Software and Hardware upgrades for Power Mac G4

[InfoTime]

Working on a Power Mac G4 (blue) 450 MHz with 256 MB RAM, 10.2.x and Office X. What's the sweetspot for upgrading this machine?

I was thinking Tiger 10.4.11 and another 1 GB of RAM. Would the install of Office X survive an upgrade to Tiger and is Office X compatible with Tiger?

 

[robotartfashion]

The ram and Tiger are a good way to help optimize it.

I would check out ebay or www.ramseeker.com for the best deals on the ram.

Have you added usb 2.0 or sata compatibility? You can get PCI cards that make that possible.

I think you'll be fine with Office X and Tiger.

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

I'd upgrade the memory to 2gb, install a dual processor(dual 500mhz), install a better graphics card(ie ATI 9800 pro). PCI SATA adapter with SATA hard drives and a USB 2.0 PCI card. Tiger 10.4 OSX will be the latest OS that you could run.

But after all that, I would rather pick up a cheap G5 for the same price as those upgrades.

 

[300D]

Max out the ram, upgrade to a used Apple dual CPU board (if your model will accept them) or a modified 600mhz single from ebay.

An upgrade that makes a BIG difference is to get a SATA card and a 16gb SSD boot drive. Those ancient IDE drives are a huge bottleneck even on a completely stock machine.

Get any cheap mac AGP video card with 32 or 64mb of ram.

Spending more money than that is a waste, you'll be in G5 price territory, which even the base models are faster than any G4 ever could be.