Ultimate PowerMac G4 (Mac OS 9) Project

[chikorita157]

At last, the final piece of the puzzle is finally complete. While I wanted to put an M-Audio Audiophile 2448 sound card in my MDD so I can hook it to my stereo system and listen to my music in full quality. The latest drivers for it was basically a piece of crap and caused Tiger to Kernel Panic. It worked as intended in Jaguar, so I ended up removing the card and get a Firewire version, which came out later.

With that, comes the Geforce 4 Ti 4600, which is a beast of a card in 2002. Sadly, finding such a card is difficult since it's sought after not because it was high end, but it's rare. I guess YouTubers who focus on retro computing gaming builds and Covid lockdowns are fueling the demand of old computer parts. After all, if you are stuck at home and want to build a nostalgic mid 90s, early 2000s gaming PC running Windows 98/2000, why not?

I manage to find a PC version for $200, which is a bit overpriced, but I just wanted it after trying to buy it from several used computer part shops that said to have stock, but in reality, they don't. This is a reference version of the Geforce 4 TI 4600, which has the same layout of the Mac version with the same reference cooler, except manufactured by PNY.


Flashing the card is a challenge since I have no PC with AGP. I decided to build a Pentium III retro gaming PC to run the games from the late 90s and early 2000s. Of course, it was not without challenge as I had problems getting parts that work. The first motherboard and CPU combo didn't work since the motherboard seems incompatible with the Pentium III (it only supports Pentium II despite using a 440BX).



So, I decided to avoid OEM motherboards and seek out a Intel SE440BX. The second try, I received the wrong motherboard, so that went back. Frustrated, I eventually paid a little more for a new old stock Intel SE440BX-2 and it worked. It was a challenge to get it to post, but I just needed to replace the CMOS battery and make sure the video card is seated. I had a PCI ATI Rage XL video card installed if the flashing process botches up and as a safety measure.

To flash the card, you need FreeDOS and NVFlash (provided in this post). You can use a SD to IDE adapter to do this as booting from flash drives aren't going to work on older computers. Just use Ruufus to install FreeDos and copy the SD card. After booting, you need to extract the ROM by typing the following:

C:\> nvflash.exe -b 4600.rom

Afterwards, shutdown the computer, take out the SD card and put it in a reader on a PowerPC Mac or a Mac running Snow Leopard. The TI Rom Maker doesn't work on versions later than 10.6 since it needs Rosetta. Use the rom file you extracted with the TI Rom Maker and copy the modified rom back to the SD card. Then remove the SD card and put it back in the SD to IDE adapter.

Now run this command:
C:\> nvflash -4 -5 -6 <modifieldromfilename>.rom
When prompted, say yes. It should flash and once it's done, remove it and take the video card out of the PC and install it in the Mac.

After this process, it seems to work perfectly. Yes, it works with both displays. Of course, if you have any ATi drivers, you need to remove all the extensions and control panels or the computer won't boot properly.


While the performance is still bad in Sims 2, which is a later game, SimCity 4 was a slight improvement. Also, it scored up to 4x higher in OpenBenchmark over the 9000 Pro.


The final build:



Final Thoughts:
While this build wasn't cheap and I ended up wasting some money on parts I didn't use, it was pretty fun. I guess from this, which ended up with two retro computers to run old computer games and have all that nostalgia when I was a kid in the 90s and spent most of my childhood in front of a computer or playing video games. But back then, I was using low end Performas, which aren't really that fast and a budget Windows 98 PC running a 400 MHz AMD K6-2 with a low end ATI Rage Pro 3D graphics and no AGP port. Either way, these builds should last for a long time, barring if I find some more upgrades for a reasonable price.

Full Specs:
PowerMac G4 MDD (2003 Model)
1 GHz Dual PowerPC G4
2 GB of DDR RAM
NVidia Geforce 4 Ti 4600 video card
275 GB Crucial MX300 SSD (Mac OS X Tiger/Jaguar)
120 GB Samsung 840 EVO (Mac OS 9)
SSDs connected to a Firmtek Serialtek 1v4 PCI-X SATA Card
Apple Keyboard and Apple Mighty Mouse
Apple 24" LED Cinema Display connected to a DisplayPort to DVI active adapter.
Bose Companion 20 speakers.
Adaptec USB 2 PCI Card with NEC USB2 Controllers

[FBz]

Very well done, indeed. Kudos. Great pics too!

Should I ever decide to go a-gaming, this might be THE guide.

