Powermac G4 Speed?

[7254278]

Hey All,
Tomorrow I will be purchasing a Powermac G4 Digital Audio, I wanted to know how would this compare to the ibook in my sig and my old sawtooth in my sig for things like, garageband maya rendering and games such as Americas Army, Football Manager 2006 and World Of Warcraft.

PowerMac G4@ 533 Dual
1.25 GB ram
80GB HD
Ati 9000 64mb(soon to be a radeon 9600)

Also how much are dual processor upgrades, like dual 800mhz?

 

[velocityg4]

The Dual 533 will make a bit of a difference with garageband. The increase in processor speed will not make much of a difference with games since most are not multiprocessor aware, however the ram increase and better video card will make a more noticeable difference.

In my opinion you would be better off getting a processor and video card upgrade for your Sawtooth G4. Possibly one of these from Gigadesigns http://www.gigadesigns.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=8. These seem to give the best performance for the money if you get a used accelerator I would expect less performance per dollar.

As for a Video card get something along the lines of a Radeon 8500 with 64mb of VRAM for $60 off ebay. If you can to spend more get a Radeon 9600/Geforce 4 Titanium or better.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

My dual 533 was a pretty good machine...yours has a better vid card (I had a Radeon 7500) and more RAM than mine did (I had 512).

I played CoD and Halo on it. performance ranged from marginal to good, depending on settings.

Performance with non gaming apps was quite good, most beachballing was due more to the limitations of the ATA hard disk/RAM than the CPUs.

Since then I've upgraded it as seen in my sig and it flies. Halo and CoD are nice and smooth, and ripping audio/DVDs is accomplished much quicker with the new CPU (But the dual 533s were still more than acceptable for this).

My recommendation: get a SATA hard drive. I saw a 10% performance jump across the board when I installed a SATA controller and 250GB Hitachi drive. The ATA controller on the logic board is a little slow.

If you want to play WoW I'd get a Radeon 9600 Pro or 9800 Pro. RAM is good at 1.25GB. Right now I can get playable framerates in Doom 3 at low settings; a Radeon 9800 would probably help me a lot there and wouldn't hurt WoW either.

Putting in a fast hard disk and better video card will make the dual 533 a better machine than the ibook - a Radeon 9800 in particular will do wonders for gaming, and you can always get a CPU upgrade when funds allow.

 

[7254278]

The Dual 533 will make a bit of a difference with garageband. The increase in processor speed will not make much of a difference with games since most are not multiprocessor aware, however the ram increase and better video card will make a more noticeable difference.

In my opinion you would be better off getting a processor and video card upgrade for your Sawtooth G4. Possibly one of these from Gigadesigns http://www.gigadesigns.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=8. These seem to give the best performance for the money if you get a used accelerator I would expect less performance per dollar.

As for a Video card get something along the lines of a Radeon 8500 with 64mb of VRAM for $60 off ebay. If you can to spend more get a Radeon 9600/Geforce 4 Titanium or better.

Not an option I sold the sawtooth a few weeks ago.

 

[7254278]

SNIP

So even with a 533 processor it will preform decently(17-25 FPS) on CoD on lower settings?

 

[jamesi]

keep in mind low settings means things dont look particularly good. someone above posted something about thier dual 533 or w/e running halo from "marginal to good" but this cannot be true. the radeon 7500 was a good card many a years ago but now it sucks. the 8500 is a big boost from your ati rage but i would suggest springing for something in the 9000 line. you should prolly just upgrade your current system as it could turn out to save you some money. if you jeep CoD and Halo on the lowest settings, you will be fine. tinker with the settings and find what works best

 

[7254278]

keep in mind low settings means things dont look particularly good. someone above posted something about thier dual 533 or w/e running halo from "marginal to good" but this cannot be true. the radeon 7500 was a good card many a years ago but now it sucks. the 8500 is a big boost from your ati rage but i would suggest springing for something in the 9000 line. you should prolly just upgrade your current system as it could turn out to save you some money. if you jeep CoD and Halo on the lowest settings, you will be fine. tinker with the settings and find what works best

Keep in mind I have 1.25GB ram and an ati radeon 9000 not a rage, im talking bout my newe digital audio not my sawtooth.

 

[7254278]

Sorry for the bump but I will purchase this computer in a few hours and I am hoping to get some more opinions.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

17-25 is about right for CoD. My dual 533 actually broke into the 30s when the levels were indoors.