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The skinny on video cards...
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Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: Jan 2000
Location: Stoneham, MA, USA
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Offline
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I will soon be coming into a 15 inch Apple monitor for free. So I wanna plug it in to my mac and get a video card and hook up my 17" to it. Trouble is, I know nothing about video cards. I have a 7500 (PCI), but I still don't know what to look for. I would be lookingon ebay, not for a new card. Can someone give me a quick lesson?
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I see dead people.
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bluefire 529
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I have roughly the same configuration, except I did things a bit backwards. I too, have a 7500 and a 15" display. I bought a game that requires accelerated graphics, so I bought a Rage Orion card and hooked up the 15" to that. I then found a GRTEAT deal on a 17" and hooked that to the card and moved the 15" to the built in port. I expanded the VRAM to 4MB.
I now have 4MB of unaccelerated video on my 15" running my email and other apps that do not require a lot of graphics horse power and my 17" is running all of my graphics apps, my browser, games, etc. on 16MB of accelerated graphics. This is a great setup.
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Moderator  Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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Offline
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Well, there isn't much to it! You plug the Graphics board into any PCI-slot and install its drivers. After reboot, you have two monitors available in Monitors & Sound (or whatever it's called in your OS version). You can now drag them around until they are geometrically placed the way you like them. Only after you have done this should you move your main monitor to the new board.
ATI has a tradition of good graphics chips with driver-support for the Mac. Rage 128 Orion/Nexus are good boards, and Rage 128 MAXX is the thing if you need more speed.
If you _really_ need speed and is knowledgeable enough to tinker around abit, 3dfx has good boards as well. Make sure you get the PCI version of whatever board you choose.
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The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: near Boulder, Colorado
Status:
Offline
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I have a similar setup to bluefire, but on an 8500. I bought an Orion card for my 17" VGA and a week later found a IIfx and 14" monitor abandoned at my door, so I put the 14" on the MoBo vid out... pallettes on the 14, work on the 17, an excellent setup. As soon as the Mac boots with 2 monitors (after installing card drivers), you get extra options in Monitors Control Panel. Also I watch TV on the 14" sometimes with Apple Video Player, using a VCR as a tuner, just set the colors to millions, or the picture is jumpy.
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Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: Jan 2000
Location: Stoneham, MA, USA
Status:
Offline
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Can you explain this a little better though...
"...abandoned at my door..."
How do you get Macs left at your door, and more importantly, how can I get Macs left at my door?
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I see dead people.
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