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asthma · Sep 14, 2005, 05:35 PM

hi,

my teacher claims he bought a radeon 9800pro for his AGP G4 his AGP speed is 2x he claims that some of the cards support 2x 4x 8x in just the one card. I tried looking for one and cant seem to find one. ive tried ebay, but all i get is 4x 8x? is there a such card as the 9800pro that supports 2x 4x 8x in one card? if so where can i find one i dont wanna spend over $175.00 with shipping included in that price. Thank You for reading!! PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!!

asthma · Sep 14, 2005, 09:13 PM

i need one of thes cards to run osx10.4 core image on my AGP G4.

reader50 · Sep 14, 2005, 09:21 PM

The AGP spec does not support his claim. AGP is fully backwards compatible up to 4x. ie - you can have a 1x/2x/4x card. But Intel made some changes for the 8x spec, so that 8x cards are only backwards compatible to 4x.

So you can have a 1x/2x/4x card, or a 4x/8x card.

For your 2x slot, you need the discontinued Radeon 9800 Pro 2x/4x card with 128 MB.

Big Mac · Sep 14, 2005, 09:21 PM

Wow, still no replies? Yes, the 9800 Pro is AGP 2 compatible.

asthma · Sep 14, 2005, 10:55 PM

ok this helps me a little now that i know its real!! but i STILL CANT find a place to buy without going over the $175.00 limit my teacher only paid about $140.00 for his on ebay thats with shipping!!!! :o

danman · Sep 15, 2005, 02:46 AM

ATI isn't making the 2x/4x ATI Mac card anymore.

Big Mac · Sep 15, 2005, 02:50 AM

Yeah, unfortunately all the vendors who still have stock are charging outrageous prices for it.

asthma · Sep 15, 2005, 04:12 AM

the cheapest ive seen so far is around $250.00 and climing to $340.00 there should be laws against that kinda crap. :_(

Big Mac · Sep 15, 2005, 04:50 AM

Such are the horrors of the Mac video card market.

asthma · Sep 15, 2005, 05:09 AM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

Such are the horrors of the Mac video card market.

i know your gonna hate me for saying this. but when we switch from PPC to intel i dont think we will have problems with video cards anymore and that will be nice!

waxcrash · Sep 15, 2005, 11:49 AM

asthma, I am in the same boat as you, looking for the 9800 Pro to replace my 9000 Pro for my G4. I am having no luck finding one. Looks like the demand is higher than the supply. I think ATI discontinued it too early. After Tiger came out, people with a G4 2x AGP all wanted one to support core image. Good luck finding one.

Lateralus · Sep 15, 2005, 11:50 AM

Originally Posted by asthma

i know your gonna hate me for saying this. but when we switch from PPC to intel i dont think we will have problems with video cards anymore and that will be nice!

Why in the world would switching processors affect our video card selection? It doesn't mean jack on any other platform.

asthma · Sep 15, 2005, 03:50 PM

intel has more compatibilty from what ive heard

Lateralus · Sep 15, 2005, 04:05 PM

It has nothing to do with the processor itself.

P · Sep 15, 2005, 05:56 PM

It does have a lot to do with the byte ordering, which is linked to the CPU used. Mac boards must have different code in its Flash ROM because of the big-endian/little-endian issue. When Macs run Intel, they will also be little-endian. In theory, any PC board will work on a Mac provided there is a driver for it. How this works out in practise remains to be seen.

reader50 · Sep 16, 2005, 01:45 AM

An update for those with a 2x slot. My original answer that you can't have a 2x/4x/8x card is technically correct, but you can have a card that will work in all those slots. A 1x/2x/4x card will work in an 8x slot ... as a 4x card. A 1x/2x card cannot work in an 8x slot.

ATi does have a 9800 Pro Mac Edition (256MB) card coming out, expected to ship in October. We have confirmation that it is based on the discontinued 2x/4x Pro Mac Edition (128MB). In other words, it is basically the 2x/4x card with more RAM, and it *will* work in Macs with a 2x AGP slot.

