Upgrading options: video cards g5 A1047

Mac
#1

Hello,
I have been enjoying getting my 2003 G5 online, and happy that I handles the net (so far) pretty well with Opera.
While I am not an upgrade junky, I think I have found some good 2nd hand hardware online,

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500 (256 MB) DDR SDRAM AGP Video Card

As well as some 1GB ram.

My question is, despite my searches on the net, I have not cone across much info on what cards can’t be used on my G5. All sites seem OK with any PCI X agp card.
It strikes me as odd considering the enormous amount of research I have to do for drivers whenever I upgrade my win machines.

I’m perfectly happy with old tech, I still run XP (faster than wife’s win10 desktop) and shoot 16mm film.

Any help would be handy, cheers

#2

As far as I know, you’ll need a Mac-specific graphics card for that Mac if you want something plug and play. You can potentially buy the PC version of a compatible graphics card and flash it to be Mac-compatible (Google open firmware graphics card flashing), but expect to spend the better part of a weekend on that kind of project.

Expect to have a hell of a time finding a graphics card that’s an upgrade over the stock models in 2020, especially for a machine of that… vintage.

(Protip: the A-prefixed model numbers generally aren’t the best identifiers for Macs, as they were often reused within the same product family for a number of different variations. The most reliable method of identifying a Mac is to use the alphanumeric model identifier (sometimes referred to as the order/part number), e.g. MD101X/A, or the model identifier, e.g. MacBookPro11,3.)

#3

Thanks for the tips,
I did more research and came across many discussions about flashing ROMs etc, and I figure I’ll just pass on getting another vid card, the current one caters perfectly, I was just hoping to find a cheap way of upgrading a little.

Now I just have to find a spare hand crank for the hole in the front of my vintage G5…

Cheers, Gareth