Re: Upgrading a Sawtooth

[Richard Gerome]

How would the 250g 5400rpm HD be faster then a 40g 7200rpm HD??? The space size being bigger??? I've been told going from 5400 to 7200 would increase the performance speed... -----Original Message----- From: Eric Volker Sent: Mar 7, 2010 1:28 PM To: g3-5-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Upgrading a Sawtooth On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 12:09 PM, skinnie <andre.fa...@ua.pt> wrote: Hi Guys,I received an G4 400MHz AGP Sawtooth with the following specs: Ram: 512Mb+3x256Mb=1.25Gb HDD:40Gb Seagate IDE 7200Rpm Graphic Card: ATI 16Mb Currently it is running tiger,but I think it is a little slow (I think it is the HDD fault).. I am planing to upgrade the HDD to my 250Gb 5400rpm "macbook original" sata hdd via sata to ide adapter. But to make it even smoother I'd like to upgrade either the video card or the ram,what will make it faster? For the videocard I was planning on buying a pc 9700pro and flashing it (20euros). FOr the ram,for the 30eur I could get about 2x512mb.. what do you think it is better?spending 50eur on this machine is not an option this time :S Flashing a PC card can be tricky, especially since most of them don't have BIOS chip big enough to hold a Mac ROM. For a long time I used a flashed (by someone else) Radeon 9700 in my G5 until it became a massive headache. Then I had to revert back to the original Geforce 5200 which so far hasn't been too painful. Upgrading the hard drive should give you a noticeable boost in perceived speed, but don't expect miracles. You might want to consider a processor upgrade, though I don't know what current prices are like. When I had a Sawtooth, I picked up a 1 GHz  G4 (with no L3) from OWC for a little over US$100. That made the machine actually usable. Running Tiger, I don't think you'll see a big improvement over 1.25 GB unless you do a lot of multitasking, or significant photo/video editing. More RAM is always good, though. Eric -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list