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Radeon X800XL in PowerMac G4 Sawtooth AGP
Posted by: EmeraldXB on 2026-03-28 21:11:57
A Few Months ago I rescued a AGP Sawtooth G4 from the side of the road near where I live. Found it with a 1.5Ghz CPU Upgrade Card and 1GB of Ram. Unfortunately the GPU is the original rage 128 that it came with from the factory. I’m wanting to do a GPU upgrade on it but am not willing to pay the prices that are being charged for them. My friend has a Diamond Viper X800XL that he’s willing to give me. My question is does anyone know if it possible to mac flash this card for EFI support?
Posted by: chriscarruthers on 2026-03-28 22:04:25
Looks like you might be out of luck with a Sawtooth re: X800s in general (not sure about the Viper X800XL specifically): http://themacelite.wikidot.com/compatibility
Posted by: herd on 2026-03-29 08:17:55
Do you have a picture of the card? It is probably keyed for 4x/8x. I think the 9800 is typically the fastest card for the AGP, but some of these are also 4x/8x. I think I read where someone added a notch and it worked fine (under dos).
Posted by: EmeraldXB on 2026-03-29 20:09:54
Looks like you might be out of luck with a Sawtooth re: X800s in general (not sure about the Viper X800XL specifically): http://themacelite.wikidot.com/compatibility
Yeah It Seems that isn’t gonna work. He also has a 9600 SE but that ain’t gonna work either. Guess I’m gonna have to keep an eye out for a 9800 as that seems to be my best bet.
Posted by: EmeraldXB on 2026-03-29 20:16:57
Do you have a picture of the card? It is probably keyed for 4x/8x. I think the 9800 is typically the fastest card for the AGP, but some of these are also 4x/8x. I think I read where someone added a notch and it worked fine (under dos).
If you look up Diamond Viper Radeon x800XL AGP you will see what it looks like though from my research it seems the 9800 is gonna be the best I can run.
Posted by: ArmorAlley on 2026-03-29 23:23:36
A Few Months ago I rescued a AGP Sawtooth G4 from the side of the road near where I live. Found it with a 1.5Ghz CPU Upgrade Card and 1GB of Ram. Unfortunately the GPU is the original rage 128 that it came with from the factory. I’m wanting to do a GPU upgrade on it but am not willing to pay the prices that are being charged for them. My friend has a Diamond Viper X800XL that he’s willing to give me. My question is does anyone know if it possible to mac flash this card for EFI support?
I think that the bus speed (100MHz) & 1 GB RAM are going to be your bottlenecks if you want to run Mac OS X 10.4.
I'm even sure if this G4 supports Mac OS 10.5 tbh.
This will make gameplay disagreeable even if you have one of the best Mac OS X AGP cards.
And the Radeon X800XL won't support 3D games in Mac OS X 9.
I'd keep that card for an unloved 1.8 or 2.0Ghz DP PCIX G5. Then it'll be allowed to roar.

Why not look for a Radeon 9000 Pro AGP card and turn the G4 Sawtooth into an excellent Mac OS X 9 machine?
Posted by: chriscarruthers on 2026-03-30 00:53:06
Why not look for a Radeon 9000 Pro
I'd second this. For a Sawtooth it's probably all the performance you can really use (plus they're not too hard to find or crazily priced), with better compatibility than the ostensibly faster cards.

(Although now I think about it I'm not sure I've tried that combo... I'm assuming the 9000 Pro plays nicely with the Sawtooth.
🤔 I hope someone here knows for sure?)
Posted by: herd on 2026-03-30 07:37:06
I have an AGP with an apple 9000Pro card that came from a MDD. I think a flashed nvidia 6200 would also work.
Posted by: obsolete on 2026-03-30 13:23:03
I'm not sure whether the X800XL could be flashed. As far as I know, the only official Mac AGP X800/X850 cards are native AGP (R420 core). The X800XL uses a different core (R430) without AGP support, with a PCIe-to-AGP bridge chip.

I've been buying and flashing AGP video cards for G4s for a while. I have a larger pile of good working cards sitting around at this point than I probably should. I could sell you a 9800 Pro or something else if you like; send me a PM.
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