Hi, I have a Sawtooth AGP G4 PowerMac Tower running currently with a Sonnet 1.0GHz G4, and it works fine. I've been waiting patiently for Apple to come out with a G5 consumer tower, but it appears they won't be anytime soon. I don't really like the G5 Pro Tower's case (I have a dual 2.5GHz tower under my desk at work), so the stripped down (performance-wise) single G5 Tower they currently offer doesn't appeal to me. They're really nice in a business office, but way too big for my home office, and I like my G4 Tower sitting in the corner on the top of my desk. It's really convenient there with easy access to both the ports on the back and its insides with a simple flip-down of the side door.
Thus, I'm now planning to upgrade my Sawtooth once more. At work we have a couple of old Sawtooth G4 dual processor towers that are quite peppy (even at only 500MHz), so I'm now looking around to upgrade my home machine to dual processors (I have the Uni-7 board). My current setup is pretty nice, with a Pioneer DVR-108 burner, the built-in Zip (haven't used it in years), a new 120GB 7200 RPM Seagate HD, and a Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edition video card (now $249 at ATI's site) driving my new 23" Apple Cinema Display. Oh, and I have 896MB RAM.
My concerns are two-fold. The old Sawtooth has the original power supply (I think it's 200 watts), so I don't want to tax it, but I really like the responsiveness of the dual G4s at work. My current Sonnet card has worked perfectly, but I'm torn with their higher prices, compared to PowerLogix, Giga, OWC, and the other competitors.
I'm thinking a dual 1.2 - 1.4GHz card would meet my needs for the next couple of years. I just got a Canon DV camcorder for Christmas, so I'm looking forward to doing some iMovie editing.
So, what kind of advice can you offer? PowerLogix seems to have terrible customer support and responsiveness, Sonnet has good customer support but higher prices, Giga seems to over-clock its accelerators which I suppose drives up the heat and power usage, OWC seems to have great customer support but lower quality cards, and none of the sites seem to actually say just how much power (watts) their accelerators need to run reliably.
Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer. I've been reading xlr8yourmac's customer comments, and lately it appears Sonnet's dual CPU cards have been misbehaving. Of course, the number of postings is small, so it's hard to say if their comments are representative.
Thus, I'm now planning to upgrade my Sawtooth once more. At work we have a couple of old Sawtooth G4 dual processor towers that are quite peppy (even at only 500MHz), so I'm now looking around to upgrade my home machine to dual processors (I have the Uni-7 board). My current setup is pretty nice, with a Pioneer DVR-108 burner, the built-in Zip (haven't used it in years), a new 120GB 7200 RPM Seagate HD, and a Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edition video card (now $249 at ATI's site) driving my new 23" Apple Cinema Display. Oh, and I have 896MB RAM.
My concerns are two-fold. The old Sawtooth has the original power supply (I think it's 200 watts), so I don't want to tax it, but I really like the responsiveness of the dual G4s at work. My current Sonnet card has worked perfectly, but I'm torn with their higher prices, compared to PowerLogix, Giga, OWC, and the other competitors.
I'm thinking a dual 1.2 - 1.4GHz card would meet my needs for the next couple of years. I just got a Canon DV camcorder for Christmas, so I'm looking forward to doing some iMovie editing.
So, what kind of advice can you offer? PowerLogix seems to have terrible customer support and responsiveness, Sonnet has good customer support but higher prices, Giga seems to over-clock its accelerators which I suppose drives up the heat and power usage, OWC seems to have great customer support but lower quality cards, and none of the sites seem to actually say just how much power (watts) their accelerators need to run reliably.
Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer. I've been reading xlr8yourmac's customer comments, and lately it appears Sonnet's dual CPU cards have been misbehaving. Of course, the number of postings is small, so it's hard to say if their comments are representative.