Quake3World

I'd been looking to upgrade the graphics card on my (AGP) Dual G5 from a Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edition.

I considered the x800xt but the $400 price tag put me off, so I turned to the BFG 6800GT in the PC next door. After a fairly straightforward flashing process using a rom from the strangedogs website in the PC, I have a working 6800gt in my G5!

The only snag was the BFG's cooler which has tall, spring load retention screws on the back of the card. These come in contact with G5 case's divider plate, raising the cooler off the GPU. Replacing the OEM cooler with a Zalman VF700 cu solved that problem and made it quieter to boot.

I need to look into doing this.. I think a lot more of the image processing I've been doing lately gets offloaded to the GPU than I thought

As long as its an AGP G5, the process involves a straightforward flash with the 2120 rom available at the previously mentioned site.

An eVGA or XFX 6800gt may be the preferred way to go as their coolers are more conventional and compact.

AGP 6800GT's are almost impossible to find new, however, so the purchase of a used unit from ebay may be necessary.

You should consider making them up and selling them on... or even have a local company making them for you.

I'm thinking of replacing the 9600 in my G5 myself and I don't want to pay the extortional amount for a Mac 9800.

I got a genuine Apple 6800 GT off of Ebay for 300.. I could do the flash, but I don't feel like soldering surface mounts to save $100 and not get to use all of the card features.

Well there's nothing like getting the genuine article. Seems like a decent price too.

After a few initial hiccups my flashed BFG 6800GT has operated flawlessly, but I may return it to PC duty soon so my gf can play World of Warcraft at higher resolutions.

Yeah, the price was amazing... I've never seen that card for less than the original $500 full price. My G5 makes a little more noise now, but the fan is no louder than the other 9 fans in the case, so the volume increase is equivalent to adding another case fan

My G5 is somewhat louder too. Interestingly it is due to the G5 PCI bay fans running at higher speed. The Zalman fan is nearly silent.