement, though with a dual-G4/450 you're going to be bottlenecked pretty quickly in most older games... newer ones won't run, of course. And even though a faster graphics card allows you to crank up the res/turn on FSAA/Aniso and maintain framerates while you're CPU-bound, the 6200 is an ultra low-end card.. low clocks, 64-bit DDR, the works.

I'd suggest buying an older Radeon 9200/9000 Pro (same card) on the PC side and flashing it for your mac if you're not gaming but need a larger (128MB) amount of graphics memory... or perhaps flashing a Radeon 9600 Pro if you can find one on the PC side.

Here's a nice R9600 Pro 256MB DDR for $50 http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?p=AT-96P_256&c=pw

 

[kgreene]

You might have to tape pins 3 and 11:

http://themacelite.wikidot.com/pins-3-and-11


There are plenty of people who are using 6200s at that site though.

 

[HawaiiMacAddict]

Aloha everyone,

Here's what I've noticed thus far: When the card was inserted, I heard the "bong", but got no video. After I took the card out of the G4, I looked at pins 3 and 11 and they have been cut, as shown in the attached pictures I took (I apologize in advance for the rather pedestrian pictures - I'm obviously not paid for my photog skills ).

I got a response from the seller, which consisted of advise to clean the gold contacts with a piece of rubber (like a pencil eraser), resetting the PRAM/NVRAM, inserting the card with a slight bit of force, and to use OnyX to clean up caches. I've done the first, and downloading OnyX now, and will do the second and third once OnyX has been downloaded and run. Is there anything else anyone can recommend?

Thanks in advance for your responses,

HawaiiMacAddict

 

[Shrimp4074]

I'm a bit scared now... I ordered the same video card from the same person on ebay. He has very good feedback... 1072 people gave him good feedback while 2 people gave him bad it looks like..

And people who have ordered the same item gave him good feedback so I figured it was safe. It says it's compatible with Sawtooth/AGP Graphics which is exactly what I have.. Am I good?