Best graphic card for G5 2.7 dual

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Level 2

379 points

Best graphic card for G5 2.7 dual

I have just bought a G5 2.7 Dual, nice and clean (no leaks, I hope) and now want to upgrade the graphic card, which, at present, is a ATI Radeon 9650 265mb. I was thinking, 6800GT, 7800GT/GS or XT800.

Any ideas or advice will be greatly appreciated.

Quicksilver G4 2002, Mac OS X (10.5.8), Upgraded to 1.47 GHz - ATI Radeon 9600 XT

Posted on Apr 5, 2011 11:25 AM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Apr 5, 2011 12:00 PM in response to Skorpan

See japamacs page here on the best AGP cards for G4s & G5s...

http://www.jcsenterprises.com/Japamacs_Page/Blog/4B4B7BA2-7ABB-47F1-87AC-B03D379 42BEE.html

And hopefully later he'll pop in. 🙂

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Answer 2

japamac

Level 7

24,400 points

Apr 5, 2011 3:26 PM in response to Skorpan

Hi-

The Radeon X800 is the overall strongest of the 3.

The Geforce 7800 GS is very strong, but better used in Tiger. In Tiger, the 7800 GS is faster than the X800.
There is some loss of performance in Leopard due to ROM/driver difficulties in 10.5x, making the 7800 GS a less than optimal card.

The Geforce 6800 Ultra is better than the GT, but either of the 6800 cards make a very good performance choice.

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Answer 3

Skorpan Author

Level 2

379 points

Apr 5, 2011 10:27 PM in response to japamac

Thanks for the info, am I right in thinking the X800 can be flashed in a Mac, and the others need to be flashed in a PC.

Also is the X800 XT the same as the X800?

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Answer 4

japamac

Level 7

24,400 points

Apr 6, 2011 4:23 AM in response to Skorpan

am I right in thinking the X800 can be flashed in a Mac, and the others need to be flashed in a PC.

Yes.

is the X800 XT the same as the X800?

There are several versions of the X800. Pro, XT and XT PE.
Only the FireGL X3 will output digital when flashed.
All other X800 cards only give analog.

The FireGL X3 is shown on my page here:
http://www.jcsenterprises.com/JapamacsPage/GraphicsCards.html

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Answer 5

Skorpan Author

Level 2

379 points

Apr 7, 2011 9:54 AM in response to japamac

Hi japamac,
Thanks for the info! I noticed on your site you flashed Gainward 6800 Ultra, with a 2130 rom, how is it working? I have a Gainward 6800 Ultra which I have been trying to flash for months, (way too busy just now) but it seems it would be a good card for my new G5 2.7 dual. Any thoughts?

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Answer 6

japamac

Level 7

24,400 points

Apr 8, 2011 2:29 AM in response to Skorpan

The Gainward was a good card. I never saw any issues with the ROM or the card in Tiger or Leopard.
It was a very good, solid performer, but the fan was really annoying.

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Answer 7

Jul 4, 2011 8:09 AM in response to japamac

I just bought an ATI FireGL x3 256MB AGP card to use in my G5 2.5GHz DP PCI-X tower. I have tried flashing this card on a PC using DOS and ATIFLASH with a few different ROMS. I have tried the FireGL X3 reduced rom on the Mac Elite Wiki downloads, I tried the X800XT reduced rom from the same place and I even downloaded the full 109 rom for the X800xt which I edited using Hexedit. I have installed the rom extenders. The card just will not display an image on the G5 running OSX 10.5.8. When I flash the card back to the PC rom and run it on a PC it is fine so I know the card works. Am I missing something? This has been driving me nuts for days. Any advice would be most welcome. I have tried editing the roms to use the 4D 4A ID as well.

This is what is displayed on the graphics hardware info:

pci1002,4a4d;

Type: Display

Bus: AGP

Slot: SLOT-1

Vendor: ATI(0x1002)

Device ID: 0x4a48

Revision ID: 0x0000

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