Is it possible to flash a 9600 that came with a G5 to work with a PC? I have one laying around and though it would be nice to give it to a friend of mine so he can play some video games. I've looked at the mac flashing site and it looks like in theory it should work but I just wanted to know if it had been taken beyond a theory.Thanks!


Draconis

Yes- this works just fine- you'll need:

http://www.techpowerup.com/bios/

find the bios that matches to your 9600 (preferably one from ATI) and make sure it's not an AIW card

matching the PRO / XT, etc ratings helps for memory timings-
also, match amount of ram or you might have issues.

once you have the rom and the atiflash, you should be able to (on a pc with a PCI graphics card):

set the bios to boot from the pci as primary.

put in the agp card, boot the system into dos.

run the ati flash and make a backup of the old 9600 g5 bios
run the ati flash and forcably flash the new bios to the card.

shutdown and test.

If the card has physical and electrical differences, before sticking it in the pc, you may need to do this mod, or one similar.
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/Graphics/FX5200_Mods_for_G4/FX5200_G4mods.html

I have never done this on a G5 card, however, my flatmate has done the 5200 mod, and I have converted 2 9800 Pro Retail cards to PC use after I stopped using them in my macs, using the procedure I outlined above.

Good luck, and let us know how it goes!

Sorry I have not replied faster. I had totally forgotten about this thread. Thanks so much for your info . I will be trying this mod within the week (hopefully) and will report back on how it goes. Again thanks for all of your help!

Might be worth considering selling the Mac compatible card as they seem to fetch higher prices than identical spec PC cards.

I think ATI and nVidia does that because they think "If a Apple user is willing to spend 2 grand for a system I bet he can afford a video card with a two to three hundred price tag".

Main reason as I see it for the extra cost on Mac Cards is the fact that the firmware has to be custom written as Macs don't work with the PC style BIOS on your normal PC graphics card. Sun SPARC hardware uses some of the same graphics cards as the PowerPC macs and again they are more expensive. Weather you believe the high cost is in proportion to the extra development cost for different firmware for a lower number of sold units is debatable though!

I couldn't agree more..

I wonder what the firmware is like on the Mac Pro cards then.......

Heres a good question. Can you use a PC videocard in the new Intel desktop macs? Or do you have to flash it?

Thats what I was asking. I was just a bit more subtle about it. Not that subtlety is in any way required by the subject matter.....

MacPros need EFI firmware on their graphics cards, PC graphic cards have been found to work in BootCamp but only display stuff once the Windows drivers have loaded.

Brief article hear:
http://www.hardmac.com/news/2006-09-10/

Maybe once the PC world moves to EFI we will no longer have anything but driver differences between PC and Mac Graphics cards.