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need suggestions for a PCI mac video card for a powermac 7600

oblivion

oblivion

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I have a Powermac 7600 with a G3 upgrade and OS 8.6 that i'm planning to use as a mostly all purpose 90's gaming Mac. the on board video is maxed with i Believe 4mb of VRAM but I'm considering adding a PCI video card. thing is I know for a PC people generally don't recommend going higher then a Geforce 4 or 5 for 90's games because some features were removed so I was wondering if the same advice applies to the MAC? I was looking at Radeon cards, particularly the 7000 series but should I go for something older to maintain the best compatibility for pre 2000 era gameing?
 
I had trouble getting a Radeon 7000 working on any old-world ROM macs (mind you, my card was a reflashed PC variant). An alternate card I would recommend would be something like the ATI Xclaim or similar cards.
 
NeXT said:
I had trouble getting a Radeon 7000 working on any old-world ROM macs (mind you, my card was a reflashed PC variant). An alternate card I would recommend would be something like the ATI Xclaim or similar cards.
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yhea, I was just looking at the ATI Rage 128 series. the Mac versions looked to be very common and well supported even in system 8 and it should be enough for any 90's game without being "to new" to cause issues.
 
I have an ATI XClaimXR 128 in my beige G3 that does a decent job. The Radeon 7000 was only really popular with folks running OS X on pre-AGP macs with the "Quartz PCI Extreme" hack. There were quite a few OpenGL accelerated games that could take advantage of a 3dfx Voodoo or Voodoo 2 card as well. With those, standard PC cards would work with nothing more than drivers install since they lacked any sort of ROM.
 
Not really. Sounds was good enough back in the day to not need sound cards. At one point SoundBlaster released a SoundBlaster Live card, but it crashed and burned due to probably some of the worst commercial software ever written, and practically no apps or games that utilized it.
 
I had trouble getting a Radeon 7000 working on any old-world ROM macs (mind you, my card was a reflashed PC variant).
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Were you, by chance, trying to use something other than the 32MB ATI OEM card? (I.e., this one, plus or minus the DVI/TV ports.)

There are also some issues getting the cards to work with anything under OS 9.1. OS 8.6 can be made to work, and supposedly as far back as 7.6, but it requires a bit of fiddling around with the driver packages to manually install some files and extensions.

Even despite the hassles, I'd consider the 7000 to be the best option for a machine with a G3 upgrade. The Rage/Voodoo route would be adequate with a 603 or 604, but with the extra CPU power of a G3 to feed it, the Radeon will be considerably faster. Plus they're readily available and cheap.
 
oblivion said:
I have 3 PCI slots in this thing so I may go with a rage 128/voodoo 2 combo. were sound cards ever a thing for the mac?
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There were a few professional sound cards for the mac but nothing realy for games since the Nubus era (Pro Audio Spectrum PAS16). For games to need a sound card there would have to be a decent 3D API and there wasn't one for the PCI Mac, A3D and EAX didn't exist.
 
Old Thrashbarg said:
Were you, by chance, trying to use something other than the 32MB ATI OEM card? (I.e., this one, plus or minus the DVI/TV ports.)

There are also some issues getting the cards to work with anything under OS 9.1. OS 8.6 can be made to work, and supposedly as far back as 7.6, but it requires a bit of fiddling around with the driver packages to manually install some files and extensions.
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Why yes actually. Mine had DVI and composite. In the end I put it in a blue and white G3 and 9.1's ATI drivers worked happily with it. 10.3 on the other hand hated it.
 
well, I do have OS 9.2.2 I can always upgrade to that if it will make installing a Radeon 7000 less of a struggle. as long as that doesn't create any issue with older games. As far as I researched mac games will pretty much run the same from os 7-9 but you guys may know better then I, i am not much of a Mac guy. EDIT - seems installing 9.2.2 on a 7600 is way more hassle then just getting a radeon 7000 to work in 8.6
 
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well I managed to install the voodoo 5500 in the 7600. theres plenty of room for it and it...kinda worked. by kinda is It gave me an image but its as if the computer was in some kind of duel monitor mode and all i had was a blue background. if I moved the mouse around enough it would eventually show up. now if I used the built in video I got my desktop back but i suspect its in duel monitor mode because if I move my mouse to the left it stops when it hits the edge but if I move it left it keeps going off the screen. so I have 2 questions since again, i'm unfamilier with macs

1) in os 8.6 how do I turn off a duel monitor mode and or select what video output I want as the primary?

2) how fragile are voodoo 5's in general and would say something like a radon 7000 be comparable to it? the voodoo is cool but I just feel paranoid running it, like its going to die on me.
 
2) how fragile are voodoo 5's in general and would say something like a radon 7000 be comparable to it? the voodoo is cool but I just feel paranoid running it, like its going to die on me.
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It's not an 8800GTX. You can't easily kill the card.
 
I dunno why its the one piece of hardware i get paranoid about (though why I don't about stuff twice as old IDK). i think its cause there kinda expensive and have those fans running all the time. last one i had a fan died but i caught it in time. I've had crazy luck with 5500's though. a few years ago I never would of assumed i would own one cause they were low on my hardware priority list and to pricy. in literally the last year I've acquired 3 and the most I've paid is $25.

if I use it or not i think depends on if I can get a radeon working in os 8.6 or if I can solve the wierd duel monitor issue with the voodoo.
 
I've just decided to go with the rage 128/v2 combo since for one i'm really only going to be using this machine for older mac exclusive/enhanced gamed games so fiddling to get a radeon to work probably isnt worth it and the V5 is just overkill. so I have 2 new questions

1) where do i find driver or extentions or whatever there called for the rage 128? theres no CD's on ebay and after searching around on the net I've just turned up mostly dead links

2) can someone PLEASE tell me what the specific RAM type is for this machine??? i'm trying to max it out with 128mb sticks and I've purchased 2 lots of 128mb RAM so far and neither has fit. spec sheets say its 168 pin DIMM DRAM but it seems i'm having a lot of trouble finding the correct type of said RAM as every stick I buy does not fit correctly.
 
It takes up to 128MB 5V FPM or EDO 168-pin DIMMs. OWC sells them.

Chances are people are selling you SDRAM not knowing any better. Those are keyed for 3.3V and won't fit.
 
njroadfan said:
It takes up to 128MB 5V FPM or EDO 168-pin DIMMs. OWC sells them.

Chances are people are selling you SDRAM not knowing any better. Those are keyed for 3.3V and won't fit.
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thank you! it doesn't help that the placement slots look pretty much the same, there just very slightly off and its really hard to tell unless you place them up against the RAM you do need to use.
 
It takes up to 128MB 5V FPM or EDO 168-pin DIMMs. OWC sells them.
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To be specific, it takes 5v buffered, non-ECC FPM/EDO DIMMs. I don't think you have to worry much about getting the wrong thing if you get the memory from OWC, since they specialize in Mac stuff, but those details are important to know if for whatever reason you want to source the memory from elsewhere. There are a lot of unbuffered ones out there, which won't work at all. And there are also buffered ECC types... those might work (just with the ECC ignored) but I've never tried it and wouldn't necessarily count on it... old Macs can be kinda bitchy about RAM.
 
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