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Best Quicksilver Graphics Card?

LaPorta

Well-known member
Anyone have any recommendations for what would some of the best ADC-port, AGP graphics cards for the Quicksilver? Looking for some power for early OS X games on my 17" ADC Cinema Display!
 

demik

Well-known member
If you are going with OS X, you can look at beefier cards

the following are quite nice if you need an ADC Port:
- Radeon 9000 Pro from a MDD (low performance, but accelerated on OS 9)
- Radeon 9600 Pro or XT from a G5 (CTO option, more rare)
- Radeon X800 XT (CTO option, rare as well)

Without ADC, a 9800 Pro AGP is easier to find.
... and 6600LE are PCI Express only so not compatible IIRC

The FX 5200 Ultra is on the low end and does not perform well.
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
I have to see what I Have in there, but it has 32 MB VRAM I know.

The ADC port is convenient because the monitor uses an ADC connector.
 

Unknown_K

Well-known member
The 9600 cards from AGP G5's have the ADC card plug in a different location then the G4 series so unless you are going to break it off and run wires ADC will not work. Also you have to modify the card by cutting a trace so it works in a 2/4x AGP slot instead of the hard wired 8x.
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
I think you are right @Torbar. I also wanted to point out I am running both OS 9 and X, but only really running graphic-intensive games under X.
 

jeremywork

Well-known member
The Radeon 9000 Pro is going to be the most commonly available G4-ADC 9/X accelerated card.
There's also the Geforce4 Ti4600 which has G4-ADC, very quick acceleration in 9, but only emulates Quartz Extreme in OSX (so isn't a great choice there despite strong numbers.) It's also noted to have a noisy VGA output; DVI(ADC) is fine though.

The MDD series will also have had the Radeon 9700 Pro as an option which is significantly faster, retains G4-ADC, but only accelerates in OS X.

Edit: I've also heard from multiple IT offices that running displays off the ADC port contributes to PSU failures, especially when machines are left in sleep mode overnight. I run mine off of ADC too (too streamlined not to,) but I'd switch to an external brick if I were going to run one of my G4s heavily.
 
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LaPorta

Well-known member
So, to confirm, t's a GeForce 2MX with 32 MB VRAM that is in there currently. That is what I am looking to do better than.

Your warning is well taken. The good thing is, none of my machines see "heavy" use. The heaviest use it will get is maybe playing an hour of a game, that's it.
 

Byrd

Well-known member
Ati 9000 is about the easiest to get.

+ perfectly capable for Quake II and Unreal engine games of that era. After that, PPC OS X games that needed faster GPUs is pretty limited and not well optimised (Doom 3, Halo etc)
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
I’ll tell you exactly what I’d be running: Red Faction, Quake III, RTCW, possibly Halo, and F/A-18 OIF
 

Byrd

Well-known member
All should be good, except Halo which runs like rubbish on all bar the highest end G4/G5s with 9x00 GPUs and above
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
Ok, it seems that the general consensus is that it makes sense to search for 1 Radeon 9000 Pro. I see that they came in 64 and 128 MB versions...was there a 128 MB ADC version, or was that only a PC VGA/DVI one?
 

volvo242gt

Well-known member
Alternatively, get a M8661LL/B adapter and run it off a DVI equipped card like the 9700 or 9800. I used one of those for a few years in my old G4 Digital Audio after the original nVidia card took a dump in 2009. Moved it over to my MDD machine in 2012 for a while, until I got annoyed with the howling cooling fan, even after I'd switched to a single 1GHz G4 processor from the dual G4 processors it used to run. At that point, reassembled the G4 DA and used that in tandem with the old Dell laptop before I got my original A1181 in 2013.
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
Thanks, I do have the adapter indeed, I just was hoping to keep it simple and have the actual ADC port. I wound up ordering an ATI Radeon 9000 w/ DVI. We will see how it works when it gets here!
 
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