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graphics card
i know this isn’t a hardware forum but it’s the closest i could find on this site. i have the original dual 2ghz G5 on OS 10.3.9, 2ghz ram. my graphics card just died. it was the one that came with the mac so it’s an ATI Radeon. which specific ATI card, i’m not sure but it is an AGP dual monitor card with 32mb per connection (ADC and DVI). my question is, when buying a new graphics card, let’s stick with ATI for the sake of argument, do i have to buy the one that says “mac edition”? i’ve been told by many people that most if not all of their cards will work in a mac, even if it says it was designed for windows on the box. if you can use some or all of those cards…why do they have a line of “mac edition” cards? it’s made card shopping very confusing. also, what kind of slots are the other three slots on the board (remember, this is the original dual 2 G5, not the newer one)? are they PCI or PCI-X? can i put a pci graphics card in one of those slots instead of the agp slot? will there be a performance issue? can i put a pci card in a pci-x slot or vise versa?
any answers, suggestions would be appreciated.
thanks
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3 Replies
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My first question is whether the card is still under warranty. Did you have just one year Apple Care or did you extend it? Even if only 1 year, does the card itself have a warranty? Looking at video cards I see a 3 year warranty on the ATI 9800 card… https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/accelerators/ATI-Videocards/
No, you cannot use the PC version of an ATI card. Mainly because of drivers I would think. But you also need to be careful because some of them are for PCI-Express instead of AGP 8x or PCI-X. Most cards you will find for the Mac (for basic video like your ATI card) will be AGP and the PCI ones are usually laggards in performance. But the main difference is if you NEED the ADC connection. PC cards do not come with that.
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thanks for the info. i don’t have the extended applecare but the computer is under 3 years old. should i contact ATI or apple to see if the card itself has a warranty?
i don’t need the adc connection. i currently have two vga monitors and in the future may have two dvi monitors. i tried shopping at actual stores but found them tremendously lacking in graphics cards for macs. i didn’t want to wait for shipping cuz i need to work so i bought the only one i could find. it’s the ati 9200 pci card with a vga and dvi output. it works fine, but if i can get a free agp card via warranty i will definitely do that and return this card.
what about nvidia, is it as hard to find mac cards from them?
this has been much more difficult than i thought it would be.
thanks again for the info
chris
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[chris newman] ” i don’t have the extended applecare but the computer is under 3 years old. should i contact ATI or apple to see if the card itself has a warranty? “
Naw! No Apple Care – you are on your own. Now is a great time to upgrade the video card anyhow.
You must get a video card that has MAC support listed on the packaging box. The ATI X800XT is the hottest card available and I believe it has two DVI ports. It has 256 MB DDR VRAM and is the hottest thing you can buy for the mac today. Check out the prices on http://www.buy.com as they are generally as good as you can find most snywhere reliable.
If you don’t want to spend the bux for the top dog then look up the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Special Edition. It is a little older and priced lower but still a good card.
BTW – If you are ever planning on running Motion, you can not use the ATI 9200 video card for that.
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