[G4] 128MB video card for Quicksilver?

[Mel Krewall]

Anand,
As far as the 9600 goes, it will not work on Macs before the G5 without  
a hack that a guy on an Irish tech web site discovered. There are some  
signaling differences between the 8x slot on the G5 and previous Macs  
and the site explains them pretty well. You have to cover a couple of  
the small PCI edge connector traces. It does not require an off-board  
power connection. I bought one on eBay, but I could not get it to work  
in my Quicksilver 2002 933, but certainly not for lack of trying. The  
link is:
http://www.techseekers.net/modules.php? 
name=Reviews&rop=showcontent&id=71
Unless you consider yourself pretty good with working with electronic  
circuit boards, it's not really viable. The techseekers website has a  
some other hacks and flashes for other cards, most of which require a  
PC and a second PCI video card to pull off. You can find other sources  
around the web as well.
The next most powerful ATI card is the 8500, followed by the 9000. Both  
are getting a little long in the tooth. I resold the 9600 on eBay and  
picked up a Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti, which is a 64 MB card, that has worked  
pretty well for me. It comes with an ADC and DVI connectors. The  
selling prices vary quite a bit on these, I don't know why.
Why do you specifically say you need 128MB? The 9600 for Mac only has  
64MB of RAM. See:
http://ati.com/products/radeon9600/radeon9600prome/specs.html
Are you going to run two monitors for 3D apps? If you are buying it for  
3D games, 64MB should handle most anything that your G4 can handle.

Hope this helps.
Mel

"The ardent golfer would play Mount Everest if somebody would put a  
flagstick on top."
~ Pete Dye


On Apr 2, 2004, at 11:24 AM, Anand Keathley wrote:

> Mel wrote, "The one and only retail 128MB card for any Mac is the  
> Radeon 9800 Pro
> Mac Edition. It will work with any 2x or 4x AGP Mac, which includes
> your Quicksilver.
> Mel
> -------------------------------
>
> Thanks Mel.  It is nice to know that there is at least something  
> available.  Do you or anyone else know of other non-retail  
> posibilities?  For instance, there are some cards, like the 9600 pro  
> that require a power input for the card not available on the QS mobo.   
> However, I wonder if that is really needed to run the card or only the  
> ADC port?  If your intention is only to use the DVI output, might  a  
> 9600 pro or other ADC enabled card, work in a QS as well?  Also, what  
> about the idea of flashing a 9000 pro 128MB pc card?  I'm just trying  
> to understand all of the possibilities.
>
> Thank you all very much,
>                                              Anand