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What PCI video card will work?


SuperNet33
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BUMP, I'm looking for a regular PCI Video card to add to my Shuttle KPC Barebone. I would like for it to have at least a DVI output so I can plug it into my HDTV for an HD Movie Rig. If it could run on a vanilla kernel as well, that'd be even better, but not required. Any ideas?

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I bought a Gainward Geforce fx5200 128mb pci "Pro/660 TV/DVI" which works with qe/ci in leopard.

 

Manufacturers page was here , but appears to be down at time of writing.

It appears that that company no longer exists, and no one seems to be selling that card online either. Do you know if any Geforce fx5200 pci card would work with the vanilla kernel? For instance, perhaps this one?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814130188

It seems to have almost exactly the same specs as the Gainward one, but I know that doesn't necessarily mean that it will work. Also some people in another thread were claiming the FX5200 PCI doesn't work with PCI, in this thread:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...p;p=461960&

Any help anyone can give me on this would be wonderful. I've currently got a KPC barebones with an Intel Celeron E1200, 500 GB ATA HDD, and 1 GB of RAM. It only has one regular PCI slot, and not PCI-E. The purpose of this video card is to allow my KPC to plug into my HDTV so I can play HD (720p, 1080i) Videos onto my TV from it. I COULD dual-boot and put XP on it, but that would be my LAST resort. I would like to keep this computer Windows free if I can help it and keep everything on OS X, so please let me know of any suggestions you guys have! Thanks!

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I'm pretty sure any pci graphics card with a supported chipset would work.. so yes, your geforce fx5200 128/pci should be fine.

 

as for what was going on in that other thread, who knows?

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It appears that that company no longer exists, and no one seems to be selling that card online either. Do you know if any Geforce fx5200 pci card would work with the vanilla kernel? For instance, perhaps this one?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814130188

It seems to have almost exactly the same specs as the Gainward one, but I know that doesn't necessarily mean that it will work. Also some people in another thread were claiming the FX5200 PCI doesn't work with PCI, in this thread:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...p;p=461960&

Any help anyone can give me on this would be wonderful. I've currently got a KPC barebones with an Intel Celeron E1200, 500 GB ATA HDD, and 1 GB of RAM. It only has one regular PCI slot, and not PCI-E. The purpose of this video card is to allow my KPC to plug into my HDTV so I can play HD (720p, 1080i) Videos onto my TV from it. I COULD dual-boot and put XP on it, but that would be my LAST resort. I would like to keep this computer Windows free if I can help it and keep everything on OS X, so please let me know of any suggestions you guys have! Thanks!

 

 

I used an old pny fx5200 under Tiger an it worked fine but it didn't have dvi just vga

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I currently use a GeForce FX5500. It is PCI - not PCIe and it works just fine. See my sig for Specs.

Cool, BladeRunner. Do you know what brand of card it was? It might be that only certain brands are giving people problems, like in the other thread. Also, that thread was from last October, so perhaps additional drivers have come out to fix the issues.....

 

Also, do you HAVE to have the card installed when you install Mac OS X Kalyway, or could I just install both the integrated Intel drivers and the NVidia drivers and run off the Intel 950 graphics until I order the card? Let me know, thanks!

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OK, so I have my OSX86 rig completely setup....it's a Shuttle K45 with an E1200 Dual-Core Celeron, 1 GB of RAM, and a 500 GB SATA HDD. Kalyway's Leopard 10.5.2 is all setup and running fine on it (audio, ethernet, and all!). However, I really want to install a PCI video card so I can have a DVI out, as well as the power to output videos to my TV. I've already installed all of the ATI and NVidia drivers that came with Kalyway 10.5.2, so I guess my next question is this: where do I go from here? What (regular) PCI video card works best with OS X Kalyway 10.5.2? And since the drivers are already on my install, is it as simple as putting in the card and enabling it as the primary card in the BIOS? Please let me know, I'm anxious to get this rig finished!

