JW Holmes wrote:I am at a decision point with my computer and I was wondering if anyone
might provided me with some information to help in my decision. I
currently have a PM 9600 upgraded with a Sonnet G3/500. I have 740 MB Ram
2 SCSI drives (9 GB each) on ATTO card, and a ATI Rage 128 Video Card. I
run Jaguar (10.2.8), and I am considering moving upgrading to a Sonnet
G4/700 and upgrading to Panther. My dilemma is this: would I be better off just buying a used PowerMac G4/
500 for ~$450, or go ahead and get the Sonnet G4/700 for ~ $225 and
install it.
Right now 10.2.8 is very stable and I have not had any problems with the
machine. I would like a bit more speed but I don't play games so I don't
need blazing speed. I don't want to spend more than ~ 450 because I have
to buy Panther.
Any opinions would be appreciated.
Spend the money on a PowerMac G4. I have Panther on a Beige G3/500 with a Rage128 PCI card and it works pretty well. Video goes about 40% faster with the same card in 10.3 (vs. 10.2.x) and the difference between your 50 MHz Bus and my 66 MHz bus is pretty minimal. Keep the G3/500 and install Panther on it anyway.
My personal opinion/advice, would be to go for the used Power Mac G4. The faster bus speed is an incredible boost in performance, and that price sounds like a good deal to me.
It's not only the bus speed. The AGP slot in the G4 or your iMac below. Makes just as big of a difference.
I have a PM 9600 with a Sonnet G4/800mhz card in it, Radeon, lots of RAM, etc.., and it almost makes me want to weep when I use the G3 400mhz iMac DV here at work, as it's actually smoother and faster in many aspects than my upgraded 9600. (50mhz bus vs. 100mhz bus) The 9600 is OK for common everyday things, but only 2 or 3 bigger apps at a time. More than that, and it feels like I'm navigating through a mud bog, especially when iTunes or Thoth is one of the apps running, along with Safari. already-jerky mouse-wheel scrolling (even with Quartz Extreme enabled) becomes much worse. I imagine you wouldn't have this on the newer G4's.
If you have QE enabled on your 73-9600 Mac and you use the PCI slots for anything else except video, it's saturating the PCI bus and degrading performance instead of enhancing it. I'd keep it at regular Quartz acceleration and turn off QE.
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