[CUBE] Silence and speed

[Joseph B. Gurman]

    "JAS" wrote:

>How silent will a Cube be with a processor upgrade (Powerlogix Dual 800 or
>similar) and possibly a graphics card upgrade also. Will it be in the region
>of iMac Globe?

     With the caveats that I work most of the time in a very noisy 
(white noise, so it's not distracting) room (so loud a wind tunnel G4 
isn't particularly audible), and only some of the time in other, 
quieter rooms with iMac G4's and Cubes, I find the iMacs quieter than 
a Cube with a 1 GHz PL upgrade. That said, both are nearly inaudible, 
but the fan in the PL kit does have a faint but noticeable, 
high-pitched whine.

>
>And also a q about OSX speed, I read this conclusion on upgradeing to
>Powerlogix 1GHz:
>
>"In practice, we can notice acceleration by 2 of G4 after installation of
>the new processor. I do not find that the Finder is as reactive as under Mac
>OS 9 with the old 450 MHz processor but it is more reactive than before."

     This appears to be completely subjective. The OS X finder has so 
many more things to do, under a true multitasking system, that is 
seems silly to compare this year's apples with last year's dried-up 
pippins. For what it's worth, if you have one of the latest, dual 1+ 
GHz G4 desktops (the loud ones), the Finder is significantly faster 
than the OS 9 Finder was on, say, a 450 Sawtooth. The 1 GHz-upgraded 
Cube is somewhere in between. Pretty meaningless, though --- I was 
happy with a B&W G3 350 at home running OS X until I started using a 
wind tunnel G4 at work. I suspect anyone who's new to OS X will be 
quite happy with a 1 GHZ Cube. (The possible exception, of course, is 
if you play graphics-intensive games; I don't have much experience 
there.)

>Is X so demanding that even a 1GHz system will feel slow compared to
>450MHz/G4 running OS9?

     Not to me, anyway.

     FWIW,

						Joe Gurman


-- 
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by."
                                                             - Douglas 
Adams, 1952 - 2001

Joseph B. Gurman, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Solar Physics
Branch, Greenbelt MD 20771 USA