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nonhuman · Oct 16, 2007, 01:09 PM

So I'm pretty sure the video card in my 3 yr old dual 2.0 GHz PowerMac (an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro) is dying. Often when I start my monitor doesn't detect any signal from the video card and doesn't wake up from low power mode (manually turning the monitor off and then on just reveals that it's not getting a signal). Restarting usually fixes it, but it sometimes takes multiple tries. I know for a fact that the computer is actually starting up when this happens because I can use ARD to view the screen, log in and do that all. In the Displays pref pane it doesn't list any available display.

I have an eVGA Ge-Force 7800 GT in a gaming PC I built a while ago, is it possible to flash to work in a Mac? Also, does the Intel switch affect our ability to use PC graphics cards in Macs? Obviously that's not applicable to my G5, but would still be nice...

Failing that, what's a good graphics card that I could replace my Radeon with? I don't need high end 3D graphics for anything. Really the only advanced feature that would be nice is hardware H.264 decoding to take that load off my CPU. Oh, and a maximum resolution of at least 1900x1200.

It's been so long since I've had to look into any of this stuff I don't really know where to look any more...

nonhuman · Oct 16, 2007, 02:10 PM

So some research suggests that my 7800 GT isn't flashable to work in my G5, although it should work just fine with no modification in a Mac Pro (sweet!). OWC sells a total of two video cards that will work in my G5, one of which is over $300, the other is the same I already have and costs around $125...

So I'm just going to wait and see. If it actually kicks the bucket I'll probably replace it with the equivalent part (maybe I can pick up a broken G5 on Craigslist or something for less than the cost of the video card).