I'm looking for an upgrade for my GeForce 4 MX for my G4 dual 867 Mhz PowerMac.

I would like a Radeon 9800, but if you've got another great card you'd like to sell me reply to this thread as well.

Thanks a lot - that's really helpful.

One important note - Apple writes the drivers and ROMs for Nvidia cards used on the Mac, and as a result you can only flash PC cards that use the same GPU chip or "core" as the Mac Edition cards.

What this means for the 6800 series is that all GeForce 6800, 6800GT and 6800 Ultra cards can be flashed to the Mac. Some GeForce 6800GS cards can be flashed (like mine), but at some point last year they switched to a different core GPU for the 6800GS, and those 6800GS cards can NOT be flashed to the Mac. About the same time this switch happened GeForce 6800XT cards appeared on the market; these are also NOT flashable to the Mac.

So, long story short, for best chance of success look for a 6800GT or 6800 Ultra - these also tend to have better heatsink/fan setups anyway. BFG and XFX brand cards are known to be good for flashing, but various other brands work as well.

Thanks for that great post - I will sincerely consider following your advice on the 6800GT, since it seems the best route to go. I've never flashed a card before though, but hey there's a first time for everything

It may very well be more work than you'd like, but I recommend hunting around on ebay for a GeForce 6800GS/GT/Ultra and flashing it to your Mac - click the link in my signature and see how I did it using a hacked ROM available free from the Strangedogs video card flashing forum. The 6800 is one of the fastest cards you can put in a G4 (a 7800 is possible, but a very involved conversion).

My 6800GT absolutely destroys the Radeon 9800 in every performance category.

However, the Radeon 9800 is still a very good card for a G4 tower with a stock CPU - tons of PC cards are available, you can pick one up very cheap on ebay and flash it to the Mac. Most of the 9800 "Mac Edition" video cards on ebay are actually converted PC cards anyway.

If you want to buy a "real" Radeon 9800 Mac Edition, expect to pay double the price (or more) of the converted PC cards.

There are other options (like the GeForce 4ti Mac Edition or Radeon 9700 PRO Mac Edition) but they will be hard to find and expensive as they were never sold retail, but only as a built-to-order option. The Radeon 9700 PRO offers essentially identical performance to the ubiquitous Radeon 9800.