How can I hook up a second 17 inch LCD flatscreen monitor to my Power Mac G4?

January 19, 2007 1:49 PM

How can I hook up a second 17 inch LCD flatscreen monitor to my Power Mac G4?

What's the best and cheapest way to do this? I can't quite figure out the best way to do it, even the guys at the Apple Store were kind of clueless.

posted by brokekid to computers & internet (5 comments total)

You will want either a PCI video card, or a new dual-head AGP video card. I may have a PCI card around here that'd work, if you want it.
posted by kindall at 2:00 PM on January 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

First, we're assuming here that you have a G4 with AGP graphics. (Not all of them do. Some early ones, codenamed "Yikes!" had PCI graphics.) The "Sawtooth," "Digital Audio," "Mirrored Drive Doors" and later G4 models all had AGP. Everymac.com may help you with identification of yours, or fire up Apple System Profiler and see what it says about busses (does it have AGP).

Kindall is correct here: you have two basic options. Option 1 is for you to remove the existing graphics card, and install a new 'dual head' card in the computer's AGP slot. Option 2 is that you leave the graphics card in place, and install another card, in one of the PCI slots.

I vote for Option 1. Trying to install a PCI graphics card may be an exercise in frustration; assuming you can find one with Mac drivers for cheap, it's not going to be very fast, and probably won't be supported by Quartz Extreme. (Even if you're not playing games, having a decent graphics card lets your computer offload a lot of the CPU's work to the GPU, which is key in making an older system feel snappy.) Of course, this all goes out the window if you have a Yikes! PCI-based system.

Picking up a dual-head AGP graphics card with Macintosh drivers shouldn't be very hard, and will probably give you better results than using your existing card plus a PCI one. Additionally, you won't need to sacrifice a PCI slot.
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:32 PM on January 19, 2007

It looks like I have an Apple Power Macintosh G4 867 (Quicksilver) - does that change these suggestions?
posted by brokekid at 4:38 PM on January 19, 2007

No changes! That model is actually a good one. You should be able to pop a reasonably priced dual head AGP card in there. (not to mention, there's a slim chance the card installed is already dual-capable... does it have 2 ports?
posted by clango at 5:09 PM on January 19, 2007

I had no problems installing a second (PCI) graphics card in my Power Mac, as long as you install the drivers. Even with a very low-end Radeon 7000 (which are very cheap on eBay), I never had any complaints about performance. Quartz Extreme doesn't do a whole lot.

Whichever way you go, you need to buy a special "Mac Edition" version of the card.

there's a slim chance the card installed is already dual-capable... does it have 2 ports?

All Quicksilver models have two ports, but the standard card in the 867MHz model can't drive two different monitors.
posted by cillit bang at 12:29 AM on January 20, 2007