[X4U] [OT] Processor Upgrades

[Zane H. Healy]

>Thinking about upgrading my Sawtooth 450 G4.  It really seems worth 
>getting an upgrade but I wondered what your opinions would be. 
>Apparently mine is compatible with Mutli-processors but the price 
>and the lower clock speed of these Dual Processor cards makes me 
>wonder if a) it will be slower and b) it will be more expensive.

Are you sure it's a Sawtooth?  I thought those were only available as 
400Mhz and slower.  The Sawtooth is the one with PCI graphics, right? 
I actually seriously considered doing this with my G4/450 AGP system 
(to old for a dual upgrade) until the G5's came out.

>I was tempted in the 400$ range and see:
>
>PowerLogix PowerForce47 G4/2.0GHz with 512K 1:1 L2 Cache Per Processor  
>       $399
>PowerLogix PowerForce47 Dual G4/1.2GHz with 512K 1:1 L2 Cache Per 
>Processor   $419

Try to find out how one of these would compare to a Mac Mini.  It 
seems to me that a Mac Mini *might* be a good cheap upgrade.  At the 
same time there are quite a few arguments against the Mini and 
upgrading your Sawtooth.

>Also, should I think of spending less and getting a graphic card 
>upgrade as I'm stuck with the ATI Rage 128 Pro.

I upgraded my G4/450 AGP to an ATI Radion 9000 Pro, I'd like to think 
it made a difference, but as I moved from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X 10.2 
at the same time, who knows :^)

>I'm not a gamer but maybe cos my machine is to slow :) ... just a 
>surfer, connect to work,  listen to music, mess with iMovie/iPhoto 
>etc.... would be nice to run Virtual PC at a reasonable rate too but 
>I don't think that is possible on a 2.5 Gig G5.  My wife dabbles 
>with Adobe Apps.

You might be surprised at how much a faster system helps in surfing. 
As much as I hate to admit it, there were really only two things that 
I needed the G5 upgrade for, one was Adobe InDesign 2.0, the other 
surfing.  Of course once I got the G5 2x2 I started playing with 
Video Editing.

		Zane


-- 
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| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary)    | OpenVMS Enthusiast         |
|                                  | Classic Computer Collector |
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