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How much faster is an G4 iBook compared to a G3 iBook?

A

atomheartmother

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 27, 2006
214
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Right now I have a G3 iBook (900 MHz, 640 MB RAM, Combodrive, 40 GB HDD). I'm looking at a G4 iBook (1.2 GHz, 768 MB RAM, Superdrive, 60 GB HDD).

How much faster would the G4 be over my G3. I figure that after selling my G3, the G4 would only be another $200ish on top of it. Would this be worth it?
 
What apps will you be running?

For most things (Web, email, word processing), there will little difference. For more processor intensive tasks (pic editing, ripping songs from CDs) there will be a nice speed bump. For $200, go for it.
 
I know this thread is really old, but what kind of difference would I see between a 600mhz iBook g3 with 640mb of ram and a 700mhz iMac g4 with 256mb? I'll probably upgrade to 768mb in the future.
It was a pretty lucky upgrade, I managed to sell my iBook and for exactly the same amount I spent on the iMac.:D
 
Going from a G3 to a G4 is a good speed bump. Even if the clock speed is only a 100Mhz increase, it'll be a good increase. The ram is the limitation for your iMac. Once it's upgraded, it'll out preform any G3 iBook. The desktop drive in the iMac will load things faster than the slow laptop drive in the iBook.
 
Would an upgrade to 512mb be enough? As it turns out PC133 memory is kinda pricey, and considering this iMac won't really be doing anything most time I don't want to put much money into it. I just want to use it for some pretty basic things and maybe play a few old games. The iMac is running 10.4.11.
 
512 should be enough for Tiger/10.4.11. If you plan up putting Leopard on it, I'd suggest upgrading to 768 or even the maximum of 1Gb.
 
Intell said:
512 should be enough for Tiger/10.4.11. If you plan up putting Leopard on it, I'd suggest upgrading to 768 or even the maximum of 1Gb.
Click to expand...

Agreed, although I'd probably stick with Tiger since TenFourFox is (obviously) compatible with 10.4. 1GB of RAM would be quite sufficient for Tiger. I used to have a 700MHz (256MB RAM) iMac a few years ago. I loaded World of Warcraft on it just to see what would happen (back before Blizzard ended PPC support). I managed to get about 5-10fps on the lowest settings. It's pretty amazing what these old PPC machines can still accomplish at such an old age.
 
atomheartmother said:
Right now I have a G3 iBook (900 MHz, 640 MB RAM, Combodrive, 40 GB HDD). I'm looking at a G4 iBook (1.2 GHz, 768 MB RAM, Superdrive, 60 GB HDD).

How much faster would the G4 be over my G3. I figure that after selling my G3, the G4 would only be another $200ish on top of it. Would this be worth it?
Click to expand...

Having previously dealt with both clamshells, dual-USB G3's, and G4's, the G4's have a more stable display than the G3's, which would stop working, though not completely (Actually, Apple used to repair those for free). In G3's, you usually have to look at the processes running and manage them yourself to prevent lagging and stuff, but you can use a G4 for a lot more at once. You can always expand the RAM to 1 GB later, which would give you a serious performance boost. Also, it can depend on which OS you are running. I used to have a G4 (see below) and surprisingly, it gave me great performance in G3 could give you even better performance.
 
Man, I remember after I killed my Intel Mac mini a few years back, I had only the use of my 800 MHz iBook G3 w/ 256 MB RAM and Tiger for two months. I had used it from time to time when I wasn't at my mini, but having to put in service as my only machine was a struggle. It did just fine browsing most sites and using iChat and iTunes... but give it any more tasks than that and it just wouldn't cut it.

And then I bought my 1.3 GHz iBook G4 w/ 512 MB RAM, The difference was near night and day. The G4 could easily do all of the above, plus ripping a DVD in Handbrake and uploading some pictures in Skitch, among other things. And once I maxed out the RAM to 1.25 GB, I had more machine than I knew what to do with.

...I really need to stop talking about that thing, everytime I do I always end up browsing eBay for a bit. :eek:
 
Agreed for the most part

Thought I would chime in here..

After owning a series of iBooks (500-900), all maxed out with ram and running 10.4.11, I jumped to a G4/500(TiBook) to my current Alum 15/1.5.

I have to say the performance is truly night and day. I have yet to really throw anything at this laptop that it cannot do. The thing that gets me the most is the difference in build quality. The iBooks where in my opinion some of the cheapest machines build wise that apple ever made. The keyboards are horrid, the screens leave a lot to be desired and the case flex? There were times with my 700,800 and 900 that if picked up with one hand made the battery fall out.

