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XServe G5 doomed to not have Quartz Extreme?

O

orestes1984

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 10, 2005
1,000
4
Australia
Hey guys, I managed to rescue a G5 for $100 a while ago (score!), but am as of yet not sure where to go from here... The Machine Specs are as below:

Xserve G5 2005 model
2x2.3ghz G5s
2.5gb ECC DDR400 RAM (came with)
128gb Corsair Force 3 SSD (my spare parts)
1.5tb Seagate 7200rpm HDD (my spare parts)
Radeon 7000 VGA card in the PCI slot (stock video card)
Combo Drive (came with)
Leopard 10.5.8

I know I can run 10.4.3 with the Quartz Xtreme hack. In this day and age its not really a viable solution to anything much. Even then it was buggy and didn't really do its job leading to a lot of people disabling it. It's not a RAM issue, the activity monitor reads 2gb Free.

What I am wondering is though, is whether there is another way to get some better video performance? I've done my research, the Geforce 6200 PCI edition seems to be the highest card that will run, but flashing one is another matter, or finding one that is flashed. Going back further the ATI Radeon 9200 Mac edition works and is a drop in replacement, but that won't really solve my problems. Is there any other way to hack Quartz Extreme onto this Mac?

I've had my share of issues in trying to resolve this. I even went as far as to install Debian and loaded up Ubuntu from a Live CD which really was not usable, the Apple drivers even without Quartz Extreme make the Xserve more than usable where as the Open Source Radeon drivers really are the epitome of coders poking around in the dark and are not much good for anything, particularly on a slower machine.

I'm running out of ideas here, I don't want to buy a Radeon 9200, or Geforce 6200 and then be stuck in the same position I am now, but without Quartz Extreme this is really taxing the CPU even when I move windows around because the CPU is having to do the majority of the work with only Core Image activated.

TLDR: Is there anything better than the Radeon 7000 in my Xserve G5, will I see any improvements at all with a GPU upgrade even if its not Quartz Extreme compatible? Or can I even enable Quartz Exteme on this machine?
 
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You can flash a PCI Nvidia GeForce 5200FX and put that into it. Then run PCI Extreme to enable Quartz Extreme and CoreImage. That's one of the few CoreImage PCI cards available. People have even gotten it to run well in a B&W G3 with CoreImage. They're fairly cheap to find and the flash process it easy as well. I have a Radeon 7000 in my Power Macintosh 8600 running 10.4.11, I used PCI Extreme to enable Quartz Extreme on it as well. Does make a big difference even though the card is running on a congested 33mhz PCI bus.
 
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Yes, but that involves going back to 10.4 which really is getting old now. I was hoping for a better solution, but I guess this is the only one :confused::(:confused:
 
Not sure why. Worked for me and many others. Start it up in verbose mode and see what it stops at. You can also try starting up on in Safe Boot mode to force it to rebuild its caches.
 
Intell said:
Not sure why. Worked for me and many others. Start it up in verbose mode and see what it stops at. You can also try starting up on in Safe Boot mode to force it to rebuild its caches.
Click to expand...

Ok, I waited it gave me the typical Unix warning about using sudo and I pressed ok, it went through the application and closed. I went into the system profiler and its still coming up as "Quartz Extreme not supported."
 
Intell said:
You have to reboot after you enter your password in Terminal. It isn't that magical.
Click to expand...

I rebooted and same problem, Quartz Extreme not supported. I'm not sure whether its 10.5.8 or what. I'm running 10.5.8 with the intel components removed.
 
I know this is an old post, but last night I installed PCI Extreme on my Xserve G4 running 10.5 to get better support out of my ATI 9200 Mac Edition, and it rebooted to a light gray screen. Connecting into it via Screen Sharing shows the same light gray. I'll have to try booting into Safe mode when I get home tonight.
 
Edgecrusherr said:
I know this is an old post, but last night I installed PCI Extreme on my Xserve G4 running 10.5 to get better support out of my ATI 9200 Mac Edition, and it rebooted to a light gray screen. Connecting into it via Screen Sharing shows the same light gray. I'll have to try booting into Safe mode when I get home tonight.
Click to expand...

How did it go?
 
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