Best graphics card for power mac g4 500 dual

I recently acquired a power mac g4 500 dual core processor, and i'm looking for an upgrade for the graphics card. I currently have the stock ATI rage 128 pro, and it doesn't seem to cut it very well, especially since I installed 10.5 leopard on it (hacked through open-firmware). I've been doing some research, and I've had a hard time finding the best upgrade. I'm not looking to really play any games or do anything graphics intensive, I just want all the basic tasks to be quicker. I'm looking for something that supports Quartz extreme, and possibly core image. Thanks.
-Aaron

Hi-
Leopard needs Core Image. The best card is the Radeon 9800 Pro Mac edition.

Similar Messages

Best graphics card for the MAC Pro 4,1

I am using the 4870 card, but, is there a better graphics card for doing photography with Adobe CS5 Extended and Lightroom 3?
Thank you.

While recently discontinued, you can probably get your hands on an nVidia GTX 285 fairly easily. It's not only faster than your Radeon HD4870, it has double the video memory, and more importantly it's on the shortlist of cards that are support hardware acceleration of the Mercury Playback Engine in Adobe CS5. That's a HUGE feature, if you use Premiere or After Effects, it's probably worth the price of admission right there. I've got one in my machine, works wonders. Aside from a zippy system, lots of basic stuff that used to have to be rendered in order to preview no longer require it.
The nVidia Quadro FX 4800 is also a bigger/faster card, and provides even more powerful support for the Mercury Playback Engine in CS5, but it's also vastly more expensive. As I type this the price is $1799 at Apple, and $1399 most everywhere else (Apple store managers, if you're seeing this you might want to check for a price drop).
That's the current max, but it's possible that new graphics cards are right around the corner. In the spring nVidia introduced their next generation of GPU, there are a range of new GTX 4xx series cards on the mainstream line, and just last week new Quadro cards were launched for the high end. Adobe does not support either of them for CS5's Mercury Playback Engine hardware acceleration at this moment, but Adobe employees have said that it's coming in an update soon.
It's also likely that the ATI Radeon HD 5770 & Radeon HD 5870 will be released for the Mac. My understanding is that the 5770 performance is on par with your HD 4870, and the 5870 will blow it away. Both the new ATI cards also boast two mini displayport plugs as well as a DVI out. Neither card is likely going to get support for hardware acceleration in CS5 anytime soon (not really Adobe's fault, ATI are still in their infancy on the high performance/OpenCL front compared to nVidia).
My advice, if you need something now, chase down a GTX 285 and you won't be disappointed (especially in CS5). Otherwise, you may want to wait it out and jump on the next generation if/when it becomes available.
Hope that helps!

Need new low-end graphics card for Power Mac G5 (PowerPC 970)

My Power Mac G5 (PowerPC 970) has recently died I believe due to a bad
ATI RADEON X800 XT MAC EDITION video card.
Reason for thinking its the card, is that the machine was performing its intended tasks for several days even though the monitor was snow.
Having trouble determining a low-end replacement. (I no longer need the enhanced features of the RADEON X800 for this machine.
Much appreciated if someone could suggest a product appropriate for PowerPC 970.
Thanks!

I also ran into this issue with my dual G5. When I bought it, I didn't get wireless because it was a dedicated desktop on the network, but I'm upgrading and giving it to the kids to use in a room without wired network. Now that wireless would be really nice and it looks like the official solution is:
"Apple Wireless Upgrade Kit for Power Mac G5 Dual or Power Mac G5 Quad MA252G/A"
which is really expensive and difficult to install. But the weird thing is that I do have bluetooth. I wonder if there's just some little doodad I need to connect to get wireless going too, but I can't find any info on the card, and it looks like it's buried on the motherboard behind all the cooling stuff. I'll probably just spring for one of the USB solutions.

Best Graphic Card for a Mac Pro

I am buying a Mac Pro very soon but i am still wondering about what kind of grahics card i should get? I will be doing lots of after effects and maya along with photoshop. I heard the X1900 is a good way to go? Any ideas on what i should get or is the best for me?

You've got two choices.
The X1900 (ATI) and the Nvidia Quadro FX 4500.
The ATI is $299. The Nvidia is $2000.
All around performance wise, the X1900 is usually faster then the FX4500. It's a more general purpose card, which I find works great in Photoshop and Cinema 4D (3D modeling). The FX 4500 is designed for high-accuracy complex models- usually that of a mechanical CAD drawing or something in engineering.
Regardless, the FX 4500 is far too expensive for what you get over the X1900, which is relatively nothing in your case. The '1900 is cheaper and faster for your uses.
If you've got money to spend, I'd suggest ether more RAM, or loading your Mac Pro up with hard drives (I personally use 4*500GB in two 500GB RAID0 arrays for redundancy).
-SC

What's the best graphic card for FCP X and a Mac Pro (early) 2008?

