[G4] Help on upgrading my G4

[Snow White]

David:

That is a decent computer you got under you.

The best upgrade you could do in my opinion is --

Sell the G4 you have as it will still fetch a reasonable price and 
search out a faster G4 that is only a few hundred dollars more.  This 
is the cheapest and my least preferred upgrade option. Get with the 
newer shit.

Or sell the old one and go invest in a nice shiny imac G5 (or other 
model G5) from Apple or Apple Reseller.  I would assume that the price 
on G5s will drop a bit as soon as Apple announces (officially) that it 
is switching to Intel chips (from IBM).  Also check the possibility of 
an Academic purchase and/or the Specials page on the Apple website.  
The Specials page has refurbs and close-outs from Apple.  This has the 
best advantages in Warrantees and Guarantees and free shipping (in US).

The third option I can think of is to search out a used G5.  Some of 
the earlier ones can be had reasonably and these would still represent 
a signifigant speed boost to you.  Always some risk buying used stuff, 
no warrantee and shipping is high on these 50 lb beasts.

Too just do parts purchasing for you old G4 would cost as much or more 
than most of the options listed above and in general it just is not 
worth it.  You would need a faster CPU but the bus speed cannot be 
changed.  And this may also mean using a 3rd party procesor.  Faster, 
bigger HD but again Bus speed...   Better video card but you AGP slot 
is still the same speed, so your options are limited and the top video 
cards for G4s tend to be more expensive, so you pay a small premium.  
The only advantage to this peice-meal upgrading is that you can do it a 
few hundred dollars at a time over time.  I only see this as an option 
when the speed of the CPU is acceptable but you want to add Ram or HD 
space.

Good luck.

jj


On 6-Jun-05, at 12:48 PM, g4-request at listserver.themacintoshguy.com 
wrote:

> Help on upgrading my G4
> To: g4 at listserver.themacintoshguy.com
> Message-ID: <20050606151244.92632.qmail at web53701.mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>
> I need to upgrade my G4 to a really fast machine.
> 733MHz is not doing it any more. Need to know the best
> way to do this. Also like to game.
>
> Listed below is, I hope, enough information to answer
> any questions about the machine.
>
> Hardware Overview:
>   Machine Model:	Power Mac G4
>   CPU Type:	PowerPC G4  (2.0)
>   Number Of CPUs:	1
>   CPU Speed:	733 MHz
>   L2 Cache (per CPU):	256 KB
>   L3 Cache (per CPU):	1 MB
>   Memory:	768 MB