G3 400 BW running Tiger

[Chrispy]

Hey all. I just got an older G3 400 BW and I have tiger running on it. It actually runs fairly well given it has 512MB RAM and SCSI HDs. However, the graphics card is only 16MB and I think this is causing me trouble. If I was to upgrade to a 64MB PCI graphics card in this system would things run better. Exposé and Dashboard are sluggish right now as in scrolling in some Safari windows. Would it be worth the money to upgrade the graphics card? Does anyone have this configuration (G3 400 and 64MB graphics and up)? Thanks all.

Oh and I am running on a 20" Dell widescreen display which I know is not helping performance any haha.

 

[zen.state]

your options are 32mb (radeon 7000) and 128mb (radeon 9200) for mac rom cards but some get ati 7000's that have 64mb to run on mac with a flashed rom.

I have seen mac 7000's for as low as 45$ on ebay

 

[Mechcozmo]

Upgrade the processor and the video card, maybe a bit of RAM, and you have a good computer for CHEAP!

Plus it's expandable

 

[ReanimationLP]

I'm running Tiger using my 400 MHz PCI G4. Performance is really snappy, but this is mainly due to the Radeon 7000 PCI Flashed card I had gotten off of ebay for about 50.

 

[Chrispy]

Ok I have a few questions. First, would this be a good config speed wise...

Upgrade from G3 400 to G4 700
Upgrade from 16MB Rage 128 to 128MB Radeon 9200 PCI
Upgrade from 2 8GB SCSI Drives to an 80GB WD 8MB cache ATA/100

Also, if I have the option between a G4 700Mhz or a G3 1000Mhz which one would be faster? Thanks all!

 

[Mechcozmo]

Ok I have a few questions. First, would this be a good config speed wise...

Upgrade from G3 400 to G4 700
Upgrade from 16MB Rage 128 to 128MB Radeon 9200 PCI
Upgrade from 2 8GB SCSI Drives to an 80GB WD 8MB cache ATA/100

Also, if I have the option between a G4 700Mhz or a G3 1000Mhz which one would be faster? Thanks all!

Firstly, it won't be a brand-new computer. But it will run nicely. And it really depends what you use your computer for... if it is a lot of iChat, Safari, Mail, work, then the 1 GHz G3. But the G4 if you do the occasional iMovie, etc.

 

[Chrispy]

I do occasional work in iMovie so then I should go for the G4 I assume because is does better with processor intensive activity? Thanks again for the advice everyone. This computer was a trade for an iPod I had but didn't really use that much since I have my iPod mini and I figured if I can upgrade it significantly for under $400 (which is where I am now with the config above) then why not.

Also, I play WoW on my PC but will it run with settings down on the mac after the upgrade? I like to use IM when playing the game as well as look at web pages and the PC gets cranky about that so I was thinking of moving to the mac for WoW if I can. Thanks

 

[Mechcozmo]

I do occasional work in iMovie so then I should go for the G4 I assume because is does better with processor intensive activity? Thanks again for the advice everyone. This computer was a trade for an iPod I had but didn't really use that much since I have my iPod mini and I figured if I can upgrade it significantly for under $400 (which is where I am now with the config above) then why not.

Also, I play WoW on my PC but will it run with settings down on the mac after the upgrade? I like to use IM when playing the game as well as look at web pages and the PC gets cranky about that so I was thinking of moving to the mac for WoW if I can. Thanks

Actually the G4 has the AltiVec doohicky on it which allows it to do a lot more work and faster with video, etc.

I don't know about WoW. With a 128MB Video Card you probably could, but your system bus will limit you a fair bit.

I'd upgrade the CPU, hard drive, and video card now, and then once I'd built up a bit more cash, move up to 1 GB of RAM or more. Older computers do well with RAM because they can cache more and then don't need to use the processor to grab stuff out of the hard drive, or cause a bottle neck, etc. And OS X loves RAM!

 

[zen.state]

do yourself a favor and do not buy the G4 700. any G4 zif upgrade over 600mhz in going to downclock your system bus from 100mhz to 66mhz. getting a G4 500 or 600 will run just as well if not faster since these speed zifs will keep your bus at 100mhz.

I have seen some xbench scores where a G4 500 zif beats a G4 1ghz in several tests. main slow down is memory on the 66mhz downclock and slow memory is a very bad thing.