blue and white, kill or save

[justblue]

i own a dual G4 mirror door, a 500 mhz OG g4, 2 450 mhz B&W G3's and a 400 mhz B&W G3, my question concerns the latter...

is it cost effective to try and make the G3 400mhz computer perform better?
i have spend a couple hours reading posts and i know it can be done, but i can't find a breakdown of costs.

i currently run OSX 10.3.9 on this machine with 512 ram. i use it at work for website maintenence, email and ad graphics for our company (using photoshop 8.0). the web crawls and a numbing speed and makes me wanna go postal (using roadrunner via ethernet)

anyone got recommendations on what to do and a guesstimate on costs?

thank you very much!


PS woot! 1st post

 

[Lord Zedd]

Go to eBay and find a cheap 350/400mphz G4 CPU to throw in it.

 

[hughvane]

is it cost effective to try and make the G3 400mhz computer perform better?
i have spend a couple hours reading posts and i know it can be done, but i can't find a breakdown of costs.
anyone got recommendations on what to do and a guesstimate on costs?

First thing is to upgrade the RAM to 1 Gb (4 x 256) Older RAM is getting both harder to find and higher priced, but OWC is the place to shop: http://eshop.macsales.com/MyOWC/Upgrades.cfm?model=41
Cost? either US$48 or US$64.

Second: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/PowerLogix/PFZGX10001M/
US$130 (has just gone up $5).

So, you're looking at US$180 - US$200. If you want to add a larger hard drive, say a 80 Gb Hitachi ATA, add US$45; or a Samsung 120 Gb ATA, add US$55.

I intend boosting my G3 350 b/w to get the 1 GHz processing speed. It's a little way off yet, lack of $$$.

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

mAxDaRam = $35 from the owc link above ( 2x 256 + the 512 you have now)

forget the G3 upgrade if you gonna change da CPU, see if you can find a 450/500mhz G4 minimum on ebay.....prolly ~$150
This will enable much faster gui rendering in OS X and make the whole machine feel faster PART 1

To really complete the performance upgrades (Part 2), you would need a Quartz-capable video card too.....like the Radeon 8500, 9000 or so.....prob ~$85-100 on ebay.......

so there you have it:

Spendin around 2-$300 on a mostly worthless machine that is and always will be forever obsolete & bottlenecked by the slow FSB and 2x AGP, not to mention complete mobo & PSU failure in the near future as well.....

Is this REALLY da path ya wanna embark upon

 

[disconap]

Smurfbox is right. I suggest spending the $35 on boosting the RAM and putting Panther on it and being happy with it as is, unless you have the money to blow. It'll work fine, if a little slow.

If you do, I actually have a MaxPower G4 upgrade for the b/w that I'm selling, I turned mine into a server and it didn't need the boost.