I have a Radeon HD 3870 in my Mac Pro, it seems that I cannot use this configuration with Final Cut Pro X. Then what's the best graphic card for FCP X usable in a Mac Pro (early) 2008?
Thx,
Phil

You can get a 5770 radeon ATI MAC card
Avoid the 5770 cards on ebay and Amazon - many are black market or manipulated cards.
Buy it from Apple online store or B&H photo or Macconection
And in my case, I was able to sell my old 2600 XT card on ebay for $65 and put that money toward a 5770 card (Which was about $230 minus the $65)
I installed the 5770 in my early Mac Pro 2 x 2.8 and it works great

HT4664 What is the best graphics card for FCPX?

In the nonstop anti-FCPX propaganda is an article of interest — posted 7/9/12 — comparing the benchmarks of FCPX and PP6.
http://www.streamingmedia.com/Producer/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=83582 &PageNum=1
The system used was a 2 x 2.93 GHz Quad-Core Mac Pro from early 2009 running MacOS X version 10.7.4 with 12 GB of RAM and an NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 graphics card with 1.5 GB of onboard RAM.
In most cases PP6 outperformed FCPX with this configuration. However, in the comments Ben Balser pointed out that FCP X's A/VFoundation engine wasn't ideal on the NVIDA card:
"Quadro is actually not the best card for FCP X's A/VFoundation engine, but great for CS6's Mercury engine, so the test is amazingly flawed right there. Try both on a 5780 card and watch things drastically change. I've done that test myself. Exporting to Compressor uses a MUCH more sophisticated encoding engine meant for higher level, professional transcoding, not simple outputs, which are faster using Export Media…"
Apple lists this card on its support page: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4664
So,
What is the best graphics card for FCPX?

Ben,
Thanks for chiming in on that article. It would be good to have a benchmark comparison with the two systems each with a preferred card.
I'm hoping to see some other comparisons on this thread. Also, some links to other articles about best practices and configurations.

Best Graphics Cards for Motion 4

Hi All, what's the best graphics card for Motion 4. The The Nvidia GTX 285 or Radeon 4870
My Mac is a 2009, Dual 2.26, 12GIG Ram, External Raid 5 and running 10.6.2
All Motion files and media are stored on the raid running eSata
Thanks.
Message was edited by: addy77
Message was edited by: addy77

We've been waiting for a Macintosh version of the 5870 for more than a year. Get the 4870, learn the application, buy a new card if you can make money with it.
Waiting for the next iteration of Mac-compatible graphics cards is a waste of time if you need to get to work.
bogiesan

Best Graphics Card for InDesign

I have seen a number of articles discussing the best graphics cards for a number of Adobe products such as Photshop, AfterEffects, SpeedGrade and Premiere Pro, but we have users that do not use these products extensively, but do use InDesign, Acrobat and Illustrator quite heavily, during prep for a paper catalogue.
Can anybody give me some advise on the best graphocs card for these particulat products please...? we are using CC.
Thank you.

Only really need a graphics card for video editing - 3D modelling etc.
Even then the video softaware doesn't address the graphics card all that much.
It's only recently that video software and 3d software request access to the graphics RAM.
Mostly the processors these days have pretty good onboard graphics cards. That should be plenty for photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.
It's more physical RAM that is required, not graphics cards.
I have 20gb RAM and i7 4770 processor with no additional graphics card.
It works great.
Although a standalone graphics card would be better for video editing and 3d modelling.

Best Graphics Card for Photo Editing

Hello All,
I am a professional photographer. I currently use Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 4.1. I am in the process of having a new computer built just for editing my photography. The board will be an ASUS P9X79 with an intel Core i7-3820 and 16 GB memory. The technician building the computer would like a recommendation of the fastest and or best graphics card for editing still images.
All of my work is done in RAW from a 5D MII. 21 megapixel.
Processing speed has always been a bottleneck for me and Lightroom 4 has not helped.
Can anyone please recommend the best or fastest graphics card for this system?
Thank you, Jim

I would focus on your PS CS5 requirments. If you intend on using a wide gamut display at some point I'd give serious consideration to graphics card that will truly support 30 bit display data (10bit/color) in PS CS5/6.There are only a handful of graphics cards that actually support a 30 bit data path with PS CS5/6. Some links:
http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cs6-gpu-faq.html
http://www.amd.com/us/products/workstation/graphics/software/Pages/adobe-photoshop.aspx
http://www.nvidia.com/object/photoshop-cs6.html
http://forums.adobe.com/message/4487697
You may also want to read this concerning limitations of using a wide gamut display with non-color manged applications (i.e. browsers, MS Office, etc.):
http://www.gballard.net/photoshop/srgb_wide_gamut.html

Best graphics card for mac pro 1,1 Intel

Can anyone tell me the best graphics card to buy for a mac pro 1,1 intel for use with Cinema 4D R12?
Many thanks.

