pc pci radeon in blue and white powermac

millhousemillhouse
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
hi, im longing for well quartz extreme and the rage pro 128 just wont cut it, so i was going to put a pci radeon into my mac, problem is mac editions are 120bucks for a 32mb ddr vid card (i bought my agp pc geforce for 42 bucks which is agp and had 32mb ddr) i've read around the net and read all the article's that you can flash a pc radeon with a mac rom and have everything be peachy. as well as making quartz extreme go through the pci bus rather then the agp bus. my question is has anyone here done this or have any advice they can offer?



ATI OEM RADEON 7000 64MB DDR DVI/CRT/TV PCI

Specifications:

Chipset:Radeon 7000

Memory: 64MB DDR

BUS: PCI



newegg.com has that for 43 bucks and it seems to good to pass up so im wondering if i should do this or not.



running mac os x version 10.3 panther by the way

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    altivec_2.0altivec_2.0 Posts: 995member
    I asked the same question a while back on these threads. The answer I got was that Quarts Extreme will not work on a PCI Video card.
  • Reply 2 of 7
    bitemymacbitemymac Posts: 1,147member
    I've tried doing the flash method and wasn't successfull with powercolor radeon 7000 pci. It seems that some newer radeon 7000 pci cards come with half locked eeproms and will not let you flash full 128k tweaked rom files available online. Even if you are able to flash 32k flash with hacked mac radeon rom, when you try to flash using the radeon flashing utility on mac, it will fail at 50% completion.



    I'm not saying that all pc radeon 7000 cards won't work, I just wanted to note that some do and some don't. I'm sure some guru will come up with a way to unlock other 64k from the eeprom, but untill then you'll have to take a chance.



    All in all, I've ended up getting the mac version radeon 7000 pci and running it. I still have the pc radeon 7000 as well, in case someone finds a way to flash the rest of 64k. I've got about 3 more weeks before my return policy expires with the mac radeon 7000 pci.



    If you can find a older radeon mac pci card on ebay then get that instead of the radeon 7000 pci. The older mac radeon pci card is about 2x faster in 3d. (I'm not sure about competibility on MacOS X though)



    BTW, QE works with pci radeon 7000 card with the IOAGP to IOPCI tweak. It does show some side effects, such as QT preview atifacts and slight hesitation in dock when it shows from hide mode.

    Other than that, it has made things more snappier overall in destop activities.



    My mac config.



    8500 with Sonnet G4 800

    PCI radeon 7000

    PCI tango usb/fire card

    Adaptec 2930CU scsi card

    256 MB RAM for now (G4 card doesn't like my other memory sticks) -just ordered pair of 128mb sticks from OWC to prepare for panther.

    MacOS X 10.2.8 via Xfacto(ID: 0)

    MacOS 9.2.2 via OS9helper(ID: 1)
  • Reply 3 of 7
    millhousemillhouse Posts: 96member
    sounds good, i've been around the net and the radeon im looking at is made by saphire or whatever and it was listed as one of the ones that people have had luck with, so hopefully if i buy this itll go ok.



    worst case scenario it doesnt work, is there a way to flash it back to the pc rom?
  • Reply 4 of 7
    bitemymacbitemymac Posts: 1,147member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by millhouse

    sounds good, i've been around the net and the radeon im looking at is made by saphire or whatever and it was listed as one of the ones that people have had luck with, so hopefully if i buy this itll go ok.



    worst case scenario it doesnt work, is there a way to flash it back to the pc rom?



    yes, you can always flash back to the backedup pc rom at anytime.



    Note: I've read that some of the newer saphire cards have flashing issues as well. One guy on another forum got 5 pc cards, but was successfull flashing 2 or 3. He must be one of those ebay sellers.



    Good luck, If you want some flashing stuff for this, shoot me an email.
  • Reply 5 of 7
    millhousemillhouse Posts: 96member
    thanks man, if i buy itll be at the end of this week, so you might get that email, and hopefully soon i'll be livin in QE heaven!
  • Reply 6 of 7
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    The best card to get is actually the PCI Radeon, not the "7000." If you can find an old Radeon Mac Edition with 32MB, supposedly they are quite a bit quicker than 7000's.



    And apparently they have the right firmware.
  • Reply 7 of 7
    gizzmonicgizzmonic Posts: 511member
    One of my friends was able to do it with a PC Radeon 7000 card he got off eBay for $50-keep in mind that these cards aren't nearly as nice as the Mac version.



    I thought ATi was just gouging Mac users, but the truth is my friend's PC Radeon has no other connections than the one VGA, while my Mac Radeon 7000 has a DVI, VGA, and svideo output...plus you can get them for $99 now if you shop around. To me, it might be worth the extra $50 for dual displays, tv out and no hassles.
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