What video card for beige G3/Mac OS X 10.1.4?

[trmarch]

Hello,

I want to buy a video card for my beige G3 266 MHz (upgraded with a Sonnet ZIF chip to be a G4 500 MHz) with 384 MB of RAM running Mac OS X 10.1.4.

I want something that's

- PCI format,
- compatible with Mac OS X (obviously),
- going to show me a real improvement in day-to-day video functions (I'm not a gamer), and
- not too terribly expensive (less than $100 or so).

What card brand and model do you recommend? How many MB of video RAM does it have?

Thank you,
Tara

[macosxuser]

The PC PowerColor Radeon 7000 pci works with a rom flash.

Go to the Strangedogs site for details.

Just google for strangedogs.

[sinclair_tm]

*DO NOT GET A PC CARD AND FLASH IT!!* that is a very bad idea. it will never be 100% stable. the pc rom is smaller than the mac rom, so it will not all be there. plus techiclly, it is against the law. (there have been several threads with this info here). if you can afford it, i'd spring for this card. other than that, goto ebay or amazon and get any pci ati radeon mac edition (base radeon, 7000, 8500, or 9000). they all come with at least 32mb, if not more. i would get one with at least 64mb for that mac. i have a radeon mac edition in an older pci mac, and it works great. a big difference than the on board video.

[tumbleguts]

Hello Tara.

Back in the day - the card to get was the Radeon 7000. The true "mac edition" (a bright green thing) only ever came with 32MB of VRAM. There are a host of these cards selling on Ebay for around $35 US.

Later versions of the Radeon 7000 came with 64MB VRAM (twice as much). You could get "flashed" versions of these cards for the Mac (usually Sapphire or PowerColour brand). If you can, try to get one at the true 183MHz/183MHz speed (as many flashed cards are downclocked). I had a Sapphire card that was quite a decent performer. I once tested it in a G4 Digital Audio against the standard Rage Pro 128 (AGP slot) - and was shocked to find that the Radeon 7000 card in the PCI slot thrashed it by a long shot.

That said, you are only going to get so much performance out of a 33MHz PCI slot. (Unlike later graphics connections such as AGP or PCI-X.) The Radeon 9200 PCI 128MB (which "sinclair" recommended) is a nice card - but probably a bit much. Personally, I wouldn't be spending kind of money on a Beige G3 that has some very serious limitations; such as a 66MHz system bus, and a crippling inbuilt ATA 33MB/sec interface...

As much as I'd like to say that flashing your own card is fun - the reality can be quite the opposite. Mac and PC graphic cards are identical except for the EEPROM on the card. Here the big difference is size. Macs have a 128KB ROM and PC a 64KB ROM. Your success depends on getting a PC card that has a 128KB EEPROM chip. Even then, my experience is that many cards cannot be flashed on a Mac and must be done so on a PC computer. Not to mention the frustrations of flashing blind...

I'd recommend getting a "flashed" 64MB Radeon 7000 off Ebay. Twice as much VRAM is definitely worth it. BUT... do try to get one with a 128KB EEPROM. Some sellers actually remove the existing small 64KB EEPROM and install a larger 128KB one. Otherwise, you'll be getting a flashed PC card with a reduced ROM on it - which can (but not always) lead to instability problems. The reduced ROM's from strangedogs that many use for flashing have a very good reputation. And, at the very least, get one with the latest 226 ROM. Some of the Sapphire cards also come with 5 nano-second VRAM chips (instead of the usual 7ns).

All of these cards will work in both Mac OS 9.2 and Mac OS X. OS X is pretty visual + processor intensive, so a decent graphics card will really help. The Radeon 7000 card also has two video ports - so you can run two monitors with extended display if you want to. And should you ever upgrade to Panther on your Beige G3 use 'XPostFacto' to help install the OS and to make sure the Radeon 7000 is supported. One more thing - if I recall correctly, there is/was a program called "PCI Extreme" that could enhance the graphic cards ability in Panther...

Good luck!

PS - In my opinion, the ultimate card to get would be the original "Radeon Mac Edition PCI". This card was an absolute legend. Although it has only 32MB VRAM - it's much (much) more powerful than the Radeon 7000. See here: http://www.barefeats.com/gr7000.html

Oh... here you go:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Radeon-Mac-Editi...QQcmdZViewItem