And perhaps much like the highly-coveted Geoforce 4 Ti 4600,
all else you’d truly need for the actual Ultimate PowerMac G4
might be that other Holy Grail item of the G4’s…
the Sonnet Encore MDX G4 Duet?
(Isn’t there always… just one more thing?)

But most definitely, great work!

[chikorita157]

I have some bad news. After testing more games out, it eventually plays and crashes. Also, there are kernel panics with screen artifacts indicating that the card is bad. I filed a SNAD since the seller described the card as working. It's a shame, so I have to go back to the Radeon 9000 Pro. However, I decided to buy a Radeon 8500 and flash it, which is slightly slower than the Ti 4600, but maybe I will have better luck with ATi? Maybe I will give another Geforce 4 Ti 4600 if a Mac version ever goes back on Ebay.

As they say, Nvidia is Novideo.

[FBz]

I take back all the good things I said.

Joking. Chutes & Ladders, ya know.
The struggle is real.

[chikorita157]

I take back all the good things I said.

Joking. Chutes & Ladders, ya know.
The struggle is real.

We will get there someday. It was even a struggle to get the card to flash, when the ATI cards are easy and can be done on the Mac at least. I know that while the Radeon 8500 isn't as powerful as a Geforce 4 Ti, it's easy to flash and is about as fast or faster as a Geforce 3 Ti series. Looking at some benchmarks, the 8500 is only slightly slower than the Ti 4200. I guess I could try buying and flashing a 4200 and those are readably available than the 4600, but I don't really feel like it nor it looks like it's worth the trouble. Maybe another day.

The funny thing is besides the benchmarks, the Ti 4600 didn't perform as I expected. Even when I tried to play the Sims 2 for a few minutes before it crashed, the performance was actually worse than the Radeon 9000 Pro. SimCity 4 was still really choppy as well. Maybe this is because it's a faulty card, but I don't know. I can't really test the card since I didn't have a full Windows installation up and the SD card corrupted the Windows 2000 install. So, I had to go for a CF card setup. But I am considering probably getting a workstation equivalent of the Ti 4600 and put it in my Pentium III gaming build, if I can find one for cheap. Don't know about modding it since it needs a lot of mods to make it work, including flashing.

But in short, I just want to enjoy the machine to the closest I can make it to being the Ultimate, for now. As they say, there is no truly ultimate machine, it's pretty subjective. But still, I want to get a hands on a working Ti 4600, not just someone put it on Ebay, not test it, and list it as working.

[Philgood]

I'm pretty sure the Geforce4Ti is better for MacOS9.
For OSX you should be able to get better cards.

[chikorita157]

I'm pretty sure the Geforce4Ti is better for MacOS9.
For OSX you should be able to get better cards.

The problem is the 4600s are rare since most people aren't selling them. I know a 4200 is a cut down version that might work, but I would rather wait for a 4600 that is tested to work or at least the Mac version of the card.

That said, I did test the card in the system out of curiosity. Not only the card doesn't perform as expected, maybe because it's bottlenecked by the 700 MHz Pentium III or that it's defective, it shows the artifacts too. Didn't crash, but the card is clearly defective. I read on Vogons that this may be because of defective memory chips.

The problem with later cards is that they don't work in Mac OS 9. I like having the great of both worlds, and I have early Intel Macs that I can install Snow Leopard to run later games if I need to.

Also lost a bid on a Quadro 4 900 XGL. I think I am done, until another Ti 4600 pops up. I will flash the Radeon 8500 and sell the 9000 Pro, since that card is somewhat disappointing and I have another one in my Pentium III build.

[chikorita157]

Some good news. I finally got the Mac version of the Geforce 4 Ti 4600 thanks to the owner of Mac OS 9 Lives. I have used it for a while and everything is stable, which was not the case with the PC version of the same card. I wonder if the PC version was abused for it to start dying like that or bad memory chips. Either way, that saga is over and the build is complete. It benchmarked the same, so I don't have to share any new benchmarks, although I noticed that the UI is smoother with this card over the Radeon 9000 Pro.



The next endgame upgrade is a faster G4 processor. The MDX Duet Accelerator, I can forget about that since those are really rare and probably be expensive, so I am probably be on the lookout for a Dual 1.42 GHz or a Dual 1.25 GHz if I can buy a parts system that has one or someone sells the processor module and the heatsink, if it's the 1.42 GHz. That is not a priority since 1 GHz is still plenty fast for what I am using it for, mostly for games and light audio editing (podcast recordings).

[IIO]

while i would love a ti, it is not at all an important upgrade if you are an audio guy.

first on list should be a bunch of SSDs (8*2 TB for the cost of one PCI slot?...), replacement fans, and then an audio DSP accelerator card depending on your platform.