Power Mac G4

I have a Power Mac G3 B&W 300mhz and 768mb ram and a G3 iBook 900 mhz with 256mb of RAM. I've decided its time to upgrade seeing as a new class Im taking requires me to use iMovie and possibly final cut at home. I have found a Power Mac G4 450mhz 512mb ram. would this be sufficent for my needs and would it faster than the computers I have now. BTW over the course of the next few months I'll probably drop a new processor in it 1ghz and 1.5 gigs of ram and a 128mb vga card.

Be careful with those processor upgrades. I personally don't trust them. There seem to be lots of issues with heat and bugs...The 450 G4 is a decent machine; however, if you can, see if you can get a DUAL processor 450 at least. It will more than double your performance. MacOS X takes advantage of dual processor units very well. I understand you are probably on a budget (as am I!), so lets stick with your 450 selection. First off, yes, max the RAM out. 1.5GB should be maximum for that model. A good video card should help a lot. Consider the Radeon 9600. It is AGP-4x compatible (what your G4 has), and it has 256 MB of video RAM for approx. $200. That is what I have got in my G5 1.6 and it works great so far. I would say do those two things first, and put a nice big fast HD in there. See how your performance is then decide on a processor upgrade. I can help you out more if I knew your budget. I hope this helps so far.

Consider looking at www.macofalltrades.com
best prices around, and I look....ALOT.