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Headless PCI GPU in Quicksilver

Reasons.

Well-known member
I've had a Quicksilver kicking around for a few years that I'm finally getting around to restoring. I'd ideally like it to be a hybrid OS 9/X machine, but I'm hitting a rough spot trying to find a suitable upgrade to the stock Geforce2 MX. It doesn't seem like most of the performant OS 9 GPUs work well under Tiger, but upgrading to a Core Image-compatible card loses you hardware acceleration in OS 9 and (maybe) Classic. Would it be possible to get around this by installing a PCI GPU in a spare slot and using it headless? I'm imagining I'd use the AGP GPU as the primary display output and in Tiger and the PCI GPU for headless hardware acceleration in OS 9. I've tried running this down on google, but unfortunately everything's buried under hackintosh threads.

(If it matters, I'm integrating this machine into a modern desk setup and would like a card that supports 1080p. 1440p would be extra nice, but the 9600 Pro seems to be the only option and its Quicksilver compatibility is sketchy.)
 

DarthNvader

Well-known member
Not sure what you mean by PCI GPU for headless hardware acceleration in OS 9.

If you mean you want to use the PCI card as a 3D accelerator without ever connecting a display to it, that really can't be done under OS 9.

It works somewhat under OS X with ATI cards like the Radeon 9100 PCI, but the transaction across the PCI bus from the 3D card to the display card make the window server eat up all your CPU cycles.

The only two real options is to connect a display to the PCI card for OS 9 or use a KVM, or get a Voodoo2 and use VGA passthrough to power your display. The Voodoo2 won't do anything under OS X, it will just pass VGA from you AGP card though to the display, but when you boot OS 9 you'll get 3D acceleration with this setup.
 
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