The confirmation is posted on barefeats. Follow the link, it's currently in the 2nd paragraph. There isn't a direct way to link to that news post, so you may presently have to search down the page for "9800 Pro Mac". It doesn't say how much the new card will cost, but I figure it will have a suggested price of US$299. If so, it will likely sell for ~$250. At the very least, that will force the discontinued card to sell for prices under $200.

Big Mac · Sep 16, 2005, 06:31 AM

Originally Posted by P

It does have a lot to do with the byte ordering, which is linked to the CPU used. Mac boards must have different code in its Flash ROM because of the big-endian/little-endian issue. When Macs run Intel, they will also be little-endian. In theory, any PC board will work on a Mac provided there is a driver for it. How this works out in practise remains to be seen.

The Intel defection still won't magically produce drivers, other software, packaging and support for each card. Everywhere else we're led to believe endianess is a trivial matter - everywhere except concerning the speculation on future graphics cards. Look, If it's true that the Intel def.. switch opens up a new range of cards due to endianess or BIOS (which I know Apple may or may not use) or whatever else, that's a great thing. Apple certainly deserves some free benefits from this outlandish gambit.

P · Sep 18, 2005, 07:38 AM

No, the switch doesn't automatically bring drivers - but if the drivers are made for say the regular Radeon 9600, those drivers should also work for a 9600 Pro or XT, and possibly the 9800 versions as well - even if there aren't specific boxed Mac versions of those boards. That would bring us more options than today in any case.

P · Sep 18, 2005, 07:53 AM

Originally Posted by reader50

An update for those with a 2x slot. My original answer that you can't have a 2x/4x/8x card is technically correct, but you can have a card that will work in all those slots. A 1x/2x/4x card will work in an 8x slot ... as a 4x card. A 1x/2x card cannot work in an 8x slot.

ATi does have a 9800 Pro Mac Edition (256MB) card coming out, expected to ship in October. We have confirmation that it is based on the discontinued 2x/4x Pro Mac Edition (128MB). In other words, it is basically the 2x/4x card with more RAM, and it *will* work in Macs with a 2x AGP slot.

You're right, but let me explain the background to all of this - that might make it easier to remember.

AGP boards can run on either 5V or 3.3V. The slot is designed so you can't seat an incompatible board - the grooves are in different places.

The AGP 1X standard specifies 5V only. The 4x (and 8x) standards specify 3.3V only. The 2x specifies both. Reading this out, you get this: A 1x slot only accepts 5V boards. A 4x (or 8x) slot only accepts 3.3V boards. A 2x slot accepts both. A 1x board runs at 5V. A 4x board runs at 3.3V. A 2x board runs at either 5V or 3.3V, but not necessarily both, and you don't know which.

Since most boards run on more than one standard, you can read out what sort of voltage is acccepts from the standards it is specified for. A 1x/2x/4x board accepts either 3.3V or 5V - it has to, because 5V is required for 1x compability and 3.3V for 4x compability. The Radeon 9200s work like this, for instance - they have two grooves and can be seated in either type of slot. A 1x/2x board requires 5V, and thus doesn't work in a 4x slot. A 2x/4x board runs at 3.3V and doesn't run in a 1x slot. 8x is equivalent to 4x in this case (there are other difference that affect compability, but the voltage is the same).

Did that make things clearer?

dfiler · Sep 18, 2005, 09:39 PM

I'm running an 8x 9800 pro in my 2x agp slot right now. Simply had to tape over two of the connector contacts...

Big Mac · Sep 19, 2005, 08:24 AM

Originally Posted by P

No, the switch doesn't automatically bring drivers - but if the drivers are made for say the regular Radeon 9600, those drivers should also work for a 9600 Pro or XT, and possibly the 9800 versions as well - even if there aren't specific boxed Mac versions of those boards. That would bring us more options than today in any case.

