Best video card for G5 tower?

June 13, 2006 10:32 AM

What is the best video card I can upgrade my G5 tower with?

Judging from this thread, it seems I'd have to get a Mac-specific video card to upgrade my G5 tower. I could flash a PC card, but I don't have any windows machines to do that with. What's the "top 3" cards I can get for this machine? I tried looking on xlr8yourmac.com, but the site just isn't designed well, IMO, for gathering information of this type.

Money isn't much of an issue (I'd rather save up for a good card than spend a little on a lower-quality one). However, I'd prefer to spend less than $500 on one. =P

My motherboard only has an AGP slot (no PCIE). Also, it has 1.5GB of RAM, and dual 2 GHz processors. I'm running OS X 10.4.6.

posted by triolus to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Crap, forgot a "< /a>" tag.. and it seems there's no way to edit it.. can any mods help me out?
posted by triolus at 10:37 AM on June 13, 2006

This guy will flash one and send to you for $10.
posted by sophist at 10:51 AM on June 13, 2006

Yeah, xlr8yourmac pretty much qualifies as one of the most horribly thought-out websites going. Sad, too, since they do some very good work there.

Anyway...since it sounds like your G5 is one of the older AGP (not AGP 8x) machines, your best bet for a Mac-specific card is probably going to be this one. It's a good card, though horribly overpriced considering it's nowhere near ATI's top of the (Mac) line these days. That would be the x800 xt. But it's an AGP 8x card.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:07 AM on June 13, 2006

Okay...I went back and double-checked the specs and, according to this Apple page, even the earliest G5 towers featured AGP 8x slots. My bad. I assumed 8x was added to the later towers. Sooo...Looks like the x800 xt might be your best bet.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:20 AM on June 13, 2006

Thorzdad: Thanks for fact-checking. =) I wouldn't be too worried about it, though as most video cards are 'backward-compatible' in the sense that an 8x card can run at 4x in a 4x slot.

Since the x800 xt is only about $100 more, I think I'll go with that.. unless someone knows of a killer nvidia card, that is... =)
posted by triolus at 11:45 AM on June 13, 2006

True about the "backward compatibility" thing...it's just that it's a waste since you wouldn't be getting the full 8x performance that you paid for if you mounted it in a 4x slot. That's all I was really thinking about there.

Enjoy the new card.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:37 PM on June 13, 2006

You're probably best with an ATI on the Mac. Apple writes the ATI drivers, and they do a better job than NVidia does.

This is exactly backwards to how things are on the PC.
posted by Malor at 4:33 PM on June 13, 2006

I have the 9800XT in a dual 2.0 G5 and it's pretty awesome. I don't 3-D game, but it drives two monitors VERY smoothly.
posted by clango at 10:28 PM on June 13, 2006