powermac g3 upgaded to 1ghz worth it?

[kenmasters]

i skimped on buying the emac..

i am now going to purchase an old power mac g3 and upgrade it to a 1ghz chip.


i can buy the powermac g3's from school surplus auction for $10 a piece the specs are written on the side.


now i know any 1 ghz mac is going to be expensive but if i can get a powermac g3 thats super cheap and then spend the cash on an upgrade will it be worth it?

i already have a ati 9200 pci videocard so i should get like 10x the performance when the upgrade is done to a powermac g3 right?

 

[motulist]

No. What you'll wind up with isn't worth the price of a CPU upgrade card. You'd probably have to spend more money on ram upgrades as the old school G3 will be ram anemic, then you'll have to buy an OS X install license because it probably only has 10.2 installed on it at the very most.

 

[Mac 13]

i skimped on buying the emac..

i am now going to purchase an old power mac g3 and upgrade it to a 1ghz chip.


i can buy the powermac g3's from school surplus auction for $10 a piece the specs are written on the side.


now i know any 1 ghz mac is going to be expensive but if i can get a powermac g3 thats super cheap and then spend the cash on an upgrade will it be worth it?

i already have a ati 9200 pci videocard so i should get like 10x the performance when the upgrade is done to a powermac g3 right?

Of course it's worth it assuming you are just using it with apps that don't need to much power. The upgrade will cost you only $99 for a new PCI 1ghz processor from sonnet or you can spend $500 more for a 1.83ghz mini.
>
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http://store1.sonnettech.com/index.php?cPath=22_29

 

[Lord Blackadder]

You need at least 512MB of RAM as well, preferably more.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

I concur with the consensus. Buying it, even dirt cheap, specifically to upgrade, is not going to be worth it. You're better off finding a natively faster G4. You'll get better (and more upgradeable) graphics, a faster drive bus, and a faster processor right off the bat. Low End Mac lists the current G4 deals. Yeah, you'll spend more than $100, but in order to have a truly usable computer out of that G3, you'd spend about as much, anyway.

The insane thing is that the very first generation G4 Mac minis are selling for as much as they did new! (1.25 GHz, 256 MB RAM, 40 GB hard drive, Combo Drive, $499 used, the exact same price it sold for brand new in January 2005.)

 

[CanadaRAM]

add to the mix -- slow ATA bus, limited to 120 Gb hard drives internally, no DVD reader/burner probably, slow PC66 memory bus, memory compatibility and overheating problems in general with CPU upgrades, USB 1.1 IIRC, not 2.0. Goofy video card.

 

[motulist]

So we all agree, buying a G3 for $10 with the plan to highly upgrade it makes no sense.

However, for $10 I think it's totally worth buying a few just to have around! Stock G3 towers can be upgraded all the way up to 10.4 tiger (iirc). I have one of those machines and it still can do a lot of great stuff! It can play NES roms, it can run iTunes and play MP3s, it can surf the web well besides java and flash based sites, it can be a machine setup to run your long downloads, print, scan, and fax. And specifically because it can't play movies, modern games, or fancy websites, that makes it a great machine to setup as a writing machine because there's no ability to be distracted by an alt-tab over to youtube or other horsepower required distractions. And it's awesome to have a usable web surfing and writing machine available for when you main machine inevitably eventually has some sort of problem.

For $10, it'd be silly not to get it!

 

[product26]

$10?

it is worth buying for sure.. upgrading... NO.


see what model.. perhaps it is overclockable?

 

[Schtumple]

In theory, good idea, in practice, it'll be to much time and hassle, I'd go for a new mac to be honest, it'll only cost a tiny bit more.

 

[JesterJJZ]

You can proabably ebay it and make a couple extra bucks on it.