replacement Nvidia card for G4/400 Gigabit Ethernet

peerpeepeerpee
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Would a NVIDIA GEFORCE4 64MB MX VIDEO CARD that came out of a G4, work in an older G4/400 Gigabit Ethernet (which has an ATI Rage 128 Pro in it at the moment)?



I'm confused by the varying prices of Geforce 2, 3, 4, and what MX is.



I want to be able to use a new Cinema Display with my G4/400 and have Quartz Extreme support.



Any help or advice much appreciated. Thanks!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    Yes, a nVidia GeForce 4 MX graphics card should work fine in a Gigabit Ethernet G4/400. My only concern would be that it might not be able to do ADC, even if the card has it. There's some connector in the AGP slot that provides power to the monitor through ADC, and all of Apple's LCDs require ADC, so you may or may not be able to (someone please enlighten me!)



    As far as the difference between the GeForce 2, GeForce 3, and GeForce 4, well, generally they go in a line. GF2 is not as good as a GF3 which is not as good as a GF4. However, the exception is MX, which is fancy-marketing-speak for "worse." The GeForce 4MX isn't as good as a GeForce 3. The GeForce 3 isn't as good as a GeForce 4 Titanium. Here's how I think the nVidia cards go, starting with the best and working your way down to the worst (I'm excluding versions that aren't available as Mac-compatible cards, like the GeForce FX 5900).



    1. GeForce 4 Titanium 4600

    2. GeForce FX 5200

    3. GeForce 3

    4. GeForce 4MX

    5. GeForce 2MX



    I'm not quite sure if the GeForce 3 or the GeForce FX 5200 is better. They're probably about the same. But I think those are the only nVidia cards that have been made in Mac versions. On the other side, there are ATI's cards:



    1. Radeon 9800

    2. Radeon 9700

    3. Radeon 9600

    4. Radeon 8500

    5. Radeon 9000

    6. Radeon 7500

    7. Radeon (sometimes called the Radeon 7200)

    8. Radeon 7000



    Yeah, the 8500 is better than the 9000 by a little bit. But that's how the cards stack up for both ATI and nVidia (no pun intended, really!).
  • Reply 2 of 4
    peerpeepeerpee Posts: 44member
    My Gigabit Ethernet G4/400 has ADC already on the Rage 128 Pro card. Works fine. Does this mean that it will definitely be okay then?



    Thanks for your reply.
  • Reply 3 of 4
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    Yep, it should definitely work if it came with an ADC card.
  • Reply 4 of 4
    peerpeepeerpee Posts: 44member
    Many thanks indeed Luca!
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