PC vs. Mac Video Card

Pardus

Pardus

Lurks: 15,289
I have a G4 867, 1.5gb ram, dual 21" VGA monitors with a GeForce2 MX 32mb AGP card and an ATI Rage 128 16mb PCI card. This is just my work computer (no Gaming) and primarily use Adobe CS, Flash, FCP express etc... I hope to upgrade to a G5 soon but will keep this G4 for my son and want to fix it up a bit. Will an upgrade to my video cards give me any noticable speed increases? I have read a few posts about not recommending PC video cards but I can get an OEM ATI Radeon 9200SE-128M (AGP) for $58cdn but the mac version is $200. Is it worth buying the mac version? This card should also run both my monitors, right?

Anyway, if anyone has any insight, I would appreciate it.
 
DanTekGeek said:
I was under the impression that you could only run mac specific cards on macs. PC cards are incompatible.
Click to expand...
Out of the box, yes, they are, but you can flash the ROM (or something) to make them compatible.
 
Radeon 9600 Pro Mac Edition : $119.00 US ( $145.12 CAN )
Radeon 9000 Pro : $129.00 US ( $157.31 CAN )

Stay away from flashed cards. There are a host of issues with them that aren't worth the hassle, not to mention their warranty is instantly null & void (when ROM is flashed PC to mac) and it's also illegal at that.
 
That's strange. A 9600 pro is cheaper than a 9000 pro.... Sure they've got the price right?
 
Guys i have this card..i.e. An ATI rage 128 16 MB VRAM PCI slot. Its worked for years in my G4 but now i fancy putting it into my new G5 in one of the PCI x slots. I have read if this card is a 66MHz card I could damage my G5. Do you know what speed my card is.. thanks
 
a. Vultcher stick to one thread, posting in all vid card threads will not get you an answer faster.
b. flashing card is illigal? this is the first i have heard that. in fact i have seen lots of places that sell pc cards flashed to mac. please give me some references to the laws that go with that. i was going to flash an old scsi card, but will hold off now if it is aganst the law. i need to know cause i just got a da g4/466 and was thinking of upgrading the agp card too.
 
Check the terms of use agreement included with the firmware updates supplied by the manufacturer (which you have to agree to before you install). ATI is very specific on their video cards, as well as NVidia.
 
Yup -- and, in order to install a Mac ROM onto a PC video card, you need to have a license for the Mac ROM. How do you get a license for the Mac ROM? One way and one way only: buy the Macintosh-specific video card.

It's illegal according to the license agreement, like mdnky said.
 
thanks for the info, guess it helps to accully read the agreements completly. now that i know, i'll make sure that what ever i get is really for the mac, and not flashed.
 
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