[geeks] Thoughts re: PCI --> AGP upgrades

[Bill Bradford]

On Mon, Oct 21, 2002 at 04:04:50PM -0400, Andrew Weiss wrote:
> The Powermac G3 Blue and White computer that I have is all PCI... it has 3
> 64 bit 33Mhz PCI slots and one 32 bit 66Mhz dedicated graphics PCI slot.  It
> occured to me while doing my Apple Certification training and reviewing a
> Powermac G4 Cube take-apart that the AGP riser card for the Powermac G4 cube
> fits into a PCI slot.  What would it take theoretically to re-engineer a bus
> extender/riser into a blue and white for using AGP cards.  I'm assuming
> there would be almost no benefit speed-wise due to the non-updated Open
> Firmware since AGP is a specialized subset of PCI.  It would, however,
> assuming it worked allow one to use an AGP GeForce 2MX from a Cube in a Blue
> & White... or perhaps any GeForce... i.e. 2MX, 3, 4MX, and 4 Ti.

That riser card isnt pci, its just re-worked AGP (so it can fit).  Would
be easier to just slap a PCI Radeon into that blue and white and enable QE
on that (there's hacks to do it; I did it on mine).

One of the reasons QE isnt enabled on PCI by default is lack of 
bandwidth, and if you do a lot of graphics, you'll throttle the bus.

Bill

-- 
bill bradford
mrbill at mrbill.net
austin, texas