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What PowerMac G5 Graphics Cards Are Avaliable, And How Do They Compare?

J

JohnnyH1012

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 12, 2014
98
1
New Jersey, USA
Hello everyone! I am just recently delving in to the world of PowerPC Gaming on my Dual 2.5 GHz PowerMac G5, and discovered that my video card is a ATI Radeon 9800 XT. I was wondering, what are all of the PowerMac G5 Video ards avaliable, and how do they rank against each other? I googled my question and was able to find very little on video cards compatible with a G5, and next to nothing on how they compare in terms of power; Therefore, I came to the experts. Thanks!:D
 
There are more powerful cards available, AFAIK the best cards would be the ATi X800 / X850 or the nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra. The 9800XT you have is definitely up there with some of the better cards though - you already have a powerful machine CPU-wise so you may not see a tremendous difference by upgrading the graphics.

The OEM or retail video cards, especially the exotic and usually rare ones are now shockingly expensive. Your best bet is usually to find the PC version of these cards and flash it with the Mac firmware. This nearly always works out considerably cheaper than tracking down the original Mac versions. The Mac Elite covers the cards to look out for and the cards to avoid, as well as flashing guides and ROM files.
 
Somewhere or another out there, there is a relative listing for all the native and "flashable" G5 cards.

As I recall, the X850 is at the top of the list for cards that were available in a Mac version, although there are a few better performing cards that can be flashed.

Personally, I have a 6800 Ultra(ranked a notch or two below the X850 on the chart I've seen) and have been very happy with it. One of the big advantages of the 6800, at from what I've seen, is that it's probably one of the easiest high performance G5 cards to find(I think this may be due to the fact that it was a BTO option for the G5). Performance aside, one of the disadvantages of the 6800 vs. the x800/X850 is that the 6800 is a dual height card and the X800/850 standard height.

Also, depending on how you wish to use the card, I'll point out that the 6800 has dual DVI outs whereas the X800/850 has ADC and DVI out. ADC is relatively easy to turn into DVI with a $20-30 passive adapter, while turning DVI into ADC requires a $50-100 power brick adapter. There are flashed equivalents of the X800 that have dual DVI.
 
I'm looking at various options for PCIe as well.

So far it boils down to:
GeForce 6600 $30
GeForce 7800 GT $75
ATI X1900 GT $85
Quadro FX 4500 $145
GeForce 7800 GTX $50 flashed
Click to expand...
(in order of performance)

Anyone else have experience in flashing a 7800 GTX? I could probably find one locally to flash it but most of them say "256mb/512mb" as in 256 dedicated and another 256 system shared turbo cache. Unsure of the model # to look for.
 
The newest graphics card that I know of is the Ati Radeon x1950 which can only be flashed.
 
I got a used Sapphire 1950XT for about £15 and flashed that. It is purring away in my G5 right now. Quiet as well unlike the Zotac 8800GT I had in my Dell hackintosh.

I wouldn't pay $85 for a genuine Mac card unless I really wanted ACD support, which my G5 does not have.
 
weckart said:
I got a used Sapphire 1950XT for about £15 and flashed that. It is purring away in my G5 right now. Quiet as well unlike the Zotac 8800GT I had in my Dell hackintosh.

I wouldn't pay $85 for a genuine Mac card unless I really wanted ACD support, which my G5 does not have.
Click to expand...

Is that PCI-E? Do you know if there is a guide on flashing it or a link to the ROM?

I could pick up a Sapphire X1950 xt but,

Here's what they stack up based on PassMark:
Code: 
64 GeForce 6600
117 ATI X1950 GT
138 ATI X1900 GT
197 GeForce 7800 GT
207 Quadro FX 4500
They have lots of samples so I think the PC benchmarks should be accurate.
 
Hi, I like to come by here and see what folks are doing with the cards we created.

Most non-OEM cards were written by Arti Itra. 6200/6600AGP/6800 GT and Ultra flashed versions were all his.

The 7800GS AGP and 7800 GTX 512 PCIE were done by myself.

I seem to recall that the 7800GS can run a 30".

Most 6800 cards can NOT, but the Quadro version can, if you change the device id in the rom.

Had a lot of fun creating the cards, glad to see people still use them. I imagine that if you flash a X1900 or X1950 it will be limited to 256 Megs as we never got 512 to show up on an AGP card. Which was too bad, the 7800 GS Gainward cards had all pipelines and 512 megs on an AGP card. We never got all 512 to show up.

I gave my dad an old G5 with one it in, he never knew what it was, I'll bet he sold the whole machine for $25 in a yard sale.

Sadly, Gainward updated to G71 chips and never changed anything external on card. So know way to know if it would flash perfectly for Mac (G70) or be totally useless (G71)
 
MacVidCards said:
Hi, I like to come by here and see what folks are doing with the cards we created.

