Re: New video card help...

[dc]

On Jun 24, 3:46 am, Mark Sokolovsky  wrote:
> Hello everyone, I need help on this one, so try your best. I recently picked
> up myself a nice deal on a new video card. for $60, I got myself an ATI
> Radeon 9550 AGP 8x with 256MB of DDR2 Video RAM.

Sorry but that card is not a good choice for a Mac. This page has
pictures of compatible video cards:
http://themacelite.wikidot.com/ati-radeon
These cards are getting hard to find because pro flashers are buying
them up, flashing them and reselling them on eBay. IMO the best choice
for a Sawtooth is the XFX Geforce 6200 PV-T44A-WANG 256MB DDR2.
If you watch the LEM swap list you will see video cards come up for
sale every now and then; the prices are usually reasonable and they
are Mac compatible.

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Re: New video card help...

[pdimage]

On 24/6/10 08:46, "Mark Sokolovsky"  wrote:

> Hello everyone, I need help on this one, so try your best. I recently picked
> up myself a nice deal on a new video card. for $60, I got myself an ATI Radeon
> 9550 AGP 8x with 256MB of DDR2 Video RAM. I am pretty much fed up with even my
> 64MB Nvidia Geforce 4 MX/MX440 ADC card from my dual 1.0Ghz quicksilver,
> because is still doesn't perform what I call "Perfect" under Leopard, so I got
> myself 4X the video card for this upgrade. I need to know, how can I get an
> ATI Radeon 9550 with 256MB of VRAm to work happily on a PM G4 Sawtooth? I
> don't want to do board soldering, I just ant a simple solution that works.
> Your help will be much appreciated. I tried google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask, and all
> of those other search sites, and nothing really helpful came up because it
> didn't WORK.

The 9550 with DDR2 cannot be flashed for use in a mac - 9500/9700/9800
Pro models are all flashable to mac but the 9550 was never successfully
converted and AFAIK no suitable rom is available. 9800 Pro/XT is your best
Radeon bet - no soldering required with the reduced bios available. Beware
also the newish cheap Radeon copies coming fron China with TSOP (oblong)
memory and half the data width - you need an older genuine Radeon with BGA
(square) ram chips.

Pete


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Re: New video card help...

[Nestamicky]

On 24/06/10 6:19 AM, Kris Tilford wrote:


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.
As always, a fine explanation by Kris even a daft should understand. 
Great, Kris and thanks.


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Re: New video card help...

[Kris Tilford]

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:




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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New video card help...

[Mark Sokolovsky]

Hello everyone, I need help on this one, so try your best. I recently picked
up myself a nice deal on a new video card. for $60, I got myself an ATI
Radeon 9550 AGP 8x with 256MB of DDR2 Video RAM. I am pretty much fed up
with even my 64MB Nvidia Geforce 4 MX/MX440 ADC card from my dual 1.0Ghz
quicksilver, because is still doesn't perform what I call "Perfect" under
Leopard, so I got myself 4X the video card for this upgrade. I need to know,
how can I get an ATI Radeon 9550 with 256MB of VRAm to work happily on a PM
G4 Sawtooth? I don't want to do board soldering, I just ant a simple
solution that works. Your help will be much appreciated. I tried google,
Bing, Yahoo, Ask, and all of those other search sites, and nothing really
helpful came up because it didn't WORK.

-- 
 Sent from my Power mac G4 Sawtooth.

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Re: Video card HELP

[Kris Tilford]

On Jul 25, 2009, at 12:59 PM, beecaretaker wrote:

> I think the problem is that there are 2 DVI standards, DVI-A (found on
> older kit), and DVI-D (the newer standard)
> As HDMI is a digital standard, I think that it will only work with  
> DVI-
> D as the earlier DVI-A standard is analog rather than digital.
> However many cards are DVI-I (integrated digital & analog) these may
> or may not work.
> Wikipedia has a good article at 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Compatibility_with_DVI
> That may help point you in the right direction.

I believe this is exactly right, the problem is likely related to the  
type of DVI port.

