Leopard & ATI Radeon 9600
In the PowerMac G5 I have at work I have an ATI Radeon 9600 Mac / PC Edition video card. The reason I have this particular card is that it’s the cheapest AGP G5 compatible video card that can drive a 30″ monitor.
However, once upgrading to Leopard, I was having lots of graphical artifacts. I’d click on something, and sometimes whatever was behind the window would bleed through. Sometimes parts of the screen would not get redrawn. I was okay with this, but then suddenly it decided it couldn’t drive my 30″ monitor anymore. I almost gave up on it and bought a newer but waaaaaaaaaay more expensive card, when I finally fixed it.
The fix is to install these drivers from ATI’s site. This is a really funny fix, because the drivers were written in 2005 and are only 10.4 compatible. Obviously this is a really stupid and dangerous thing to do - installing ancient drivers on Leopard - but I was so desperate that I’d give it a try.
It installed and tried to load the drivers and the kernel simply would not do it, which is good. So I’m pretty sure my computer isn’t being effected negatively by the ancient drivers. However, some of the other stuff it installed completely fixed all my problems. No graphical artifacts (which I even had a little bit of in tiger) and the 30″ mode worked perfectly. I don’t know which file it installed fixed it, but I think it might have been something that tells the OS what this video card is capable of. You may have to run the “control panel” app it puts in System Preferences to get the full effect. I think the problem was that Leopard decided the card had lesser capabilities, and these archaic drivers informed it otherwise.
October 31st, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Thank you. I had the same issue because of the same reason. The same solution worked! (Had to use Safari to download the files). I had the older version of the same application from Tiger, but someof the options in the SystemPreferences for ATI Graphics card were grayed out. The reinstallation fixed everything!
November 1st, 2007 at 12:25 pm
I have the 9600XT not the PRO, and I’m not having as severe graphics issues as you were, but I am seeing a lot of choppiness in leopard. The dock animation is slow to respond and can get stuck in a magnified position. Window resizing is slow and window movement is jittery. I’ve tried installing the 4.5.7 drivers and it has not helped. Any advice?
thanks
November 1st, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Sorry, I can’t think of anything else :(
January 7th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Any chance that this will work with the Mobility 9600 chipset? Its been driving me nuts with my laptop…
January 7th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Sorry, no idea :)
February 15th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
I just did this for my G5 Dual 1.8 and it worked perfectly. Thanks for taking the time to do a blog. A week of good karma to you(buy a lottery ticket)
March 10th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
specific files have been identified to solve this problem on the discussion forums at apple.com
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5705629#5705629
here you’ll find a discussion on sleep problems after upgrading to leopard.
however if you cmd-f for radeon you’ll find richard’s post about ATI ROM Xtender on Tiger that needs to be placed in a specific folder
System/Library/Extensions/AppleNDRV
one a user follows these instructions, it should work flawlessly.
March 13th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Bravo!
worked brilliantly on my PowerMac G5 / 4GB RAM.
System Info
March 13th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
CamCham-
what powermac g5 did you do this with? did it happen to be a dual 1.8 g5?
March 13th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Dual 2GHz
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Tried everything suggested here with no success. I really wish Apple and/or AMD-ATI would step up and FIX THIS ISSUE!!! Dual G4 1.42GHz.
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:59 pm
scott elliott do you have another agp computer you can verify the radeon 9600 with? also is there another 30″ display you can verify works with another video card? if you can localize it then we can help you more…
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:08 pm
I have three brand-new retail Radeon 9600 Mac / PC Edition cards. All three fail to work in three different PM G4 MDD dual 1.42GHz macs. Swapping cards & machines does nothing. Fresh install of Leopard does nothing. ATI Displays 4.5.7 does nothing. ATI ROM Xtender does nothing. I’ve tried it ALL. Nothing works. Tiger is fine; Leopard = artifacts.
April 3rd, 2008 at 3:16 pm
My fix applies to G5s only, I believe.
April 3rd, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Wonderful. [sarcasm intended]
Any other fixes available? Should I pressure AMD/ATI to take these cards back?
May 25th, 2008 at 4:35 am
will this make quartz extreme work???
May 29th, 2008 at 9:12 am
quartz extreme has a different requirement, and i believe it has less to do with the graphics card you use and with
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1582
if you read that thread, you should find what youre looking for and more leads to answer any toher following questions you might have.
and i think i’m going to try nVidia the next time in the market for a video card.
July 22nd, 2008 at 2:41 pm
I installed Leopard today and had the blocks randomly appearing on screen problem… after scouring the net for a solution my eyes lit up when I found this blog. I also have the ATI Radeon 9600 Mac / PC Edition…
I clicked your link, downloaded the ancient software - job done! Thanks so much.
August 27th, 2008 at 9:53 am
got the 9600 pro pc/mac edition for my g4 MDD 1.25 back in January and havwe been getting theses artifacts described run the the ati 4.5.7 update and everything works great! wish i’d found you sooner the amount of times i’ve re-seated this card over the past few months is ridiculous! Im glad that it wasnt something i was doing wrong after all;)