BW G3 Upgrades?

[Apple][Forever]

Question:

I have a 450 G3 Blue & White. It has an 80GB IDE HD and 768MB RAM. I'm running OS 10.1.5. I run Photoshop, Flash MX, and Illustrator on a regular basis. I also play a bit of Warcraft 3 (don't tell anyone ). Which of these upgrades are worthwhile?

- 550 G4 ZIF upgrade (altivec would be nice, but is 100MHz going to make a difference?)
- ATA 100 controller (my drive is new, supports it. the scsi drive that came with it conked out. I think the BWs have ATA33.)
- Radeon PCI to eplace the Rage 128 (no matter what i do with the video, no QE, but WC3 might run better)
- Forget about it and wait till the G5 comes out in a coupla years

 

[marcsiry]

I did all three- except it was a 500 mhz ZIF and an ATA66 card (I upgraded 6 months ago, except for my Radeon 7000 that I threw in two months ago). I also went to 1 GB of 2-2-2 RAM and a 7200 RPM drive.

Overall, it increased the speed of my (prior 350 g3) by about 100% in Photoshop (that's a combo of RAM, faster disk, and Altivec). Overall system response and startup was similarly snappier.

Then I started working in Flash MX in OS X... dooooogggggg slow. It made me go out and buy a 1 Ghz DP. That's fast enough

My upgrades all together cost about $800. Not bad to double the speed of my comp! However, I couldn't do anything to make it as fast as my new DP regardless of the price...at some point you just have to trade up. The suite of new tech I got with the DP (AGP for QE, 133 mhz bus, DDR L3 cache) is stuff the BW will never match.

If it's worth $800 (or less, since you have the drive and plenty of memory already) to get some zip in your machine, go for it! If you have a little more $ to play with I'd say wait for the next gen's low-end machine. It will definitely blow away your current machine... and may even give my new one a run for its money!

 

[bousozoku]

Just remember that the system throughput of a G3 is not as good as the earliest PowerMac G4. The original Sawtooth G4s had something like 3 times the memory throughput alone in contrast to the G3-based motherboard for Yikes.

I noticed something disconcerting when I added an IBM 7200 rpm ATA drive to my G3/400. It slowed down. The main drive is an Ultra2 SCSI drive...only 9 GB though. When, I switched drives for a while, folding@home ran at half the speed with the ATA drive. My newer dual processor 800 MHz G4 has an ATA drive and only processes folding@home at twice the speed of the G3. I'm hoping with the G4 that it's just constrained by the lack of memory--only 512MB.

 

[Apple][Forever]

Thanks folks...

I agree--looks like I'll just have to make do, which isn't too bad. the system is definitely usable.

On my G3, i noticed a slight improvement in speed after putting in the hew HDD. Do you have a samsung drive? I've seen some weird compatibility jumper settings on those... if it's set wrong it might be putting more of a strain on the controller. Other than that, I can't imagine why a computer would slow down that much from that.

 

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by Apple][Forever
Thanks folks...

I agree--looks like I'll just have to make do, which isn't too bad. the system is definitely usable.

On my G3, i noticed a slight improvement in speed after putting in the hew HDD. Do you have a samsung drive? I've seen some weird compatibility jumper settings on those... if it's set wrong it might be putting more of a strain on the controller. Other than that, I can't imagine why a computer would slow down that much from that.

It's an IBM DeskStar 7200 rpm drive. I think it's just that SCSI drives, in general, do their business without needing the computer and ATA drives absolutely need the computer. That would also explain why I've seen the same ATA drives run faster on machines with a faster processor. If I buy the ATA/100 card, it will probably speed everything up somewhat.

 

[Hemingray]

Originally posted by bousozoku
Just remember that the system throughput of a G3 is not as good as the earliest PowerMac G4. The original Sawtooth G4s had something like 3 times the memory throughput alone in contrast to the G3-based motherboard for Yikes.

Did you mean that the system throughput of the G3 was not as good as the Sawtooth G4? The earliest G4 was the Yikes.

 

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by Hemingray


Did you mean that the system throughput of the G3 was not as good as the Sawtooth G4? The earliest G4 was the Yikes.

The slowest of the original G4s was Yikes-based. The 400 (later 350) was using a Yikes motherboard. The 450 and 500 (later 400 and 450) were using the Sawtooth board.

 

[Hemingray]

Originally posted by bousozoku


The slowest of the original G4s was Yikes-based. The 400 (later 350) was using a Yikes motherboard. The 450 and 500 (later 400 and 450) were using the Sawtooth board.

Right, but you said that "the system throughput of a G3 is not as good as the earliest PowerMac G4" when in fact it was, since the earliest G4s (Yikes) were using the same mobo as the B/W G3s. You then go on to speak about the Sawtooths. Just confused me a little.

 

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by Hemingray


Right, but you said that "the system throughput of a G3 is not as good as the earliest PowerMac G4" when in fact it was, since the earliest G4s (Yikes) were using the same mobo as the B/W G3s. You then go on to speak about the Sawtooths. Just confused me a little.

It seems to me the first G4 machine announced was the 500, if I must pick nits.

It's nice to know that I'm not just confusing myself. Thanks!

 

[Hemingray]

Yup, 400, 450 and 500. Then downgraded to 350, 400 and 450. That was the one time I felt fortunate to have ordered the 400 right before it jumped $1000 in price by taking the 450's original spot.