This is the iMac forum - try the Mac Pro forum for faster response https://discussions.apple.com/community/desktop_computers/mac_pro

Best graphics card for Mac Pro Early 2008?

I have a Mac Pro Early 2008 with the default graphics card (ATI Radeon HD 2600), and would like to make an upgrade to a better graphics card that will run games smoothly. I'm not an expert with computers at all, but all I know is I would like to buy a graphics card for around $200-$300 (If it's more expensive then that's ok, but preferrably this price range) that will get me the best performance possible. I play games like Minecraft, Skyrim, and Team Fortress 2. Thank you for any help/recommendations you can provide!
Also, I wasn't sure which section to post this in, but feel free to move this thread.

Also, to provide more information (not sure if needed), I have dual monitors and the following specs:
Processor 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Memory 16 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256 MB
My two displays are LG ULTRAWIDE Display (2560 x 1080) and LED Cinema Display (24-inch, Late 2008, 1920 x 1200)

Best graphics card for uncompressed HD?

I am going to buy a new 8 core mac pro (yay!), but am wondering which graphics card to go for.
I want to edit uncompressed HD in Final Cut Studio, and use After Effects, but am unsure which of the current Apple Store cards to go for.
I CANT afford the NVIDIA quatro FX

Uh...graphics cards for uncompressed HD? To WORK with the footage or CAPTURE and OUTPUT the footage? There are two different things. The graphics card will increase Motion performance, and FCP performance with certain plugins, but as for dealing with the uncompressed footage itself, the GRAPHICS card really does nothing. CAPTURE CARDS are what you need. And the top of the line best one is the AJA Kona 3. The Black Magic Eclipse is a great second...
Shane

Best graphics card for bootcamp gaming.

Hi, I've heard that it's possible to fit a ATI 5970 into a Mac Pro. Does anybody have any experience with this and if you do, did you have any issues?
Thanks in advance.

There was recently a similar thread on almost this same topic:
Best graphics card upgrade for Mac Pro (late 2011)

BEST GRAPHICS CARD FOR MY G4 AGP GRAPHICS

If money were not a consideration, what is the best graphics card that I can put in my G4 AGP Graphics Mac. I tried the ATI 9200, but did not notice any improvement from my 6 year old card and was actually told that because the 9200 is a PCI card it was slower than my old AGP card.
AGP Graphics 350MHz (1999) Mac OS X (10.3.9) Upgrades: 1.75 gig RAM, USB 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet 1.8 GHZ SONNET PROCESSOR

Robert,
Is that the Radeon 9800 PRO Mac Edition 256MB AGP? Part #100-435058?
I believe we have the same system. I purchased 9600 PC & Mac and it didn't fit so now I'm gun shy.
Machine Name: Power Mac G4 (AGP graphics)
Machine Model: PowerMac3,1
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (3.3)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
L3 Cache (per CPU): 2 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 100 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.2.8f1
Serial Number: xxxxxxxxxx
Sales Order Number: xxxxxxxxxxxx
Pete
I've got the ATi Radeon 9800 Pro in my 5 year old
G4/400, and it works great at everything I throw at
it.
--->Robert
8-)
Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics) Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Best graphics card for Motion 4???

I'd like to upgrade to the best graphics card possible for Motion 4.
I have a Mac Pro desktop 2 x2.8 Ghz Quad-core Intel Xeon with 4GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT (512MB RAM) but I find that Motion is very slow at rendering and playback. I am working with many layers in my Motion timeline (dozens), but what can I do to increase Motion's speed?
I've heard of the ATI Radeon 4870 and much more expensive NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800. Has anyone used these graphics cards with Motion?
What is the best graphics card on the market right now for Motion 4?
Would it help if I doubled my RAM from 4GB to 8GB of RAM? Or does FCP7 and Motion 4 not use more than 4GB of RAM?
Thanks very much in advance,
- Nick

Hi Marc and Patrick, thanks for both your feedback.
Sorry Marc, I didn't mean to imply that I didn't believe you. I was just confused at to why a card that had 1.5GB of memory would not be better than one with 512MB. But I'll take your word that the 4870 is the way to go.
Regarding the ATI Radeon 4870. I went to Apple's web site in the store section but it looks like they're just selling the single DVI option of that card. BH Photo Video is selling it with Dual DVI option.
So I'm confused, should I be getting:
Diamond Viper ATI Radeon HD4870 (dual DVI) ($309.50 at BH Photo Video )
or
ATI Radeon HD 4870 Graphics Upgrade Kit for Mac ($349.00 Apple Store)
Which card or version of the card are you referring to exactly?
Thanks in advance for your help.
- Nick

Best graphics card for power mac g4 500 dual

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for