EQMac.com

I'm currently running a stock ATI 64mb card in a G4 PowerMac, dual 1.25ghz with 2G RAM (OSX Panther 10.3)

I'm thinking of flashing an ATI Radeon 9250 128mb for my PowerMac (it was in a PC). Question is, will I notice much performance improvement over my stock ATI Radeon 9000 64mb? In terms of running particle effects, raiding, etc.

Trying to figure out if it's worth the trouble.

I've got all the info on how to flash it and make it work, the only thing I'm not certain about is when I put the card into the AGP slot of a PC in order to flash it, won't I lose graphics as soon as I do the actual flash? In other words, do I need to have a PCI video card running when I flash my Radeon AGP that I'm going to put in my Mac in order to keep the monitor running while I do the flash?

I don't know a a whole lot about this, but it seems that you wouldn't notice any changes until you rebooted after the flash; I COULD BE WRONG ON THAT.

If it were me I'd have a pci card (or onboard video if you have it) running as primary when I do it. Dunno if the system will detect the video card gone and act funny or reboot or something, and if you're in the middle of flashing it that might brick the card.

Good point Malignant, this PC does have onboard video also, totally forgot about that. I'll be booting into safe mode to do it probably... that or just boot into DOS.

Do you think the performance improvement will be noticable? During raids, etc?

I don't know. I've performance increase from the 6600 to the 7800 gt but people are telling me that it isn't there and the cards aren't rendering at all, but mentioned it might make a difference for older cards... or something.

I believe the cards are rendering in the old PowerPC Macs like the G4 quicksilver and MDD, to a point anyway. I believe where the big changes come are in G5 and up, then the graphics cards become less important... at least that's what I've been reading.

The problem with the G4's is that they will only read up to 128mb of the VRAM anyway, so even if I were to flash a 256mb card to put in there, it will still limit to the 128mb. Otherwise, I'd be more adventurous and flash a better card. The Radeon 9000 Pro (stock in the MDD DP Macs) is supposed to be a pretty good card, not a GeForce 4 Ti, but still pretty damn good... so I might not see much improvment at all.

If I'm successful, I'll post the results... if not, I'm stayin quiet

I think your going to notice a difference but it won't be to much in game and raids. The memory interface on the 9250 is sonly 64mb. The gpu however does have some added features but the problem is even with the new models on the Graphics engine in EQ dates back to approx. luclin era, and there have not been many drastic updates, thus maybe not even utilizing those newer features.

From what I have seen since 2003, System memory and buss speed have made the most difference. I think that the Radeon 96xx series and higher have a lot of memory and cache onboard and make more improvements but I am curious to see if there is a boost.