Video Cards for WoW on AGP G5 Macs
My system:
- PowerMac G5 Dual 2.0GHz (PCI-X and AGP)
- 4GB of RAM
- Mac OS X Server 10.4.8 (this machine doubles as the household fileserver and PHD (portable home directories) server)
Note, these are all AGP cards.
Video cards I have used:
- nVidia 5200 64MB
- ATI RADEON 9800 Mac Special Edition 256MB 8x
- ATI RADEON 9800 flashed to Mac firmware 128MB 4x
- nVidia 7800 GS flashed to Mac firmware 256MB 8x
- ATI RADEON X800 Mac 256MB 8x
Okay, now for some notes.
nVidia 5200: Total garbage. I started playing on this card and about 2 weeks later realized something was horribly wrong.
9800 MSE 256MB: Great card. Could get 30-45 fps on low to medium detail settings. While small-grouping and questing and running early instances.
9800 flashed 128MB: Not as good as the 256MB. 20-35 fps on low to medium detail settings. Good for soloing, questing, wouldn’t want to raid on it. Had noticeable chop while helping someone get MC attunement. Lava effects were beating me up.
7800 flashed to Mac: Awesome card. Dialed effects all the way out, FSAA 2x, terrain to half, an.filtering set to half. No glow, left on death effect. 35 fps on average. Spikes into higher, dips into lower. Can get great performance by dropping some detail settings. This card eventually started getting really flakey and crashing my machine. Sending it back for testing/reflash/checking. Don’t know what I’m going to do with it though because…
X800: just came today. Already looks better than the 7800. Haven’t taken it out and kicked the tires yet but will come back with another update. It just looks better for sure though, which I find surprising. I’m running at 33 fps in the Stormwind auction house on a pretty busy morning. This is a good sign.