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Cool, BladeRunner. Do you know what brand of card it was? It might be that only certain brands are giving people problems, like in the other thread. Also, that thread was from last October, so perhaps additional drivers have come out to fix the issues.....

 

Also, do you HAVE to have the card installed when you install Mac OS X Kalyway, or could I just install both the integrated Intel drivers and the NVidia drivers and run off the Intel 950 graphics until I order the card? Let me know, thanks!

 

Sorry to be so long in reply. I got sidetracked with other things.

 

I have had two different GeForce Fx5500 cards - the first one, made directly by Nvidia died because the cooling fan froze and it overheated. I think the current one was branded by PNY. Although, I can't locate the box at the moment. I don't use any special drivers for the card. What I do use is device ID EFI strings located in com.apple.Boot.plist.

 

I have three of four drives/partitions with OS X installed. One is on a USB stick where I have a copy of my retail 10.5.1 install DVD. Another is on an external USB hard drive. Both of these drives have Chameleon installed as the boot loader. The internal hard disk has pc-efi-v8 as the boot loader. Both boot loaders support the use of the EFI strings.

 

I have had the graphics cards installed when I installed OS X. All of my OS X partitions were installed from a copy of my retail 10.5.1 DVD. I used to use the JaS Intel SSE3 distribution DVD. However since I learned how to use the retail DVD I have converted all partitions to that.

 

I see no reason you couldn't have Intel, Nvidia and ATI kext bundles all on the system at the same time. In fact, that is the normal way the system is installed. Take a look in /System/Library/Extensions and do a "ls -ld *ATI* *Intel* " you will see a list of kext for each one.

 

However, if you take advantage of the EFI strings to identify your graphics card you will need to custom fit it to the card you are using.

 

Have a look in these forums for more information on EIF strings http://forum.netkas.org/index.php#1

 

Also get a copy of "OSX*86Tools by ~pcwiz found here http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=104754

It can help create the EFI strings for a great many graphics cards.

 

Hope that helps.

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Sorry to be so long in reply. I got sidetracked with other things.

 

I have had two different GeForce Fx5500 cards - the first one, made directly by Nvidia died because the cooling fan froze and it overheated. I think the current one was branded by PNY. Although, I can't locate the box at the moment. I don't use any special drivers for the card. What I do use is device ID EFI strings located in com.apple.Boot.plist.

 

I have three of four drives/partitions with OS X installed. One is on a USB stick where I have a copy of my retail 10.5.1 install DVD. Another is on an external USB hard drive. Both of these drives have Chameleon installed as the boot loader. The internal hard disk has pc-efi-v8 as the boot loader. Both boot loaders support the use of the EFI strings.

 

I have had the graphics cards installed when I installed OS X. All of my OS X partitions were installed from a copy of my retail 10.5.1 DVD. I used to use the JaS Intel SSE3 distribution DVD. However since I learned how to use the retail DVD I have converted all partitions to that.

 

I see no reason you couldn't have Intel, Nvidia and ATI kext bundles all on the system at the same time. In fact, that is the normal way the system is installed. Take a look in /System/Library/Extensions and do a "ls -ld *ATI* *Intel* " you will see a list of kext for each one.

 

However, if you take advantage of the EFI strings to identify your graphics card you will need to custom fit it to the card you are using.

 

Have a look in these forums for more information on EIF strings http://forum.netkas.org/index.php#1

 

Also get a copy of "OSX*86Tools by ~pcwiz found here http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=104754

It can help create the EFI strings for a great many graphics cards.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Thanks for the reply! One last question: Do you know if the 5500 series supports QE/CI ? This is important since I'm wanting to plug the DVI out into my HDTV and am afraid that my home built server won't gave the gusto to display Standard Def. or HD movies. Let me know your thoughts on this, if possible. Thanks again!

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Thanks for the reply! One last question: Do you know if the 5500 series supports QE/CI ? This is important since I'm wanting to plug the DVI out into my HDTV and am afraid that my home built server won't gave the gusto to display Standard Def. or HD movies. Let me know your thoughts on this, if possible. Thanks again!

 

Yes, supported and hardware accelerated

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