[Cube] Video Card Options

[Riba]

On Oct 7, 2004, at 12:01, Michael Grunewalder wrote:

> After reading the list for a while I got a bit "excited"and want
> to give my cube a new graphic card.
> Which current models (that are available new) will work.
> I haven't seen too many Apple shops here in Bangkok, so I hope
> some sort of AGP PC card might work?!
> Any advise and help is appreciated.

Here is my opinion on this subject...I'm assuming that you have the old 
Rage 128 inside, and I'm also assuming that you are not after some high 
end graphics cards that require moving your DC board inside the cube 
that produce quite a bit of heat.
Realistically, your options are the following:
- Flashed Radeon 7000 PC card. These are cheap to get, and have decent 
performance, although a bit worse than the original Radeon. They will 
get you Quartz Extreme though, and might be fine for an occasional 
gamer. You might even get dual monitor support. I have flashed two of 
these, and the problem is that they mostly came with 64 Kb ROM chips as 
opposed to 128 K ones required for a Mac ROM to be flashed. There are 
stripped-down Mac ROMs that can be put onto 64 Kb cards, and they work 
with some minor differences. Details about the flashing can be found 
around the net, but if you choose to go this way, contact me by mail 
for details. This is the only card that can be obtained and flashed to 
work in a Cube without requiring you to move the DC board (okay there 
is a GF3, but those are impossible to find)
- flashed or original nvidia GeForce 2MX. The flashable PC version 
cannot be bought anymore, but you might find some floating around. The 
site that had a list of cards that have been flashed successfully is 
down at the moment though... You can also get a Mac version of 2MX, but 
don't let them rip you off. I've found the best way to do it is to find 
someone who had this card in the desktop mac and upgraded to somethng 
better. They don't tend to think that the card is made of solid gold.
- If you are lucky enough, I personally believe that the best card for 
Cube is Radeon 7500. The best way to get one of these is to find a 
desktop owner who upgraded. A lot of later generation silver G4 
desktops were shipped with a Radeon 7500 card. I have swapped the 
flashed Radeon 8500 for Radeon 7500 :), and it turned out to be quite 
cheap.