Mac Edition Video Cards

M

mrweasel

Gawd
Joined
Apr 11, 2005
Messages
848
Okay, stupid question of the day:

I noticed some video cards are listed as "Mac Edition". Can't you just put a regular PC AGP card in a Mac or is there some voltage difference?
 
Same hardware, apart from the ROM. Mac video cards have a much larger ROM than most x86 video cards. 'Professional' x86 cards have the same size, I think. You can buy a top-end FireGL and flash it into a Mac X800XT, for example. Problem is the Mac X800XT costs several hundred dollars less... ;) For the most part, however, you can't use an x86 card in a Mac. Don't bother.
 
Black Morty Rackham said:
Same hardware, apart from the ROM. Mac video cards have a much larger ROM than most x86 video cards. 'Professional' x86 cards have the same size, I think. You can buy a top-end FireGL and flash it into a Mac X800XT, for example. Problem is the Mac X800XT costs several hundred dollars less... ;) For the most part, however, you can't use an x86 card in a Mac. Don't bother.
Click to expand...

Yes and no you can. Plain vanilla cards (like a Geforce 3) can have the ROM reflashed to a Mac version but you lose additional features like TV out. ATI cards need a chip replacement to accept the larger ROM file from the ones I've looked at.

Personally, I'd rather pick up a used Mac video card than mod one. Me = paranoid
 
i thought you could flash some cards to work with macs, like the 9800pro, ive seem people say they have flashed those to mac
 
I flashed the GeForce 3 that's still in my old G4. I did my research, made sure I got the right model card, and pushed the button. It was quite a bit of fun, actually :).
 
nsc1120 said:
i thought you could flash some cards to work with macs, like the 9800pro, ive seem people say they have flashed those to mac
Click to expand...

The 9800 jobs I have seen have all involved either flashing with an SE or reduced ROM or replacing the EEPROM chip with a larger one and doing a solder job on a few resistors.
 
Centauri said:
The 9800 jobs I have seen have all involved either flashing with an SE or reduced ROM or replacing the EEPROM chip with a larger one and doing a solder job on a few resistors.
Click to expand...
Yep. Quite a bit of work.
 
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