Best Bang For Buck AGP Card For My G5?

[Goftrey]

I'm on a bit a budget & was just wondering what is the best value for money AGP card for my dual 1.8 G5, the FX5200 is a pretty weak card & could do with an upgrade. Cheers

[MacJunky]

To be perfectly honest.

None.

But if you want to look at cards to flash then imo getting a used PC GF6800 GT or so might be doable for non-insane cost. But you gotta flash it yourself otherwise you will be looking on ebay and last time I saw(ok, 2007/2008) people wanted like, $200-$300 and more for pre-flashed cards like the Radeon x800/x850, GeForce 6800GT/7800GS.

[BGoins12]

The Radeon 9650 out of the later G5 towers isn't too bad. I think it has 256 megs of VRAM. The only bad thing is they are hard to find at a good price. That's the only bad thing about AGP Mac video cards is they either suck and they are cheap, or they are really good and expensive.

[Byrd]

Cheapest option would be to pick up a PC 6800GT for < $40 and flash it yourself. Go only for the exact cards though that Mac Elite offer ROMs for. I've a Leadtek 6800GT, supposedly the A400 model, but with a cheaper heatsink, that plain refuses to work with any ROMs tested (might try the other ROMs just to see though).

The PC flashed 7800GS is the best card, but again be wary as you can't flash cards over a certain ROM revision as they essentially use the same chipset as a 7900GT, which isn't supported.

JB

[Goftrey]

How would I go about flashing a card? I've never even looked into it before & can't seem to find much info around the web.

[Goftrey]

@BGoins I've actually found a few 9650 for, and it looks like a real nice card, but considering it would cost me more than I paid for the machine itself I don't really so the point.

[BGoins12]

True. Then if anything, it would be best to find a good PC card to flash. It's not too hard. There's a website I found to flash my FX5200, and it was easy to follow. You are going to need a PC with an AGP slot to do the flashing. The only reason I flashed mine is because it's a 256mb card, and it works great.

I know this particular site also lists cards that you can use.

[trag]

On the Mac Elite's compatibility table, when it states a minimum OS requirement, is that for acceleration support, or will the card completely fail to display with older OS's.

For example, if I put an ATI X800 XT in my MDD, will I still get video if I boot into OS 9.2.2?

[BGoins12]

When I had my MDD booting into 9.2.2 with the FX5200, it would only allow 256 colors at 640x480 if I'm not mistaken.

[Goftrey]

Looks like I'll most likely be going with a 6800GT in the future. Thanks for the help