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Ecodisk

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 8, 2005
64
0
Portland, OR
Ok I'm buying a B&W macintosh and upgradeing it. I noticed that the standard video card is in a special PCI slot. Can I put an upgraded video card in one of the normal PCI slots or do I have to use that special slot that the standard one has? Also can I buy any video card or does it have to be a special mac version?
 

AdamR01

macrumors 6502
Feb 2, 2003
259
9
Actually all of the PCI slots are "special" slots. The standard PCI slot looks like the one the video card is in. However that slot runs at 66MHz where as a standard pci slot runs at 33MHz. The other slots are 64bit PCI slots that run at 33MHz. If you plug a normal card into one of the 64bit slots it will act like a normal 32bit slot. If you were to plug a video card into the video card slot it would run at the faster speed which it may not be able to handle. I think the Radeon 7000 PCI Mac Edition can run at either speed, but I am not 100% sure. If it can, definitely put it in the same slot as the current video card as this will increase performance. Hope this helps...

Edit: I looked at a picture and the 66MHz slot is notched differently from a normal PCI slot. If the card has a notch closer to the backplate at the one end then it should work fine (it should also work fine if it has 2 notches). You might want someone else to confirm this though.
 

Ecodisk

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 8, 2005
64
0
Portland, OR
Thanks for your help. I have one more question now. Where is the best place to find Mac video cards since I have to get a Mac specific one :(
 
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