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FX5200 AGP Pro into G4 MDD FW800 |
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Written by Dan McCarthy
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Sunday, 19 February 2006 |
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A cheap mod to get Core Image support for your AGP 4x PowerMac. My 5200 was a working pull from a PowerMac G5. These cards turn up very cheaply on eBay quite often.
FX5200 in MDD G4.
Greetings all, just a quick guide to installing an OEM nVidia GeForce FX5200 AGP Pro card from a PowerMac G5 into a PowerMac G4. This particular G4 is a MDD FW800 single 1GHz, but it should also run in any G4 with the same AGP slot. (Digital Audio or later.) It may also work in a G4 Xserve. Perhaps I'll let you know about that one.
I deserve no technical credit whatsoever, I merely copied this mod guide on XLR8:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/Graphics/FX5200_Mods_for_G4/FX5200_G4mods.html
Though I did not need to enlarge the gap between pins A65/B65 and the E/F pins, I did have to remove the protrusion which clips the back end of the card into place in the slot.
Its probable I did not use the best tools for the job when I performed this mod.
I made a few choice cuts with a hacksaw, did some scoring with a stanley knife and basically snapped the unrequired pins off with a sturdy pair of pliers.
I then shaved the edge down with the blade since I didn't have any files or sandpaper to hand, and taped over the exposed edge with a thin sliver of duct tape.
I also severed the A3 and A11 pins with the tip of a stanley blade, rotated on a carefully picked spot under a magnifier.
Like I say there are probably better ways of doing this mod, but it now works a treat.
Overclocking the FX5200:
I used Graphiccelerator to overclock the card, after bolting a 40mm fan from an old Pentium CPU cooler onto the 5200's heatsink. It is currently up to 350/300 and running fine. I think I could probably go a little higher.
The instructions for using Graphiccelerator can be found elsewhere on Macmod, or in the readme which comes with it.
I ran occasional benchmarks with Xbench with the old Radeon9000 installed, the 'stock' 5200, and the overclocked 5200. The score went up when I swapped the 5200 in, but dropped sightly after the overclock. I bumped the system RAM up another 256MB not long afterward and the score dropped back to what it originally was. I have concluded from this that Xbench is not so great, so I have left out the scores entirely from this guide.
Thats it!
 
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