Most Powerful Video Card a B&W G3 Can Handle?

[EvieSigma]

I recently found a 256MB video card on eBay that claims to be compatible with the B&W G3:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/251586283636?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

However, before I buy it, besides wanting to know if it's a good card, I also want to know if a stock 350MHz G3 can actually handle such a powerful card! I'd rather not spend 60 dollars and then find out it doesn't work because it's too demanding or whatever...

 

[Unknown_K]

What OS are you running , is this for gaming?

Don't think there are OS 9 drivers for that card. OSX would run like a pig on a slow G3. Heavy 3D graphics over PCI is a joke, and a G3-350 is pretty slow.

Don't see the need for anything better then a Radeon 7000 Mac edition.

 

[EvieSigma]

Well I am planning on upgrading the CPU if I can find a 450MHz ZIF or a 500MHz accelerator...but that looks like it won't be for a while. And if I ever find an upgrade I'm going to install 10.4 Tiger alongside OS 9.2.2 as well.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ati-Radeon-7000-64MB-PCI-Apple-MAC-Video-Card-DVI-VGA-S-Video-TV-out/322276090134?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D38530%26meid%3D3d01dc8bcfa34751ad88fa5cac21f363%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D5%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D261435567084#viTabs_0

This is what you mean by a Radeon 7000, yes? I think this will do nicely as an upgrade over the ATI Rage 128.

 

[rsolberg]

I modified an AGP 256MB GeForce 6200 to use in my Quicksilver G4. It works great in Tiger with full Core Image support.

In Mac OS 9, it offers no 2D or 3D acceleration due to a lack of drivers. As a result, it performs poorly even compared to something like your stock ATI Rage 128.

 

[Unknown_K]

Well I am planning on upgrading the CPU if I can find a 450MHz ZIF or a 500MHz accelerator...but that looks like it won't be for a while. And if I ever find an upgrade I'm going to install 10.4 Tiger alongside OS 9.2.2 as well.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ati-Radeon-7000-64MB-PCI-Apple-MAC-Video-Card-DVI-VGA-S-Video-TV-out/322276090134?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D38530%26meid%3D3d01dc8bcfa34751ad88fa5cac21f363%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D5%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D261435567084#viTabs_0

This is what you mean by a Radeon 7000, yes? I think this will do nicely as an upgrade over the ATI Rage 128.

That's just a flashed PC card (Saphire brand) and the 7000 label is a giveaway.

Anyway the Mac edition uses the original R100 chipset that had built in T&L in hardware. The later cost reduced RV100 chipset (NO T&L in hardware) was labeled as Radeon 7000.

http://lowendmac.com/2001/ati-radeon-mac-edition-pci/

 

[ArmorAlley]

The standard answer is an ATi Radeon 9250 Mac Edition.

It has 128MB RAM and it's not at all bad. It also tends to be pricey.

I have a 64MB Radeon 9000 Mac Edition in my 450MHz B&W G3 and I find it grand for gaming (for example, Deus Ex).

 

[Anonymous Freak]

The card will function fine - but you'll need Mac OS X 10.3 or later to have the acceleration work - otherwise it will be an unaccelerated card, worse than the stock Rage 128.  The Radeon 9250 Mac Edition would be fully accelerated in Mac OS 9, or any version of Mac OS X.  It wouldn't be as fast as the GeForce in 10.3+ in 3D games, but the Radeon will be "easier" to use, and faster in Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X below 10.3.  (But also a *LOT* more expensive to find.)

 

[EvieSigma]

That's just a flashed PC card (Saphire brand) and the 7000 label is a giveaway.

Anyway the Mac edition uses the original R100 chipset that had built in T&L in hardware. The later cost reduced RV100 chipset (NO T&L in hardware) was labeled as Radeon 7000.

http://lowendmac.com/2001/ati-radeon-mac-edition-pci/

Okay, if that's not the right one, then what is this?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-Mac-G4-G5-ATI-Radeon-7000-PCI-64MB-Video-Card-DVI-VGA-S-Video-TV-Out-OS9-/200710223413?hash=item2ebb42f635:m:mosu41F9PFEhHQf6EhSbdGA

This one doesn't match the picture on the LEM page either but it's ATI rather than Saphire...is this the cost reduced version then?

 

[Anonymous Freak]

That's a PC-flashed-to-Mac one, too.  The only ATI video cards ever released for the Mac were either Apple-shipped, or ATI-first-party-branded as "Mac" cards. (With the one exception of the ATI-first-party branded co-Mac-and-PC card that had both PC and Mac firmware.)

