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Upgrade graphics card for g5 1.8

J

jinny1

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 1, 2004
53
0
I have a g5 1.8 with 2gb of ram.
I have a 23" cinema display that I'd like to be able to watch DVD's at full screen. Currently with the stock video it loses sharpness at any size larger than "normal".
Can anyone suggest an upgrade and where I could purchase it?

Thanks,
Jinny
 
Not to sound blunt, but I think that when you watch DVD's at fullscreen they lose their clairity no matter what because you are feeding a lower-resolution signal to a moniter of much higher resolution, so I don't think a better video card will benefit from that. Especially on a moniter of your resolution. But if you wanted a better video card anyway, then I might be able to give some suggestions.

By the way, what video card do you have now? Is it the 6600? or the 9250 or something like that
 
It's a 64mb g-force 5200.


Blunt is good, I get a lot of conflicting advice from my "expert" friends. They are very well meaning but about 20% of the time totally wrong.
 
Zwhaler is basically correct - with a native resolution of 1920x1200, the 23" display is much larger than the 480 lines of pixels on a standard TV, and also bigger than 720 and 1080 HDTV signals. A video card is more concerned with playback speed i.e., an old video card will be choppy with DVD playback - but just about ANY video card on the market today, no matter how cheap, will play DVD video smoothly.

If you ever do decide to upgrade your video card though, my recommendations are either the Radeon X800XT Mac Edition from ATI or the somewhat faster (but not available new and rather rare) OEM Apple Radeon 850XT. They are pretty much the best cards you'll get in an AGP Mac, unless you get yourself a flashed GeForce 7800GS.
 
Thanks for all the info. Can you point me to a site or article that explains how graphics cards work?
I mostly find gaming articles.

Jinny
 
The X800 is MUCH faster/better than the 5200, but only for heavy 3D stuff like games or the preview modes in 3D design apps. Though it also has more VRAM, which would be useful if you ever have zillions of windows open at once and then do Exposé. Indeed, nothing will help the sharpness of DVDs. Wait, that's not true...get a smaller monitor. That will help. ;)

--Eric
 
Ahh, thanks!
That's the exact kind of page I was hoping to find.
Jinny
 
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