You're going to have to flash the BIOS of the card (PC terminology) to
a Mac ROM (Mac terminology) so that the card has Mac firmware instead
of PC firmware. This is required of all PPC Mac video cards. On Intel
"hackintosh" this isn't necessary, but you'd need to have OS X kexts
that support the specific card, and many PC cards lack OS X extensions
to be fully functional with Quartz Extreme and Core Image. See:
<http://themacelite.wikidot.com/>
Since there don't appear to be any pre-patched Mac ROMs for the Radeon
9550 you're either going to need to patch your own ROM by extracting
the PC ROM and then patching it manual and reinstalling it, or figure
out with GPU model the 9550 uses and then find a pre-patched ROM from
a card that uses the same identical GPU version and use it and cross
you fingers and pray it works. Make a backup of the original PC BIOS
just in case you need to salvage the card from a bad flash.
The main thing that causes problems when flashing firmware on video
cards is that the new firmware may specify a different clock speed
than the original. You can read the speed of the VRAM on the VRAM
chips on the card, and then if the clock speed of the ROM is too fast,
which can cause video artifacts and potentially burn out your card IF
you run to too long at too high a setting, you can "underclock" the
ROM to match the physical VRAM of the chips and then the card will
function perfectly. You can also use an application such as
ATIccelerator II to set the speed on-the-fly, but it doesn't change
the ROM permanently, so if it isn't loaded as a startup option, you
can be in trouble perhaps. This only applies when the physical VRAM is
slower than the ROM setting. If the physical VRAM is fast than the ROM
you can safely overclock the card instead of underclocking it. Ideally
you want the ROM speed to perfectly match the physical VRAM.
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