At any rate, while I am all for ya upgrading and staying PPC, for the money? I would troll eBay, craig's list or even the LEMSwap list for an alum PowerBook. They can be had for around the same price or a few bucks more and are well WELL worth it.

YMMV,

~Nathan
 
Since OS X up to 10.5 is loaded with Altivec optimizations the G4 will be much faster. To the point that a G4 of the same speed as a G3 would be as much as 60-130% faster with properly written Altivec code. It's almost like early dual core technology as the Altivec unit in the CPU is virtually it's own entity/engine piggy backed onto the CPU.

Browsers like Camino, media apps like CorePlayer, VLC or Mplayer and a massive list of other things I could list are all fully Altivec optimized.

The G4 and G5 are the only CPU's Apple used that have Altivec units in them.
 
Cassie said:
I had only the use of my 800 MHz iBook G3 w/ 256 MB RAM
Click to expand...

Well there's your problem. I had the same iBook, same RAM, same bad performance. Then I put a 512mb stick in there and it ran beautifully, and is even able to play Quake 3 on high settings and COD on low settings.
 
A G4 is definately (in my opinion) a much faster machine that a G3. For a short while, I had a G4 iBook (1.33 GHz, 768MB RAM, 60GB HD, OS X Leopard). I found it to be at least 50% faster... even running Leopard. I personally see no difference in speed from running Tiger or Leopard on a G4. Both are fast. As with browsers, I'd go with (as dumb as this may sound) Safari 5. I thought is was quite reliable and fast. I also discovered another browser, which may soon be a PPC form of Google Chrome called Stainless

Good luck!
 
MinuteBracelet said:
Well there's your problem. I had the same iBook, same RAM, same bad performance. Then I put a 512mb stick in there and it ran beautifully, and is even able to play Quake 3 on high settings and COD on low settings.
Click to expand...
Oh, I know I could have bumped up the RAM and had a nice little machine, but I never could justify spending the money. It had every problem the G3's are notorious for, and eventually died a slow painful death anyway. But if you find one in still working condition, they are definitely worth the $50-60 or so they go for these days. Nice starter computers.
 
Cassie said:
Oh, I know I could have bumped up the RAM and had a nice little machine, but I never could justify spending the money. It had every problem the G3's are notorious for, and eventually died a slow painful death anyway. But if you find one in still working condition, they are definitely worth the $50-60 or so they go for these days. Nice starter computers.
Click to expand...

Well, sad to see another one go :/

However, relating to the topic, I would like to know if there is any significant performance difference between a G3 and a G4 of the same clock speed? I know about Altivec and all but if I ran apps that weren't Altivec-enabled or whatever would I still notice a speed difference?

Here's my dilemma. I have an iBook G3 which I use to play retro games like Quake 3, but it doesn't quite cut it for Halo: Combat Evolved. However, recently I acquired a G4 iMac, that surprisingly, in theory, should have the same, if worse, performance than the G3. However, one crucial difference is the G3 runs Tiger and the G4 runs Panther. I'm not sure if it makes that much of a difference, but what I do know is that Halo: Combat Evolved and Call of Duty 1 both run smoother on the iMac G4 than the iBook G3, despite them having nearly the same specs. I'll list the specs:

G3 iBook
800Mhz G3
768MB RAM
32MB VRAM
Mac OS 10.4.11
(also, I'd like to add that the disk is an image of a school eMac from my Junior High. It has a bunch of pre-loaded software that I usually don't use, but I turned all or most of the background processes like VirtueDesktops off when I use the computer)

G4 iMac
800Mhz G4
512MB RAM
32MB VRAM
Mac OS 10.3.(9? didn't check)
(In addition, I thought it would also be important to add that the previous owners did me a good favor by upgrading the HDD long before they gave it to me. The HDD is almost a clean install, save for a few things like a corrupted iTunes library, a copy of Warcraft 3 that I don't have the CD to, and some stuff I put on it like Opera and Call of Duty. I'm not exactly sure if having a less cluttered drive affects system performance in terms of things like video playback or gaming)

The reason why I'm asking this is because I'm pondering if I should upgrade the G4 to Tiger for compatibility with things like TenFourFox and iMovie 6, or not because the performance gap might just an illusion because of the two system's differing HDD's and OSes, and upgrading might prevent me from playing Halo at a decent framerate.
 
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