Also, I'm not aware of any ATI cards that were "native Mac" that had TV-out/S-Video.

If you want an actual, honest-to-goodness ATI-first-party "Mac Edition" PCI video card, there's someone on Amazon Marketplace selling a Radeon 9000 Mac Edition PCI still shrink wrapped for $80+shipping: https://www.amazon.com/ATI-Radeon-9200-Video-100-436011/dp/B0002F8MJY

 

[EvieSigma]

Well my question is...do the flashed ones still work? I'm not a first party stickler, I'm using a HP keyboard and mouse (well...until I get a Pro Keyboard to match my Pro Mouse) and a NEC monitor.

 

[Gorgonops]

The problem with the Radeon 7000 is it is a *genuinely* gutless card compared to a "real" Radeon (R100) or better. Here's some benchmarks. Unfortunately the charts don't include the original Rage 128 in a B&W, but my G4-upgraded B&W has a semi-peculiar version of the Radeon 7000 and my vague memory of testing with things like an OS X build of the original Quake was that the OpenGL performance of the 7000 is barely half-again better than the 128's. If you're looking for a major goose in performance a 7000 isn't going to give it to you.

 

[John_A]

With my Powermac G3 (beige) I upgraded the vram to 6mb on the internal 3d rage II+ then bought a rage 128 16mb, and finally a radeon 7000 32mb. In opengl applications (like quake) there was a difference, but in everyday use, not that much.It depends what you plan to do I guess. Jumped the radeon 9200 since the benchmarks didnt point at any huge improvements and the few available at the time was expensive. The biggest practical difference was that the internal 3d rage maxed out at 1600x1200, while the others went higher.

Best mac os9 card overall would be the geforce 4 ti4600, but thats unfortunately agp.

Edit: Isnt all the cards in the benchmarks above except the bottom two agp cards?

 

[EvieSigma]

Thanks Gorg, that's exactly the information I needed to hear.

 

[Gorgonops]

Edit: Isnt all the cards in the benchmarks above except the bottom two agp cards?

Yes, but since it includes the "real" Radeon PCI I figured it included the data needed to make the point. (IE, the the 7000 is substantially inferior.) Here's another set of benchmarks that has the original Radeon, the 7000, and the 9200 PCI, and even the original 128, in a B&W. I do think that their results sort of understate the difference between the cards because several of the pieces of software they use are going to be somewhat CPU bound on a B&W. (Cinebench in particular was a useless choice that mostly works to show how decent the original Rage was at 2D acceleration.) Some of the tests do show the 7000 doing better than I remember relative to the 128 but that maybe be an application specific thing; point remains it's a pipsqueak compared to the real Radeon. (Which actually did well compared to the later 9200.)

One thing to remember, of course, is the B&W is *always* going to suck a little under OS X no matter what card you put in it. Apple disables Quartz Extreme on non-AGP machines and while you *can* hack it on the B&W's limited PCI bandwidth is still a bottleneck and enabling it can have significant side effects in areas like disk performance. Someone already mentioned the GeForce 6200; there is a school of thought that says flashed PCI versions of the Geforce 5200FX and 6200 are the "best" card you can use for running OS X Tiger on a B&W because Core Image will work, but said cards are indeed utterly useless under OS 9 and caveats about PCI bus saturation still apply.

 

[EvieSigma]

Okay, hold on, let's rewind it a bit.

The original good Radeon card for Macs is just called Radeon, correct? Not Radeon 7000 or any other numbers?  I just want to make sure when I'm combing the Bay of E, I'm looking for the right thing.

 

[Gorgonops]

Yeah, the real genuine article is just "Radeon Mac Edition", no numbers or asterisks or whatever... which I suppose would make it an extra pain to search for. I don't think it was ever sold bundled in an Apple computer, only as a third party upgrade (IE, most "Radeon, no number" cards out there for Macs will be the AGP version of the same card that was dirt common in all but the first batch of AGP G4 Towers) so of course it's a little on the rare side as used pulls go.

 

[EvieSigma]

Perhaps I should drop the $80 on that other card on Amazon, then...at least then it will be new and I know it's there.

 

[EvilCapitalist]

Before you pull the trigger on that one, there's one for $74.99.  It's also new and saving money is always a good thing.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000JFHEH8/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&me=

 

[rsolberg]

One can exclude strings from eBay searches. For example, I might search for: Radeon Mac PCI -7000 -9200 -9250

Edit: I see that in this case, it doesn't yield any useful results, at least on eBay Canada.