To keep or not to keep... G4 powermac

[Chrispy]

so are you keeping the PowerMac? it says ur selling it in ur sig

I think I'm gonna keep it. It is worth a few hundred bucks I could get for it just to have a second computer around. Folding time

 

[BiggeeC]

This must be a strange day.......I too have just purchased a Sawtooth. Here's what I have:

400mhz
No video Card
160 Gig HD
No Ram
No DVD/CD

However, I only paid $100 for it, and have purchased it as a hobby (sadly, I am currently without one) I figure it will only cost me $500 or so to have a good working machine. I can't afford a G5, nor do I really need one. The most intensive thing I do, or have ever done on my ibook is iphoto. The way I see it, this machine + my ibook will keep me occupied until the "Big switch". I see many people on this forum have Powermac G4's running smoothly at 400mhz. I really don't have any need for a 2.8ghz G5, you know? Anyway, good luck to the people who acquired new mac's!!

 

[leekohler]

This must be a strange day.......I too have just purchased a Sawtooth. Here's what I have:

400mhz
No video Card
160 Gig HD
No Ram
No DVD/CD

However, I only paid $100 for it, and have purchased it as a hobby (sadly, I am currently without one) I figure it will only cost me $500 or so to have a good working machine. I can't afford a G5, nor do I really need one. The most intensive thing I do, or have ever done on my ibook is iphoto. The way I see it, this machine + my ibook will keep me occupied until the "Big switch". I see many people on this forum have Powermac G4's running smoothly at 400mhz. I really don't have any need for a 2.8ghz G5, you know? Anyway, good luck to the people who acquired new mac's!!

Oh- have fun playing! I love messing around inside my Mac too. It should be decent for you.

 

[Chrispy]

This must be a strange day.......I too have just purchased a Sawtooth. Here's what I have:

400mhz
No video Card
160 Gig HD
No Ram
No DVD/CD

However, I only paid $100 for it, and have purchased it as a hobby (sadly, I am currently without one) I figure it will only cost me $500 or so to have a good working machine. I can't afford a G5, nor do I really need one. The most intensive thing I do, or have ever done on my ibook is iphoto. The way I see it, this machine + my ibook will keep me occupied until the "Big switch". I see many people on this forum have Powermac G4's running smoothly at 400mhz. I really don't have any need for a 2.8ghz G5, you know? Anyway, good luck to the people who acquired new mac's!!

Awesome deal. I have a 40GB and an 80GB HD that will be the main storage for mine so I will have a nice 120GB to work with when all is said and done I just ordered a 1GHz upgrade and a Radeon 9000 128MB Graphics card today to give it some extra spunk. This is my only computer with a DVD Burner (16x dual layer) so I want to make sure it has the stuff go get the job done when I need to use iDVD. Have a good time upgrading your and playing with your new mac

 

[Tilmitt]

why sell?!?! keep your beloved PB and have fun upgrading your PM! and if you need a lil bit of money sell the damn iBook, what's it really worth? 10GB HD? 500MHz? come on.

I WOULDN'T SELL A BRAND NEW POWERBOOK TO BUY UPGRADES FOR AN OLD POWERMAC...

It all really depends on your finacial status. If you have about a grand to spend, spend it on this!! or just save up for each ugprade component...

REALLY, DON'T SELL YOUR POWERBOOK, IF YOU DO YOU'LL WISH YOU HADN'T!

that's my two cents

I totally agree. Have fun with upgrading the PM and don't lose the PB!

 

[bsichran]

Upgrade Advice

Hi guys, I would appreciate some upgrade feedback for my AGP Graphics G4. I also got my Mac for $100. So far I've added a hard drive and a DVD burner:

400 Mhz AGP Graphics
1 GB RAM
10 GB & 120 GB HD
NEC 3520 DL, 16X DVD Burner

I plan to buy a CPU upgrade and use it primarily for FCP and Digital Performer. I know the FSB and the RAM and the everything else is slower than a G5, but based on feedback at xlr8yourmac I figure it would be fine for two years or so. Any suggestions as to speed and SP or DP? I'd like to have, say, DP, Reason, and a couple of soft synths open at the same time, or FCP, Photoshop, and AE open at the same time, so I think I need a DP.

Thanks

 

[Mord]

sell it and use the money to buy a pair of 1GB sticks for your powerbook.

 

[Chrispy]

sell it and use the money to buy a pair of 1GB sticks for your powerbook.

Sometime down the road I may upgrade to 2GB of ram from the 1GB I have in it now. Will I really see a big performance boost going from 1 to 2gigs tho? I will probably just wait until I need it but I was curious if it really made a big difference. Thanks

 

[zen.state]

The difference in RAM speed between the G4 tower and the Mini is not 100 MHz buss speed vs 167 MHz buss speed, it is a difference in maximum bandwidth of 800 MBs vs 2,700 MBs. That's huge.

Both the Mini and the Powerbook 15 1.5 use Dual Data Rate (DDR) RAM which executes on both the rising and trailing edge of the buss clock. So the DDR performance is 2 x 167% = 333% of the performance of the PC100.

I just can't see putting an expensive dual proc. upgrade into the tower -- especially since the highest speed G4 upgrades come without L2 cache. The processor will be hobbled by the PC100 memory buss. If you are going to put in a CPU upgrade, choose a product that is one or two steps down from the top of the line, and make sure you get a 1 Mb L2 cache to mitigate the slowdowns from the main memory.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

I bought a mini yesterday and what you say is 100% true. my powermac with pc 100 memory and a 100mhz bus gets an xbench memory score of about 41. my mini scores a 128 with half the ram (see sig)

 

[Mord]

xbench is a very flawed benchmark, ironically the more ram you have the lower your scores are (no clue why) just focus on the cpu tests, the graphics card tests are all wrong too they show that a rage is better than a geforce 3 .