video card

[schwartz52758]

Do video cards for mac OS and apple computers need to be specfically compatible for them? I need one, video card for a friends puter, np for windows, learning unwillingly about macs. Will it update drivers as well? Remember, I know nothing about macs hardly.

Thanks,
Terry

 

[jimbopalmer]

Yes, it has to be specifically for the mac.

Every peice of hardware needs drivers written for that hardware on that OS. Some are included with an OS, but it must exist somewhere to work.

For the mac, in recent years, ATI and NVidia are the major video providers

http://www.atitech.ca/products/mac.html

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=macintosh

I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.

 

[PTmon]

It would help if you let us know what model the mac is. Basically if it's pretty new, you'll have an AGP slot and can use any of the top of the line cards from ATI or Nvidia, if it's older you may be stuck with a ATI 7000 as the best you can do in a pci slot.
Best of luck,
PT

http://mahon.homeip.net/remember

 

[schwartz52758]

Thank you guys, both of you. It is a G3, blue & white, think it is about 3 years old. I bought the ATI 7000, and downloaded the driver. This puters with OS "X". Now my question is this, Where does the driver need to be stored, when it was downloaded,it was put on the desktop. I think it was a ".sit" file. Thanks for all your help, and if you ever need any windows help, let me know.

Terry

 

[jimbopalmer]

I am not an OSX user, but OS9 came with scads of ATI drivers as part of the OS, I suspect OSX has pretty full ATI support as delivered.

I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.

 

[schwartz52758]

Thanks for all your help, but I still need to know where to put this driver file, the puter does seem to be working great now, ty. It is currently in the system file of OS
X.

Thanks again,
Terry

 

[PTmon]

If your driver is a .sit file, it means it's stuffed, similar to a zip file on windows. You need to unstuff it. Double click on it and I'd guess it will automatically unstuff itself. Then you'll have an installer you can double click on that will put the drivers where they need to go. I have a blue and white G3 I upgraded to a g4/500 and put it a ATI 7000 card. Spent about $400 and gave my machine a new lease on life, at least for a while
Best of luck,
PT

http://mahon.homeip.net/remember