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I want to upgrade my G4 iMac 20"....

A

About2SwitchOvr

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 22, 2004
150
0
Boston
I have a 20" iMac, G4, superdrive, OSX, 768 ram, 80 gigs, etc...
The current (stock) video card is the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra w/ 64mb of DDR SDRAM.

I am wondering if I can upgrade the video card. The only games I play on here are CC:G and Civ 3. I just think that if I uped the video card, the games would run a bit smoother (not that bad, now), and I'd be able to scroll through pdf's with large pictures files in them.

Has anyone upgraded their iMac?

Thanks!!!
 
M

mikeyredk

macrumors 65816
Mar 13, 2003
1,267
1
Nope you cannot upgrade the video card. I say upgrade the ram remove the 512 and place a 1 gig chip in.

If you want to play games and want to be expandable you should go for the powermac
 
N

neoelectronaut

Cancelled
Dec 3, 2003
3,417
2,093
Upgrade...an iMac...

LMAO...

Upgrade....


LMAO!

*sigh...

Okay. Besides the RAM and Airport Card, you ain't upgrading anything in that thing unless you decide to crack open the sucker like an egg.
 
vraxtus

vraxtus

macrumors 65816
Aug 4, 2004
1,044
30
San Francisco, CA
neoelectronaut said:
Upgrade...an iMac...

LMAO...

Upgrade....


LMAO!

*sigh...

Okay. Besides the RAM and Airport Card, you ain't upgrading anything in that thing unless you decide to crack open the sucker like an egg.
Click to expand...


I second that... but even if you crack it open everything's soldered onto the logic board... so no hope there.
 
QCassidy352

QCassidy352

macrumors G5
Mar 20, 2003
12,028
6,036
Bay Area
just curious... regarding the PDFs, are you using preview, or acrobat reader? Because my 1 Ghz powerbook lags terribly with acrobat reader, but can handle any PDF flawlessly with preview.
 
A

About2SwitchOvr

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 22, 2004
150
0
Boston
QCassidy352 said:
just curious... regarding the PDFs, are you using preview, or acrobat reader? Because my 1 Ghz powerbook lags terribly with acrobat reader, but can handle any PDF flawlessly with preview.
Click to expand...

I use Preview to view pdfs...
the pdf I was specifically referring to, was the Wash, DC metro map, zoomed in, full screen (rather, maximized). When I don't zoom in, it's fine, but when I do zoom in, to look at the street names (etc...), it lags terribly, when scrolling up/down.
I don't want to come off as complaining, but rather, being curious...
Why does it lag, when I'm zoomed in, and not, when I'm not zoomed in? Is it that the computer is using more resources, to zoom in, while making it look sharp at the same time? (that's the only reason I can think of)
 
C

Coca-Cola

macrumors 6502
Dec 10, 2002
446
0
WA
There is a G4 upgrade available for the G3 iMac. You just yank out the motherboard and have a company solder a new G4 chip on. But that does little for the graphics card. My iMac has a 8MB card in it. I now have 32 in my powerbook, and your complaining about 64? Geez. Maybe in the far off future a company will be buying G5 chips and mounting them to G4 iMac motherboards. I hope the iMac G5 will have make some innovations into the whole upgradable graphics card area. Remember how great it was to have a door on the bottom of the iMac to upgrade the ram? I want a door to upgrade my graphics card.
 
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