G3 conversion or sell

[zuffen]

Here is a question/s for you techies....

I have a...
G3 400 scsi with 1 gig, 80 gig of UW2 storage and a bunch of legal software. FCP 2 PS, AE, VPC,VPS, etc.

Is there a G3 to G4 upgrade that will run FCP3.

If so it may be a bandaid till the new machines arrive.

Or sell my G3 with all software ( I can buy at ed discount) and buy a G4 iMac and learn and use FCP3 till a dual faster G4 or G5 arrives. I think it would be silly to buy cutting edge tower now while balancing on the edge waiting for new machines.

Keep in mind the iMac isn't suitable for FCP, if it only had dual monitor out unmirrored.

My brain is in a tissie on what to do. Keep in mind I love my G3 and would love to keep it but it would gather dust plus I can't afford to upgrade now and upgrade again unless I sell my baby.

At your mercy MAC brethren.

 

[evildead]

I would wait

I would wait for a big upgrade and then get a new tower. Like you said an upgrade CPU card for you current G4 would just be a bandaid. You sound like you are a serious user and demand some real proformance. The thing is, the CPU is not the weakest link in a desktop. Storage and RAM are the biggest bottle neck. If you run some tests and monitor your CPU, you will see that the I/O gets hit hareder than your CPU. True, the faster the CPU the better but getting a minor speed bump with a new CPU upgrade card is not going to hold you for long. If I were you I would wait untill a new Tower comes out... or mabe even the next one after that. things to look for are faster HD ( I see that you like SCSI) ATA 166 is out and iSCSI is arround the corner. Fibre is too expensive still. DDR memory is a must. Faster bus, faster PCI bus, FireWire2.0. I dont know if these things will be part of the nect Mac or not but they would mean some real proformance boosts. If you cant hold out for a 2 more generations of Pro Mac's, then Maybe an upgrade will hold you over. I just dont think you will be that happy spending $500.00 on an 500Mhz G4 upgrade card.

 

[zuffen]

I'm leaning

I thinking about just getting a G4 Imac and live with the one monitor problem. Sell the G3 with the scsi and all and if I run into a storage wall then buy a firewire drive. but with the DVD burner it shouldn't be an issue.

I found that out of all the software I only use four items and buying them agian won't be too bad plus I can skip all the upgrades.

I spent 3K on my system so it sucks that maybe I might see half that or enough to buy the Imac.

Thanks