Late 05 G5 Upgrade: Video?

[darkfa8]

I have a Late 2005 Power Mac G5 with 2.3GHz DC. It currently has a GeForce 6600 in it.

Presuming I update the OS to 10.5.8 Leopard, what is the best/fastest GPU I can plug into this unit without having to mess with ROM flashing or other software aerobatics?

a GeForce 7800 GT? Quadro FX4500? something better?

 

[hang-the-9]

Does not matter that much because the CPU will hold back any newer video card, 6600 is not that bad for the era.

 

[darkfa8]

the machine will be used for Photoshop and InDesign. I was just looking to see how or where I could improve performance without spending more than what would buy me the components to build a PC-hardware based Hackintosh.

I suppose the RAM could stand to be increased from 1.5GB to the full 16gb.

 

[hang-the-9]

The best thing for photo and video manipulation is CPU and RAM. Video card would be third in line behind those. I would not spend the money on 16 gig of ram for that, for the price of the ram you can almost buy a used dual or quad core computer.

 

[darkfa8]

It is a Dual Core Power PC cpu.

Looks like 16gb of pc-4200 ddr2 is about $230 or so...

 

[hang-the-9]

A RAM upgrade would be first, although 16 gig is a bit of an overkill. 8 would be plenty to load just about any file.

 

[darkfa8]

hang-the-9, do you have any recommendations on 500gb+ size hard drives that would be compatible with Leopard 10.5.8 on this G5?

Thanks for all of your insight! I'm just trying to maximize this machine for as long as possible for less cost then a whole new build/Mac.

 

[hang-the-9]

That I don't know about, I don't work on upgrading MACs, so can't say if there may be any issues with drive upgrades.

 

[darkfa8]

anyone else have any insight?

 

[cpitts1]

According to the Tonymacx86 database, AMD cards up to the 6870 are fully supported in OSX, the 69xx series is supported by altering graphics enabler settings, and the 7xxx series has no support as of yet.

Check out the list of supported cards Here

Hope that helps!