Worth upgrading the 604ev?

[tevion5]

Seeing as I'll be maxing out the RAM in my 8600 this summer and adding a Radeon 9200, I am beginning to think the processor might be a bottleneck. It's a 250MHz 604ev.

I suppose ideally I would be looking for a G4 upgrade card, but these are rare and expensive from what I've seen.

I found this on eBay with a quick search today:

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=391051364585

Would such a card be worth the upgrade? It doesn't cost too much, but I'd only be going from 250->300MHz and 604ev to G3? :/

I need some general advise about these upgrade cards. I don't know much about them. Heck I'm not certain if that card I found would even fit!

 

[Hrududu]

I don't think its worth it. The 604ev was a great chip, and with only 50MHz to gain, I think you're better off holding out for something faster. A search of the Bay shows several 400MHz upgrade options for sale either right at the same price, and even a few that are cheaper.

 

[bunnspecial]

IMO, probably the only thing the G3 would do is give you access to more software. It would allow you to upgrade to Tiger(using Xpostfacto). With that said, my experience with Tiger on a 350mhz B&W(which also has a faster FSB, better theoretical graphics capabilities, a faster hard drive bus, and is maxed out at 1gb of RAM) is that it's not always a great experience.

The slowest G3 that has been pleasant for me with Tiger is my 500mhz Pismo, although admittedly my 400mhz B&W wasn't bad for the short time I was running Tiger on it(before I decided to dump it to install the OS X DPs and Rhapsody).

Remember that G3s are essentially an advanced 603e-I'd personally take a 50mhz slower 604E.

 

[tevion5]

IMO, probably the only thing the G3 would do is give you access to more software. It would allow you to upgrade to Tiger(using Xpostfacto). With that said, my experience with Tiger on a 350mhz B&W(which also has a faster FSB, better theoretical graphics capabilities, a faster hard drive bus, and is maxed out at 1gb of RAM) is that it's not always a great experience.

The slowest G3 that has been pleasant for me with Tiger is my 500mhz Pismo, although admittedly my 400mhz B&W wasn't bad for the short time I was running Tiger on it(before I decided to dump it to install the OS X DPs and Rhapsody).

Remember that G3s are essentially an advanced 603e-I'd personally take a 50mhz slower 604E.

Ahh I suspected as much having learned quite a bit about the 604ev from the graphics card thread.

So I guess my question would be, what sort of card could I get that would be well worth the purchase?

 

[bunnspecial]

Ahh I suspected as much having learned quite a bit about the 604ev from the graphics card thread.

So I guess my question would be, what sort of card could I get that would be well worth the purchase?

A high speed G3 or a G4 would be a great upgrade. My "gut" is that you'd probably start to see a noticeable benefit from the G3 at around 450 or 500mhz.

With the right applications, a G4-clock for clock-will smoke a G3 but only if the application can make use of Altivec. As far as I know, without using Altivec a G3 and G4 are pretty much clock-for-clock identical.