P, respectfully, I really don't understand how that claim makes any sense. Are you saying PC drivers are going to suddenly be Mac drivers? If that were the case, the throngs of Linux geeks wouldn't be clamoring for an "open source" video card. All Mac drivers have require to be written to IOKit specification, do they not? There is no possible way a Windows video card driver could work automatically with a Mactel, without significant modification.

P · Sep 19, 2005, 11:33 AM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

P, respectfully, I really don't understand how that claim makes any sense. Are you saying PC drivers are going to suddenly be Mac drivers? If that were the case, the throngs of Linux geeks wouldn't be clamoring for an "open source" video card. All Mac drivers have require to be written to IOKit specification, do they not? There is no possible way a Windows video card driver could work automatically with a Mactel, without significant modification.

No, that wasn't what I was talking about. Maybe I was unclear. Today, there are specific Mac boards that also require Mac drivers to run. Just dropping in a PC board and installing the Mac driver will not work, because the board doesn't understand the big-endian memory addressing on the Mac. The difference between these PC boards and Mac boards are the instructinos in the Flash PROM

The Mac-Intels will have to use regular PC boards with a Mac OS X driver. That driver won't magically appear, but once Apple pays ATi or nVidia to make it for one of their machines that driver will likely work for all PC boards in the same family. Say that Apple puts a Radeon 9600 in the first Intel Mac mini. ATi will now have to write a driver for the Radeon 9600 on Mac OS X for Intel. Unless ATi is absolutely crazy, that driver will also run a Radeon 9600 Pro in an Intel Powermac, and quite possibly a Radeon 9800 XT as well. This means that a Mac user with an Intel Powermac can pick any board from the Radeon 9550 up to the 9800 XT, and there are a LOT of variants to choose from.

The same will then happen with all board families that either Apple uses in a Mac or is ported by the manufacturer themselves - if ATi makes a driver for one X800, we get all the X800s and X700s. The logical development is that the manufacturers make drivers for all their (current) chip families available, so we get all the possible boards available on the PC side. Just looking at the boards Apple are using today and extrapolating to the complete families, we'd get all Radeon 9000-9800, All Radeon X700-X800, all nVidia 6600-6800 + the 5200 - and various older boards, back to the Geforce 2 and the original Radeon. That's a big chunk of the boards currently available with AGP, and a lot more than we have today.

Big Mac · Sep 19, 2005, 01:29 PM

Okay, fair enough; sorry for my misapprehension. I don't know if compatibility will be as automatic as you and others think; it will be interesting to find out.

dfiler · Sep 24, 2005, 10:13 AM

Per request, I tracked down a link explaining how to tape an 8x card. There are other sites with alternate explanations but this turned up first in my search.

http://www.macmod.com/content/view/74/2/

crooner · Sep 24, 2005, 11:16 AM

I know this isn't the marketplace, but I do have a 9800 Pro 128 that I'll sell for $175 plus shipping. If anyone is interested, please e-mail me at crooner AT mac DOT com.

I’m not using it at all and it seems a waste just sitting in the box.

Kristoff · Sep 24, 2005, 08:02 PM

what did you replace your 9800 Pro with, Crooner?

Kenneth · Sep 24, 2005, 08:57 PM

I'm waiting for that Radeon 9800 Pro Mac+PC card for my DP 1.25 G4.

crooner · Sep 24, 2005, 09:46 PM

Originally Posted by Kristoff

what did you replace your 9800 Pro with, Crooner?

I originally bought the 9800 with the intention of upgrading my QuickSilver to last me until the Mactels, but when some extra cash came in I decided to take advantage of the situation and instead got a G5.
I have since replaced the stock GForce4MX (I think that's what it is - where the heck do they come up with these names?) and will turn the QuickSilver into a backup or music server.

So now I really don't have a use for the 9800. Lemme know if your (or anyone) is interested.