[G4] Questions on upgrading a dual G4/450 Gigabit Ethernet

[Perry Mitchell]

Hi Petter
As we say in UK - snap! (I have a G4 Mac DP450)

I already had lots of disk space (I work with professional video):
1) I've mounted two extra drives internally (5 minute job!)
2) I've got a fast SCSII card with a RAID array in an external enclosure
3) I've got several external Firewire drives that I use.

I needed to upgrade the processors because several applications now need a
faster system as a minimum. You have three basic G4 processor upgrade
choices:
a) 7455
b) 7447A
c) 7448

These are respective developments of the G4 chip that get faster, and in the
latter case more efficient and therefore cooler running. As is always the
case, the later and faster chips are far more expensive. The fastest around
seems to be about 2GHz. You basically pays your money and makes your choice
- there is LOTS of information on the web from sites like xlr8yourmac.com.
I've just bought a twin 7455 upgrade by 'PowerLogix' from a company called
Other World Computing (OWC) that happily ship to UK. It was a very good
price ($299) and is enough (2x1.2GHz) for my needs.

The video card is a far more interesting area! Basically our G4 Mac is 2xAGP
which is pretty limiting. (Current cards are 8xAGP or PCI Express)
There were relatively few cards made that fitted the 2xAGP slot and none now
meet the requirements of 'Core Image' needed to fully support Tiger (OSX
10.4) and the future. There are several vendors on eBay that sell converted
PC cards that supposedly meet the needs. I've gone for a Radeon 9500 card
that supposedly meets Core Image performance but sadly I'm having to lose
the ADC support for my old Apple LCD. Importantly for me it offers a basic
support for OS9. It also supports two monitors so I can now lose the PCI
video card that will free a slot. (I have a three monitor set-up!)

I'll tell you all how I get on in a week or three!
FWIW
Perry 

-----Original Message-----
From: Petter Adsen

I've been using this machine (see subject) as my main workstation for 
several years now, but I've found it's really about time to do somthing 
to increase performance. etc