[G4] G4-400 AGP upgrade options

[Chris Smolinski]

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone.

Actually I already have upgraded the machine to 1G, I did that two 
years ago when RAM was dirt cheap, I happened to be out west in the 
Bay area and picked up some at Fry's.  I suspect that a lot of 
Photoshop tasks are very RAM intensive, and you get hit a lot with 
swapping RAM  back and forth out to the disk.

I did decide to order an OWC Mercury 1.4 GHz CPU upgrade. So we'll 
see what kind of improvement I get with that. I run a bit of software 
that does a lot of number crunching, so I'm hoping I'll see some sort 
of improvement.

>You may want to take a look at the latest MacAddict
>magazine (Feb), which has a section on upgrading.
>They note that maxing out your ram is the most
>cost-effective way to speed up your system.  There's a
>chart comparing a Sawtooth 3 ways: stock, w/a 550
>upgrade card, and with a 1.4 gig card.  The chart
>shows the 3 variations with 256 megs, 512 megs and 1
>gig of ram, and the stock machine with 1 gig of ram
>processed Photoshop files faster than the 1.4 gig
>upgrade with 512 meg of ram.  A 512 meg clip of ram
>runs about $100 right now, far cheaper than a
>processor upgrade.  If you aren't up against the ram
>ceiling yet, consider that.
>
>Gary
>
>--- Chris Smolinski <csmolinski at blackcatsystems.com>
>wrote:
>>  I have a G4 AGP 400 MHz that I'd like to squeeze a
>>  little more
>>  performance out of. I'm looking at the 1.4 GHz
>>  Powerlogix Powerforce
>>  G4 100 processor upgrade. Transintl.com has them for
>>  $398 according
>>  to DealMac.
>>
>>  Has anyone else installed one of these? What actual
>>  performance
>>  difference did you see?  Any other upgrades I should
>>  be looking at?
>>  --
>>


-- 

---
Chris Smolinski
Black Cat Systems
http://www.blackcatsystems.com