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ibook g4 1ghz how much faster than g3 800

S

Squareball

macrumors regular
Original poster
I have a dillema.

My apple 1yr warranty is going to run out in a few months on my g3 800mhz iBook. It was bought in Sept. 2003. It has 640mb ram.
Now I could purchase applecare but for just a little more I could just sell my current ibook and get a new g4 1ghz ibook. So in all I would maybe only take a $400 hit as opposed to like $250 for the extended warranty. I would love to upgrade too as this g3 is a little lack lustre at times when doing things in Photoshop (which is a big part of my job).

So how much faster is the new g4 ibook 1ghz with 768mb of ram compared to the g3 I have. I looked all around for benchmarks but didn't really come up with anything useful comparing the two.
 
If the application is optimized to take advantage of alivec then it will be quite a bit faster on the new machine. The extra ram won't hurt either. However, on apps not optimized for altivec, I would imagine that it would be only slightly faster, due to simply the increase in clock speed of the processor. I beleive photoshop is optimized, but I hope someone else will back me up on this.
 
photoshop is largely optimized for altivec, so a G4 makes a very big difference over a G3 there. The ibook G4s also have high clockspeeds, faster RAM, faster system bus (133 to 100) and better graphics cards. All of that adds up to a computer that will be noticeably faster on most tasks, and *way* faster on altivec-aware tasks like Photoshop. If the price difference between applecare and replacing your ibook with a new G4 is really going to work out to be only $150, I'd say definitely get the new ibook.
 
Thanks guys.
I went ahead and ordered it.

Applecare would be like what $250 and after all is said and done for this new ibook I will spend like $400... not bad.. I look forward to the faster computer! Right now runing illustrator is painful!
 
FuzzyBallz said:
The biggest improvement you'll see has to be the startup time. G3 is sooo damn slow.
Click to expand...

Good god yes! When I get to my login screen, I login and then sit there staring at a blank desktop for THREE minutes 😱 (no lie! I timed it) before my dock shows up and things are ready to use!
 
Squareball said:
Good god yes! When I get to my login screen, I login and then sit there staring at a blank desktop for THREE minutes 😱 (no lie! I timed it) before my dock shows up and things are ready to use!
Click to expand...
There's something wrong with your HD I guess because on my 350 mhz imac that same task takes around 10-15 secs.
Maybe your HD is too crowded or there's too much stuff in home folder...
 
I agree that the G3 is slow at this function, but I always get the task done in less than 30 seconds. I too wonder if something isn't wrong. This upgrade may be well timed 😀
 
Megaquad said:
There's something wrong with your HD I guess because on my 350 mhz imac that same task takes around 10-15 secs.
Maybe your HD is too crowded or there's too much stuff in home folder...
Click to expand...

My NEW G3 800 iBook takes about 1.5 minutes to boot up...and I've barely used it at all...

Even my P1 233 with 96MB RAM booted into '95 in only a minute. Talk about taking a step back 🙁
 
Mav451 said:
My NEW G3 800 iBook takes about 1.5 minutes to boot up...and I've barely used it at all...

Even my P1 233 with 96MB RAM booted into '95 in only a minute. Talk about taking a step back 🙁
Click to expand...
I meant to say that it takes for my iMac 10 secs from that user-account choosing, login screen to desktop, sorry I must have misunderstood it.
Boot up takes around 100 secs, somewhat faster since I got new Maxtor HD.

As for iBook, this revision is really nice, except for one thing, there's only 32 MB of VRAM 🙁
From what I understand 64 MB would make a lot difference... why couldn't they just put 32 MB more? bah..
 
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