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Video Card in a beige g3 minitower

applemacdude

applemacdude

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Mar 26, 2001
3,240
2
Over The Rainbow
in a minitower which is better, 3D Rage Pro or the 3D Rage II + DVD

i want to upgrde my video card what should i get?

I want to upgrade my cpu what should i get and is it worth it?
 
If it was me in your case i would go with the 3D Rage Pro. The motherboard with the Rage Pro video card is a later Revision (2 or 3). From what i've read the this is the better one. On my minitower G3, i decided to buy the ATI Radeon 7000 Mac Edition PCI card. It has a much, much higher resolution, and it supports Quartz Extreme. The ATI card also supports DVD playback.

Upgarding your processor would be a good idea, if you have one of the 233, 266, or even a 300 Mhz processor. When i purchased my computer, it originally came with the 266 ZIF processor in it. After a couple of months running X Idecided it would be worth it to upgrade the ZIF to the OWC G3 550/533 ZIF. And believe me it was worth it. To me it seems to as fast, or even faster than my brothers 466 G4. If you are thinking about upgrading to a G4, its kind of risky. Its risky because you have to have a software based AltiVec enabler which i think sucks. Or you need to find the patches to make it work. But, if you want a G4 ZIF i would try to find one of the Yikes G4 ZIFs which i think already has the Altivec enabled, i could be wrong though.:)
 
Just 2 cents worth, if you are really thinking of a new video card and a new cpu i think it is time to get a new or slightly used unit. When you factor in all the newer technologies like bus speed ram,cpu.speeds.video cards, it would make more sense to get a used machine or a new low end machine. Even a emac sounds like it would be better then what you are planning on doing and i have seen refurbished units for $699. Really think hard on this because i think you would be only updating to older technology anyways. Whats the most you want to spend?
 
Well my MiniTower is 333mhz, all my PCI slots are full, (UW SCSI, USB, FIREWIRE) I have the 333mhz model. The MiniTower doesn't have a AGP slot, does it? I have a Apple's AV In/Out card. I can only use it in OS 9 but it's cool. I only have 256mb RAM, I want to get more, wherte is the cheapest place I can get it (besides crucial.com) My MiniTower has a UW SCSI 9gb HD and a Yamaha CD-RW 6x, a 6GB hd, a Zip Drive, and a Floppy drive. Also a note to all of you MiniTower users. The Floppy Drive cable that connects to the motherboard on my machine scraped against the inclosure and caused the machine to short out. First the sound went, then the firewire card, then it wouldn't turn on. I but electrical tape inside that little square where all the wires are (inside teh minitower, near the power supply) so that this wouldn't happen anymore. Thats just my thoughts. Can I upgrade my Video RAM or is it soddered on? Also Apple says this "Min - Max RAM:32 MB - 384 MB" I hope I can put more than 384mb of ram in the computer, can I?
 
Thats pretty tuff, i dont think you get much out of your older machine but you may want to try. There may be someone who wants it for nostalgic purpose. even if you could get 200 or more for it then you are looking at a used imac. If not then maybe you should upgrade but a new card and cpu will cost more then $200 wont it? i dont know what credit you have if any but a used imac i think would still move you way ahead. 400 or 500ghz at least. See what you can get out of it and the monitor and try for the highest imac you can afford.
 
Hey,LimeiBook86

You can put up to 3 256mb sticks into the old beige minitowers.

As for the vram? The max you can have is I think 6mb... so it would be a lot better to just get the ATI 7000 PCI based graphic card.

Tomasz
 
thanks, 768mb should be plenty of ram (did i add correctly?) I would have to ditch the UW SCSI card and take out teh UW SCSI HD, then I could add a graphics card, I also need money, thanks. :D
 
The cheapest that i found the ATI Radeon 7000 for was $116 on ebay. But then i had to pay for shipping, and that was an extra $10.

The ZIF that i upgraded to was, i think, $165 when i bought it from OWC. Together, they ended up costing around $290-300.

To me it was worth it. Since i am a graphic designer, i don't have the time or money to be constintly buying new computers. So, i upgraded. Personally, i am just saving more money in the long run, cause i'm saving to buy a G5 hopefully.

But if it dosen't seem worth it to you, go ahead and buy a eMac, or something. I really don't think that an eMac is what you would want though. You can't upgrade anything on it except the RAM or other basic stuff.

Good Luck with whatever you decide. :cool:
 
another queston of mine is where can i get the music when you startup jaguar for the first time. when you first install jaguar then restart the music comes up and then u register
 
I'm cheap! Instead of that $70-80 combo FireWire and USB card. I got a FireWire card for $28, and a USB card for $4.99 (it said it was for PC but, at that price you can't go wrong) :p hee hee
 
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