Hey guys,

Been running Morph on my MacMini for a while now, and acquired a Powermac 7,3 dual G5. The only downside is it has a Geforce video card so Morph won't load. I have a spare Radeon HD 5770, but I don't see that listed as supported, nor can I find if that actually even works in a G5 with the Pci-e power connection.

So my questions are as follows:

- Whats the BEST video card to currently use?
- Does the video card have to be a Mac edition? (I will not be loading OS X, just Morph)
- Any chance the video card could support a res of 3440x1440?

Thank you in advance!

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1. The best (fastest working) gfx card on AGP G5 PowerMac is currently Radeon X800XT (X850XT).
2. If you're going to use only MorphOS - it doesn't. But if you wish to finetune something in Open Firmware - do that before you switch the gfx card to a PC one.
3. No idea with ultrawide, sadly (I'd rather say it's a "no"). It does run at 1920x1200 with no problem, but that ultrawide res has got more than twice as many pixels to draw.

>> Does the video card have to be a Mac edition?

> If you're going to use only MorphOS - it doesn't.

That's only true for cards with AtomBIOS, i.e. R500-based and later cards*. So R400-based cards like the X800XT or X850XT have to be a Mac edition, or a PC edition re-flashed with PPC ROM.


Edit: * While early AtomBIOS versions came already somewhen during R400 series, the MorphOS AtomBIOS parser seems to require the newer AtomBIOS versions that started with the R500 series.

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 19.01.2021 - 00:56 ]

Ok great! Thanks everyone. Looking forward to getting it working :)

Cards with duallink DVI (Radeon 9650 for example) can produce 2560x1600@60Hz. Higher resolutions can be achieved by reducing the refresh rate, wether your monitor will work at anything below 60 is something you have to try yourself.

+1 for the X800XT, but I'd recommend tracking down a legit Mac one. There's nothing worse than compatibility frustration. Just do it right the first time and don't worry about it after that.

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Even when properly tracked, Mac version can be troublesome - as seen in the "X800 (X850?) XT issues" thread...

And what about the x1900xt ?

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What about it? The AGP version is built on an PCIe-AGP bridge and it's transfers are somewhat dissapointing (at least in Linux, and that's what our drivers are based on, AFAIR). So it's still X800XT, sir. I just hope I can get my X850XT to work properly after all...

How much slower is the x19x0 compared to a x8x0?
Where can i find the Benchmarks?

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I'd ask Bigfoot, as he's the source of this information.
The built-in MorphOS gfx card benchmark doesn't confirm the X850XT is 'teh fastest card'. In fact both 9800 Pro and 9650 score slightly better than it. But I guess the real difference would be in some Quake (or other 3D intensive game) benches.
If you need any comparison 'real life' benchmarks - I can do them for you. Currently I have an Apple X850XT in my G5.

At this point it's an issue of speed, price, and resolution.
A Radeon 9800 might be cheaper, the X800XT should be faster (but may not be as the R300 driver may be better optimized), and the Radeon 9650 does offer higher resolution ( but it's by far the slowest, even slower than a standard 9600).

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OK, my fault. It's been 9600 XT. Here are my GfxSpeed results:

Apple Radeon 9800 Pro: 12485 points
Apple Radeon 9600 XT: 12234 points
Apple Radeon X850 XT: 12017 points

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Better than I would have expected for the 9600XT.
That was the last card I had installed in my 7,3 PowerMac before I decided to stop using it.

The difference is much smaller then i've thought
And what about some game benchmarks like Q3?
Anyone with a Radeon x1950?
I will get a Radeon x1950 GT next week and will Post some benchmarks.

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In Quake III with disabled VSYNC I get 73,1 FPS in 1600x1200 with:

GD Driver: Default
GL Extensions: On
Color Depth: Default
Fullscreen: On
Lighting: Lightmap
Geometric Detail: High
Texture Detail: max
Texture Quality: 32 bit
Texture Filter: Trilinear

on Dual Processor 2,7 GHz PowerMac G5 with Apple Radeon X850XT.

EDIT: OSX 10.5.8 on the other hand gives 250 FPS on the same config. We've got room for optimization, that's for sure...

[ Edited by koszer 26.10.2017 - 14:22 ]

Maybe you should disable the second core to be fair
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I don't think Quake III at this settings use any software rendering, but OK, I will test that.

P.S. To be perfectly fair I would have to turn off 6,5 Gigs of RAM too...

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Strangely enough the game hangs if I try that. But I did another test with 2 CPUs active and now it showed 355,6 FPS. Ouch!

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What about them, benchmarks? Any new results out there?

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Sorry but i am still waiting for the x1950 card.
It looks like the seller on Ebay flea market screw me over with my 15 euro i paid him for the card.
But if i get the card i will post some benches.

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I might dig up an AGP X1650 that I have hidden in some box, to do some tests, but I don't know if it's worth the hassle (I don't even know if it's working, aaaand I'm afraid the X850 would beat the crap out of it anyway).

I'm replying to myself: Today I've swapped my Radeon X850XT with an Apple Radeon 9800 Pro. Standard Quake III benchmark did run at 57,5 FPS now, so the X850XT is a better performer, even without optimized drivers. I'll do some more swapping and report back.

Edit: on OSX I get about 179 FPS with this gfx card.

[ Edited by koszer 12.12.2017 - 21:16 ]

Did some more swapping. Unfortunately the X1650 AGP didn't initialize (it can be broken though), so I've tested the last compatible card I have - the Apple Radeon 9600 Pro. The results are:

MorphOS: 48,9 FPS
OSX: 86,6 FPS

I've benched a X850pro vs. a 9800pro - the 9800 is much faster than the X850pro. Is that a driver problem? I always thought that the X800 series is the fastest for the G5.