Affordable graphics card upgrade options for G4 Cube

[EvieSigma]

If you Google up a review of the actual, official ATI Radeon 7000 Mac Edition you’ll see it has a PCB with an SVideo, DVI, and VGA port filling up the back panel; I remember the PC retail editions looking identical so I guess I’d probably prioritize that one, but alas I have no idea how much the differences matter for flashing. If they worked the low profile Dell OEM cards that used a splitter to break out that weird DVI-ish port you find on those business class machines into two heads might be attractive for a Cube installation? (Compact and it’d make the monitor plugs more accessible.)

I've found a lot of Dell Radeon 7500s but I don't know if they have a ROM large enough to flash Mac firmware onto.

 

[Gorgonops]

Googling I found this page that lists original and modified ROMs for various Radeon cards. The Mac cards seemed to consistently have 128k flash, the ‘Reduced’ firmwares are 64k. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a ‘reduced’ ROM for the 7500. (7000, yes)

Wikidownloads2 - The Mac Elite

themacelite.wikidot.com

I think Dell did have a low-profile 9000 card too, I wonder if that’s meaningfully better than a 7000 and has any OS 9 support?

 

[EvieSigma]

Dell ATI Radeon 7500 32GB AGP VGA S-Video Video Card 0P767 00P767 1028342302 | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Dell ATI Radeon 7500 32GB AGP VGA S-Video Video Card 0P767 00P767 1028342302 at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

This is the Dell Radeon 7500 I was talking about, it has VGA and S-video only and 32MB RAM. No idea if it's DDR or SDR, if it's DDR it's probably a decent performer but SDR wouldn't be much better than the stock card.

 

[ScutBoy]

I'm surprised there are no Apple Radeon 7500 on the 'Bay. They used to be fairly common...

 

[EvieSigma]

I'm surprised there are no Apple Radeon 7500 on the 'Bay. They used to be fairly common...

I'm surprised too! I thought I'd find one but all I find are PC cards.

 

[ried]

An NVIDIA GeForce3 Mac Edition for the G4 Cube just popped up on eBay. Will not last long.

Power Mac G4 Cube nVidia GeForce 3 Mac Edition VGA ADC Apple - fast shipping | eBay

Both the VGA and the ADC ports work in both OS versions. ADC port is in great shape and has no bent pins. The displays used in the tests were the 23" Apple Cinema HD Display ( 1920 x 1200 with ADC ).

www.ebay.com

 

[Franklinstein]

That's not the sub-$100 that OP was looking for but it's not the most exorbitant price for a Cube GF3.

I'm in the middle of messing with a couple R9200s. They're both the low profile variety and I think one may be the SE that they say to avoid but it was like $5 so I bought it anyway. Hopefully one of them works. I still like booting into OS 9 so this seems to be the best option for retaining OS 9 acceleration and also doesn't involve extensive rearranging of the Cube's guts.

 

[ru225]

Guys will a radeon 7500 ( Mac edition ) work without overheating in a cube ? Or is a fan necessary ?

 

[François]

It should be fine. That was a popular upgrade back in the day. I had one with the stock heatsink in my Cube for several years, never had a problem.

 

[Mikeyy00]

Guys will a radeon 7500 ( Mac edition ) work without overheating in a cube ? Or is a fan necessary ?

I (personally) found them to be very hot. For the ~$20 for a new old stock fan.. why take the risk?

 

[Unknown_K]

Stock fans can fail and if you don't notice it when they do a very expensive machine can fry.

 

[Byrd]

Agree if you can put a quiet fan into a relatively hot running vintage computer it’s good insurance. It doesn’t take much airflow to cool things down considerably nearby a hot component.