To complicate things, a friend that installs multimedia systems  
professionally has told me that he's had many cheap DVI-D-to-HDMI  
cables not work at all, and that simply replacing the cable with a  
higher quality cable solved the problem completely. I asked him if the  
symptom was no signal at all, and he said yes, the problem was some  
cheap cables were completely defective and incapable of ever working.  
He stressed that in his experience, scrimping on the price of a DVI-to- 
HDMI cable was not a very good idea.

Also, the output resolutions of some video cards don't match the  
inputs necessary for the TV without using some extra software like  
SwitchResX or DisplayConfigX. These are not programs for casual users,  
they can screw up your display and may be difficult to rectify if  
things go wrong.

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Re: Video card HELP

[beecaretaker]

On Jul 24, 6:35 pm, Allan Castleberry  wrote:
> I am trying to hook up my Gigabit G4, to my Magnavox lcd hdtv, with a DVI to
> HDMI cable. So far, radeon 7000 and radeon 9000 aren't working. Any
> suggestions?
> --
> Allan Castleberry

Allan,
I think the problem is that there are 2 DVI standards, DVI-A (found on
older kit), and DVI-D (the newer standard)
As HDMI is a digital standard, I think that it will only work with DVI-
D as the earlier DVI-A standard is analog rather than digital.
However many cards are DVI-I (integrated digital & analog) these may
or may not work.
Wikipedia has a good article at 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Compatibility_with_DVI
That  may help point you in the right direction.
Ben.

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Re: Video card HELP

[Clark Martin]

Bruce Johnson wrote:
> 
> On Jul 24, 2009, at 10:35 AM, Allan Castleberry wrote:
> 
>> I am trying to hook up my Gigabit G4, to my Magnavox lcd hdtv, with  
>> a DVI to
>> HDMI cable. So far, radeon 7000 and radeon 9000 aren't working. Any
>> suggestions?
> 
> 
> Have you tried the VGA port on the TV? I know that when I connected  
> mine (with a Radeon 9000) to my tv it didn't work at first because the  
> video was set wrong. I was able to use VNC (I'd previously set it up  
> for remote control) from my laptop to change the video output to what  
> my TV (Proscan) used (which is 1024 x 768...the computer detected a  
> widescreen resolution 13nn x something, iirc, I only saw it flash for   
> brief moment.)
> 
> I was going to try a DVI-HDMI solution when I got around to getting a  
> cable. Maybe I'll wait to see if you get it working ...

I've used a DVI-HDMI cable both from a couple of MacBook Pros and from a 
G4 Mac Mini.  The latter has a Radeon 9200 as the built in video (I 
believe it is).  In both cases it worked right off with our Philips TV. 
  It does take a while for the TV and computer to negotiate the screen 
size and such but it's no more than 20 seconds.

I agree it could be the wrong video mode and using VNC is the way to 
check it.  If you have a Leopard machine (besides the one in question) a 
VNC client is built in.  The VNC server is built in to recent OSX 
versions and is activated in the Sharing System Preference.






-- 
Clark Martin
Redwood City, CA, USA
Macintosh / Internet Consulting

"I'm a designated driver on the Information Super Highway"

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Re: Video card HELP

[Bruce Johnson]

On Jul 24, 2009, at 10:35 AM, Allan Castleberry wrote:

> I am trying to hook up my Gigabit G4, to my Magnavox lcd hdtv, with  
> a DVI to
> HDMI cable. So far, radeon 7000 and radeon 9000 aren't working. Any
> suggestions?


Have you tried the VGA port on the TV? I know that when I connected  
mine (with a Radeon 9000) to my tv it didn't work at first because the  
video was set wrong. I was able to use VNC (I'd previously set it up  
for remote control) from my laptop to change the video output to what  
my TV (Proscan) used (which is 1024 x 768...the computer detected a  
widescreen resolution 13nn x something, iirc, I only saw it flash for   
brief moment.)

I was going to try a DVI-HDMI solution when I got around to getting a  
cable. Maybe I'll wait to see if you get it working ...



-- 
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs



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Video card HELP

[Allan Castleberry]

I am trying to hook up my Gigabit G4, to my Magnavox lcd hdtv, with a DVI to
HDMI cable. So far, radeon 7000 and radeon 9000 aren't working. Any
suggestions?
-- 
Allan Castleberry

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