Most non-OEM cards were written by Arti Itra. 6200/6600AGP/6800 GT and Ultra flashed versions were all his.

The 7800GS AGP and 7800 GTX 512 PCIE were done by myself.

I seem to recall that the 7800GS can run a 30".

Most 6800 cards can NOT, but the Quadro version can, if you change the device id in the rom.

Had a lot of fun creating the cards, glad to see people still use them. I imagine that if you flash a X1900 or X1950 it will be limited to 256 Megs as we never got 512 to show up on an AGP card. Which was too bad, the 7800 GS Gainward cards had all pipelines and 512 megs on an AGP card. We never got all 512 to show up.

I gave my dad an old G5 with one it in, he never knew what it was, I'll bet he sold the whole machine for $25 in a yard sale.

Sadly, Gainward updated to G71 chips and never changed anything external on card. So know way to know if it would flash perfectly for Mac (G70) or be totally useless (G71)
Click to expand...

MacVidCards, you are the expert: Do you know if anyone has had success in flashing a Quadro FX4500 to work in a PCIe G5 if the Quadro does not have the silver metal on the bottom (with and without metal demonstrated in pictures).

With:
fx4500-back.jpg


Without:
dell_ku705_nvidia_quadro_fx4500_512mb_dual_dvi_pci___e_video_card_3_lgw.jpg
 
bax2003 said:
As far as I know, nobody successfully flashed model without RAM chips on both sides. Silver metal is heatsink for memory chips on that side, and that is model you want to flash.
Click to expand...

What bax2003 said. "Single sided" for MP, "double sided" for G5.
 
I am sort of in the same boat, I want to install Morph OS & Linux Mint along side of OS 10.8 in a tri boot config on the 2004 AGP based G5 7,3 with dual single core 2 g processors with 2gb memory. For Morph I need a radeon agp card. While I recently took delivery of a radeon 9800xt sort of worked but was defective enough to warrant a return - broken fans blades and horiz blue lines across the screen. I also have a x1900 or an x1950 in the mail but it's a PC based card and while Morph help pages say it's compatible, I haven't determined if it will actually work or not, it's has 512mb and I found a site where the writer says if it's not on my list it won't work. It isn't listed, So I need a definitive answer. Can I use this card or return and try again?
 
toddbailey said:
I am sort of in the same boat, I want to install Morph OS & Linux Mint along side of OS 10.8 in a tri boot config on the 2004 AGP based G5 7,3 with dual single core 2 g processors with 2gb memory. For Morph I need a radeon agp card. While I recently took delivery of a radeon 9800xt sort of worked but was defective enough to warrant a return - broken fans blades and horiz blue lines across the screen. I also have a x1900 or an x1950 in the mail but it's a PC based card and while Morph help pages say it's compatible, I haven't determined if it will actually work or not, it's has 512mb and I found a site where the writer says if it's not on my list it won't work. It isn't listed, So I need a definitive answer. Can I use this card or return and try again?
Click to expand...
Do I read you correct when you say you want to install OSX10.8 on a G5, good luck with that.
 
Not exactly, the G5 I recently purchased already has OS X installed, vers 10.5.8 to be exact. Sorry for the typo. What I am thinking is installing Linux & Morph OS in their own partitions and setting up a boot manager to display a menu to choose from. But before I do all this I need to find a working video card. Linux doesn't seem to care as much as Morphos and the G5 on who makes the gpu or the model. Morph OS has a pretty small list of compatible cards, as does the G5, I just need to go down the check list and find out what really works on the G5 w agp, then check to see if it's morph os compatible.

SO back to the original question, does a pc based agp Ati Radeon x1900 or x1950 actually work in a g5, assuming I'd need to supply a power cable and flash the card's bios.

!!!! Correction !!!! The card yet to be delivered is the ATI x1950 Pro agp w/ 512mb memory.
 
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I've been looking for some help flashing older video cards, and unless you can do the flashing yourself I don't know anyone who could help you with it.
 
I just bought a G5 edition X1900GT on Ebay for $26 last night. They are hard to find, but are out there.

This was actually less than I paid for my 7800GT. Plus, if @eyoungren were so inclined he could stack four of these cards to get 8x30" Cinemas(they are dual dual link) assuming he could come up with enough power for all of them.
 
bunnspecial said:
I just bought a G5 edition X1900GT on Ebay for $26 last night. They are hard to find, but are out there.

This was actually less than I paid for my 7800GT. Plus, if @eyoungren were so inclined he could stack four of these cards to get 8x30" Cinemas(they are dual dual link) assuming he could come up with enough power for all of them.
Click to expand...
@bunnspecial. Power is never the issue.

Except if you mean the PSU of the G5. Then, yeah, that could be a limiting factor.

I'm comfortable with my G4 and six right now though. ;)

But we'll see what happens when I eventually have a G5. :D
 
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