Most powerful Video Card for G5

Hey guys,

I Recently acquired a Dual-Core 2.3GHZ powermac G5.

the current Graphics card is a Nvidia Geforce 6600 256MB PCI EXpress card.

I find it lacking for my needs. (can't run Doom 3 on Ultra settings)

What is the most power PCI Express Graphics card I can get for my G5 flashed or not flashed.

Also I want a card that has 512MB of VRAM, it has to be a fast card and have superb image quality.


Is it possible to flash an ATI 4870 (the PCI Express one) ?

No wrt the 4870, any card you use needs to have a PPC compatible ROM. That basically leaves only things that either Apple or another company sold for use with the G5s.

But a good card IIRC is the GeForce 7800GTX.
I am not sure how it stacks up with the Radeon X1900XTX though.

barefeats might have some benches and you can probably find some used ones for $50-$100 from PC users.


*Edit
Being perfectly honest, what you want to do is a big waste of money when you could just play DOOM 3 on even a semi-modern PC and max it out.

That being said, I know how appealing maxing out an old system is so I just want to make sure you really want this before doing it.

the dual-core G5s are still viable workstations so its worth it to me to max it out.

and anyway I'm getting a Macbook Pro 17" in the fall when they put the Intel Core i5s in em.

this system has the power to max out on Doom 3 I just need a new graphics card and to max out to 16 GB of ram.

[censored][censored]" target="_blank">http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-ATI-RADEON-X1900...%3A1%7C294%3A50

Sure, you can flash the cards, but you need just the right one (earlier reference cards) and it is not hard to paper weight them. I suggest the x1900xtx with a different cooler. It is basically a FireGL for Macs. Some of my ATI card mods/upgrades are listed around the site.

-maestro

could I do the 512MB version of the card?

my current card (Nvidia 6600) has 256MB and I find it sort of lacking. I also plan to be running a second display for Logic Express's mixer window, so I want as much memory for the card as possible

Can I flash an ATI Radeon X1900 XT with 512MB of VRAM with a ROM from the G5 edition that has 256MB of RAM?