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Power Mac G4 Cube Q&A - Published May 24, 2009
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What graphics card is provided by the Power Mac G4 Cube? What ports are provided? How many displays does the Power Mac G4 Cube support? Is it possible to "hack" the Power Mac G4 Cube to support a different graphics card? Which graphics cards can you install?
Both Power Mac G4 Cube models -- the Power Mac G4/450 Cube and G4/500 Cube -- shipped with a graphics card equipped with both a VGA port and an ADC port and these cards are capable of supporting a single display "up to" a resolution of 1920x1200. The essentially custom graphics card occupies a single dedicated "short" 2X AGP slot.
As shipped, the Power Mac G4/450 Cube was configured with either a 16 MB ATI Rage 128 Pro or a 32 MB NVIDIA GeForce2 MX. The G4/500 Cube was available with both of the above cards as well as a 16 MB ATI Radeon.
As a result, the Power Mac G4 Cube models officially support the following cards designed for the Power Mac G4 Cube:
- 16 MB ATI Rage 128 Pro
- 16 MB ATI Radeon
- 32 MB NVIDIA GeForce2 MX
Apple does not support end-users upgrading the video card and declines to provide upgrade instructions. Consequently, EveryMac.com cannot recommend that users upgrade their own video card in the Power Mac G4 Cube.
However, the always excellent BareFeats tested and benchmarked additional video cards that can be installed without hardware modification. These include:
- 64 MB NVIDIA GeForce 3
- 64 MB ATI Radeon 9000
- 256 MB NVIDIA GeForce 5500 (Re-Flashed)
- 256 MB NVIDIA GeForce 6200 (Re-Flashed)
Extremely dedicated -- and highly-skilled -- hardware hacker types at the now defunct CubeOwner were able to physically modify either the video card or the system (or both), to install even more video card options. Archived postings are below:
Although it is not recommended, video cards that are not supported by Apple definitely improve the performance of the Power Mac G4 Cube and make "hacks" like running MacOS X 10.5 "Leopard" on the system more feasible as well.
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