video card recommendation for a G5 Quad please.

Jitter
batchku's icon

batchku

hello,
I have a g5 quad that came with a geforce 6600.
it's weak.
i'd like to get something better and spend $200-$300.

i looked around and it seemed that ATI X1800 and X1900 series could be very nice. however, ATI doesn't support PPC OS X for these cards; there are no drives; there is mention of "G5 edition" of the X1900, but it's "upcoming", still not avaible.

so, i'm wondering what those heavy video and OpenGL cats out there are using with the big fast G5 Quads. The NVidia 7800 and 7900 series are somewhat compatible but i'm not sure if they are available for a G5. has anyone any advice on this?

thanks in advance,

a

Peter Nyboer's icon

Peter Nyboer

well, if you can't get a card, you can get all dodgy and try flashing the ROM of a card for a PC. I did this with an ATI 9800 for my G4/350 (w/ 800mhz upgrade card) AGP, and it's worked great, 10.39 and 10.4.
There are risks, however, and it helps to have a PC handy. For me, it was a reasonable risk, as there was a pretty high success rate with flashing this card, and I found one cheep on craigslist.
More info on ROM flashing here:
http://strangedogs.proboards40.com/index.cgi?board=experiments
and results of a card out of your price range:
http://www.barefeats.com/mutant4.html

It maybe be a decent option if you can't get a card, though some might say it comes with an ethical cost.

P.