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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Desktops > ATI RAGE 128 video card- updates available?

ATI RAGE 128 video card- updates available?
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ValVashon
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Oct 11, 2010, 10:37 PM
 
Hi all- it's been a while. Spouse and I have been MacBook/iMac people for a while and didn't much pay attention to screen resolutions and such. Now I am building up a B&W G3 for a project, and am having some trouble getting the ATI Rage 128 stock video card in the B&W to play nice with the new Acer LCD monitor I bought at Staples today. The Acer monitor says it has a maximum resolution of 1600 x 900 at 60 Hz, but no supported resolutions come up in the system preferences. The closest thing is 1600 x 1024 at 76 Hz, and it looks OK but not all that sharp (that's if the monitor is in widescreen). If I set the monitor to essentially 4X3, 1024 x 760 at 60 Hz looks good, but then I'm not using all of the monitor screen I paid for. I work in broadcasting, and can't stand stretched video, so most of the resolutions listed are out, as they look very distorted.

My questions are what does the refresh rate mean and can I use a higher one- like 76Hz instead of 60 Hz and is there any software or firmware upgrade available for the Rage 128 to give it more resolutions (such as 1600 x 900 at 60 Hz)?

Thanks in advance, and I'll try to hang around a bit more often.

Val
     
reader50
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Oct 11, 2010, 10:53 PM
 
There are later ATi drivers, which may add resolutions even to the Rage 128. The older drivers have gotten hard to find since AMD bought ATi. Did you need OS 9 or X drivers?

If you wanted a later video card, you need a PCI card. The main contenders would be a Radeon 7000, 9000, or 9200 in PCI. Or a flashed card.
( Last edited by reader50; Oct 12, 2010 at 02:14 AM. Reason: AMD ain't nVidia. duh)
     
CharlesS
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Oct 11, 2010, 11:24 PM
 
Originally Posted by reader50 View Post
The older drivers have gotten hard to find since nVidia bought ATi.
What

Ticking sound coming from a .pkg package? Don't let the .bom go off! Inspect it first with Pacifist. Macworld - five mice!
     
reader50
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Oct 12, 2010, 02:14 AM
 
arg ... fixed
     
Leonard
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Oct 12, 2010, 02:41 PM
 
Originally Posted by ValVashon View Post
My questions are what does the refresh rate mean and can I use a higher one- like 76Hz instead of 60 Hz and is there any software or firmware upgrade available for the Rage 128 to give it more resolutions (such as 1600 x 900 at 60 Hz)?
The refresh rate tells you how fast your monitor's screen is redrawn. 60Hz is awfully low - in fact I believe it's the minimum. A higher refresh rate would be better on the eyes as it would have less flicker. 70 or 80 would definitely be better if the monitor supports that.
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Eug
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Oct 12, 2010, 02:54 PM
 
There are apps that allow the addition of resolutions, but they can cause weird anomalies sometimes, and I'm not sure if they work with the ATI Rage 128.

What's the project?

It might actually be almost as cheap to buy an old G4 with GeForce2 MX. I have a G4 450 Cube with flashed GeForce 6200 (which runs great with my 1680x1050 monitor) and it's actually sort of tolerable for surfing with Leopard 10.5.

----

60 Hz is fine for LCD. It's too low for a CRT, he's not running a CRT.
     
BLAZE_MkIV
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Oct 12, 2010, 08:14 PM
 
What about the original mac radeons? (have 2)
     
reader50
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Oct 12, 2010, 08:23 PM
 
They'd need to be the PCI version for use in a G3.
     
P
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Oct 13, 2010, 04:17 AM
 
Originally Posted by BLAZE_MkIV View Post
What about the original mac radeons? (have 2)
Original Radeon=Radeon 7200 after rebranding. They exist in Mac PCI versions - is that what you have? The Radeon 7000 is a nerfed version of that. PCI versions of that are more commonly available - ATi had some good business selling them for secondary monitors.
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.
     
Leonard
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Oct 13, 2010, 09:50 AM
 
Originally Posted by Eug View Post
60 Hz is fine for LCD. It's too low for a CRT, he's not running a CRT.
Yeah, I forgot we're in the age of LCDs now. Got side-tracked by the old video card.
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ValVashon  (op)
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Oct 18, 2010, 01:46 AM
 
So is a Radeon 7200 what I need? I see several on eBay right now starting at $10, which is about my budget. Will this be plug and play in my G3? Is there a "PC" and a "Mac" versions of the card or is it all done with drivers? And is there any guarantee that the 7200 will have the right resolution?

Thanks for the help so far-

Val
( Last edited by ValVashon; Oct 31, 2010 at 09:17 PM. Reason: typo)
     
P
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Oct 18, 2010, 04:08 AM
 
There are PC & Mac versions of the card. What you need is a Mac PCI version.
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.
     
ValVashon  (op)
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Oct 31, 2010, 09:17 PM
 
So I decided that the best thing to do would be to buy a Hannspree 22" monitor with a maximum resolution of 1920x1080, which is one of the resolutions listed on the RAGE 128 card. Problem solved? Not really- the images look correct but the picture is shifted to the right edge of the monitor. What I mean is that there is a black bar on the left side only of the screen. I played with the settings a bit but can only center the image, not get it to correctly fill the screen.

Why is this happening if the resolution of the card set to the 1920x1080, which is the resolution of the monitor? I can post a picture in the next day or two, if you need help visualizing the problem.

Val
     
reader50
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Oct 31, 2010, 10:09 PM
 
Also tell us what connection you're using to drive the monitor. You should use the VGA option even if your Rage 128 has VGA + DVI ports. The early DVI ports topped out at 1600x1200 while the VGA port goes to 2048x1536.

I tried running a 1920 x 1200 panel from a Radeon 8500. The DVI port sometimes worked, other times it would give me a blank screen. The VGA port worked all the time.
     
ValVashon  (op)
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Nov 1, 2010, 06:31 PM
 
I was using the VGA connection, the only port my Rage 128 has. I say was, because the Hannspree 22" is headed back to Staples. I couldn't look at that black bar and not think about the extra money I spent for something that still didn't work right. Back to the Acer 20" with a black bar on both sides. Besides, the Acer seems to have a better picture.

Val
     
ValVashon  (op)
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Feb 18, 2011, 08:39 PM
 
I probably should have stated that this was a hand-me-down computer from work. OS 10.2.3 or some thing like that was still on the internal hard drive. I wiped that clean and did a fresh install of 10.3 and whaddya know, the screen now fills out the monitor and looks great with no distortion! It's off right now so I can't tell you what resolution it went to but I will update this post. Thanks for all of your help! Now, on to the SCSI card problem...

Val
     
tooki
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Feb 19, 2011, 07:01 AM
 
All you need(ed) is a utility called SwitchResX. It enables you to set resolutions that the card can handle, but that Apple's drivers did not envision.
     
   
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