Cheapest video card for dual monitors on a G4 Sawtooth

You should be able to install PCI (Another rage 128Pro, which goes for $16 on ebay) based card into your machine, rather than buying a dual monitor card.

If you're looking for a boost in power and responce then I'd recommend what I've got:

Radeon 7000 AGP, 64MB, DVI / VGA

Picked it up on eBay a few months ago for $50.00 from a reputable seller and it also came with a DVI to VGA adapter. Works great with a 20" LCD (DVI) and an old 17" Apple Studio Display (VGA) doing design work and video.

Hi, could you clarify: would any PCI based card work for this? I mean, are there some PCI cards that are for Mac only/ PC only?

Also you said another Rage 128Pro? I thought Rage 128Pro was AGP?

Sorry, I'm a beginner at this and I want to do the exact same thing as the original poster - have 2 monitors with my G4 Sawtooth.

Thanks.

Chad

I checked out the Radeon 7000. Very affordable! Just one thing I'm not clear about. It says its for Windows 2000/XP. Do I need to look for a Mac version?

Are video cards Mac/PC specific?

You need a Mac video card. All video cards except one are for only Mac or only PC, and that one doesn't work in your particular model.

Yesterday I installed a nVidia GeForce4 MX AGP out of a 2002 Quicksilver tower into my own AGP Sawtooth.

It has VGA and ADC connections and can apparently support two monitors at the same time.

My second vidio card is a MPDD card, but I may pull that now that I have a dual-monitor card. Sonnet sells something similar. They have blue & yellow connectors. These things are not high performance but they are OK to use with just about every monitor on the planet and any MacOS from 7.1 to 10.5 and beyond.

Cheap on eBay. Probably you could be even cheaper and pick up a 16-meg PCI card out of a B&W G3 tower.

Try e-bay..I just picked up a ATI Radeon 9200 agp. Works perfectly. Has 128 mb vram and support for what you want to do. Also less than $ 100

psstripper,

I just bought one of those flashed 9200 AGPs too off eBay (hasn't arrived yet). I'm replacing the original ATI Rage Pro AGP and a second ATI Rage PCI that I had installed (the PCI version was causing my Focusrite Saffire Firewire audio interface to crackle). Can you tell me if you needed to do any updates from the ATI site, or was it plug and go?

Are you able to take advantage of the Quartz Extreme stuff now in Tiger? Also, are you using the dual monitor support?

Thanks.

Message was edited by: Gregory Hendricks

I just bought a really fun video card, I can't wait until it gets to me; 256mb of vRAM should be sufficient for many years to come. What is everyone's opinion on this Nvidia card?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180005193215

I'll be running it on a 17" CRT and hopefully a 19" Sony LCD within the month

I was just looking at it the other day. The 5200 is an alright card, although I have read reports that due to the slow AGP speed it cannot take advantage of all of its VRAM, but at that price I'd say its worth it considering how much Mac cards are these days, even flashed ones like that. Looks to be alright, and if I hadn't bought a Radeon 8500 last summer I would have gotten something like that for sure this year, but since I have plans to upgrade to an Intel iMac next summer, I'm not spending another dime on my old G4.

Just got mine and I love it. The only problem I really had was that my old ATI
I just got my Radeon 9200 (the flashed PC card now an AGP Mac version). Works great. One problem though...my G4 will no longer sleep with the new card.

It half sleeps (all the fans stay on though), and then the only way to recover is to reboot. So I traded one problem for another. Figures.

When you install a new PCI or AGP device its always good to reset the PRAM or even better, use the reset button the logic board (when the machine is off and unplugged of course).

Sorry about that screwed up post above (glad you understood what I was saying).

Anyway, I fixed the problem by playing with the settings in the ATI Displays application. I don't know what I disabled that made the difference, but something in there I turned off did the trick. Sleep has returned.

And my audio interface is now working as designed (Focusrite Saffire).