Hi Guys

I'm running MorphOS 3.9 and looking to upgrade my graphics card. Running a PowerMac G5 1.6 (7,2) so AGP only,

With money no object, what's my best option?

Cheers,
Doc

Radeon X800

According to klick it would be the ATI Radeon X1950 XT. There should be MAC-bios flashed cards available.

The correct answer is indeed the Radeon X800 XT. While an R500-based graphics card might have a faster GPU, R500-based AGP cards are actually PCI Express chips behind an AGP bridge, and AGP transfers do not work on such cards (neither in MorphOS nor in Linux) and thus bus transfers become a bottleneck for these cards long before the GPU itself does.

I had an X800 in my G5 and it worked great! I recommend it.

Awesome

Thanks guys Time to start hunting around on ebay!

Well there is one other card that that ought to work that would be slightly faster.
Apple quietly added an Apple version of the X850XT to their build options in later AGP G5s.
Some PC X850XT cards ought to be able to be reflashed with the original Apple rom, but they would have to have a 128K ROM not a 64K ROM (which is more common with ATI cards).
However, replacing the rom with a larger part ought to be possible.

The X850XTs clocks at about5% faster than the X800XT and has memory that is 10% faster.

[ Edited by Jim 30.11.2015 - 10:52 ]

Cool

Thanks Jim. I'll see what I can dig up

There's a few x800XTs on eBay, not sure if most of them are re-flashed PC cards.

Re-flashed PC cards don't work in macs do they?

Doc

> ATI Radeon X1950 XT. There should be MAC-bios flashed cards available.

MorphOS can also use X1950 with x86 ROM. Besides, PPC ROM is only available for up to X1900.

> The X850Xtis clocks at about %% faster than the X600XT and has memory that is 10% faster.

X800XT PE has 4% faster VRAM and 3% larger bandwidth than (non-PE) X850XT.

> Re-flashed PC cards don't work in macs do they?

Then what would be the point in re-flashing them? :-)

>MorphOS can also use X1950 with x86 ROM. Besides, PPC ROM is only available for up to X1900.

So what you're saying is that I should be able to put an x1950 with x86 ROM straight into my G5 and it will work on MorphOS?!

Phil.

I can not recommand against using reflashed cards enough. Often you'll end up with a card that's either underclocked or overclocked, both of which are bad, and often you'll end up with a card that's not initialised properly because the firmware does not match the card.

Reflashed cards are not supported by MorphOS. If they work, then good for you. If they don't, then tough luck.

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You can, yes. But you will get no display in the firmware, so you won't be able to use the firmware boot selector to boot a different OS, for example. Also as I mentioned in an earlier post, an X1950 will be slower than an X800 at everything, including video playback.

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Thanks for clarifying! Didn't know that.

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The Apple X800XT operates at 475/500, the X850 operates at 500/550.

The only rom (a 64k reduced rom) available for PC X800XT cards also operates at 475/500.
So any converted PC X800XT would still run slower than the Apple X850XT.

You could try to altering the timing in the Apple rom for PE speeds, but frankly I don't recommend flashed cards anymore.

Ahh

It's all makes sense!

Thanks for clearing that up guys

Cheers
Phil

Yes, stay away from flashed cards. If they don't work you will not know why and no one can help you.

Besides, I can't think of any game or program that use all the power of an X800. I had an 2.7 GHz G5 with that card, and games like Quake 3 worked fine with every setting on top. So getting anything faster is probably overkill.

Thanks Yasu

I found an original Mac version of the X800 on ebay, so i'll more than likely go for that

Hi there,

I have an old PCI Radeon 9200 (Mac) lying around and a slightly newer AGP X1950GT (PC).
Plus a cheap (€40!) PowerMac G6 1.6GHz.
Could I get OF display on the 9200 and MorphOS display on the X1950GT?
BTW, according to gpureview.com, the X1950GT seems to have similar performance as the X800XT. Is that due to the Windows drivers being more optimized than Linux or MorphOS versions?

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I think it is really not worth buying a card to flash just to save some pounds or dollars. cheaper is not always better and several people already wrote that in the end they had to buy a second card becausse the flashed one did not work. It is easier and safer to buy the Mac card in the beginning, I think.
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But X800 only has DVI output, right? I did not find one with HDMI or Display Port. So no 4k displays in full resolution on this for us, I think.

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As far as I know, its still only one Radeon card per system.

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That is true. I think you need a RadeonHD card for that (which is not yet fully supported). I don't bother with those anyway. 1920x1200 is big enough for me.

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Under MOS that is.
Would MOS choose the AGP one and ignore the PCI one? Or just refuse to handle the situation?
What would OF do?

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Good question.

I would be surprised if the OF messages did NOT show up when your Mac system is installed with a supported Radeon video card in the AGP slot, no matter what is installed in the other PCI slots.

Getting the PCI video card to display anything after the boot of MorphOS is another matter, but apparently, some MorphOS users have gotten 2 video cards to work in some MorphOS supported systems. Since I have not yet tried this, I can't advise you on how to make it work, but will be interested to read what you find out, and if you can get your system working the way you want.