03-30-2006, 08:54 PM

I've installed and overclocked a new version of the Radeon 7000 64MB and may perhaps move to a 9200. I'm going to have 896mb of memory, and want to upgrade the processor.
I'm in the process of painting the case and at the same time overdoing the cooling, especially since the OC'd 7000 creates insane heat. I still think this computer has a life, but what processor should I install?
I don't want to go for the 1ghz G4 as it kills the bus speed to 66mhz blah blah blah, not to mention the outragious price. I want to use Final Cut Pro and play games such as Halo if possible. FCP only needs a 350Mhz G4 and Halo needs like a 700Mhz G4. I'm woundering if a 1.1Ghz G3 would supply the needs of these programs. Perhaps with all the cooling I'm installing I will also be able to overclock the G3, although I don't know how possible this is.
So...600Mhz G4 or 1.1Ghz G3? I know FCP is heavy on the altivec, but will the doubled clock speed make up for it? Can either of these processors even run Halo with a useable framerate?
Thanks for your help!

03-30-2006, 10:06 PM

idk if this helps, but it sounds like your mad overcooling so maybe it will run ok if u bump it up high.

http://www.lowendmac.com/macdan/02/0710ek.html

03-30-2006, 10:20 PM

Thank you,
I am sure I would be able to do that, however it does not apply to ZIF upgrades (at least the G3 one's I think) because they can be ocerclocked with software provided.

03-31-2006, 01:48 AM

Just be aware that the G4 will be significantly faster at 1GHz on a 66MHz bus than a 1.1GHz G3 on a 100MHz bus. The G4 was a big leap forward from the G3 and the Altivec unit will give decent speed boosts to FCP.

That said, I think the expense incurred to max out a Blue and White would be pushing it a little and maybe an AGP Graphics (Sawtooth or later) Graphite G4 might be a better idea?

Depends how much you are attached to the B&W G3! Either way, any upgrade to the G3 to a G4 will breathe some new life into that machine. Also *really* consider a hard disk controller upgrade card.

One of the big hinderances of the B&W is its ATA33 hard drive bus. If you could get the Sonnet Tempo ATA133 upgrade with a new fast drive that would speed things up greatly. Better still with you wanting to edit film, get the Tempo RAID card like I have in my G4, and run a striped RAID.

The speed increase from doing that really runs magnificently, I could not believe the difference when I did this for my Graphite G4.

Vicky

03-31-2006, 10:35 AM

600MHz G4 all the way. Look at the reliability comments on the Powerlogix G3s in the database at www.xlr8yourmac.com Scaaaaarrrrryyyyy. I have a G4 450 OC'd to 500 and I'm pretty happy with the results.

I also strongly recomend they HD controller upgrade. If your BW is rev1 it is an absolute must as the MoBo HD chips were crap and cause data corruption errors. Even if you have a rev2 MoBo the speed increase from the HD controller card is worth the cost.

I'm not sure you'll see much improvement over the 7000 if you upgrade to a 9200, but I don't know much about this. I've got a flashed PC 7000 in mine and it works very well (of course I don't play games on it so...).

The last thing I would recomend is a USB2.0 PCI card. If you use USB for file transfers USB1.1 is sooooo slowwww.

For the cost of the above mentioned upgrades however you could get a G4 mini that would blow the blue rig away... I like having a funky blue computer though, so I say go for it!

03-31-2006, 06:28 PM

G4 600Mhz upgrades are now only $170, plus the say $50 for the HD controller, I don't think you could get a mini for $220. Plus like you said, the computer just looks cool and I'm sorta attached to it. I hear with a voltage change the G4 600mhz could even reach 700mhz with enough cooling and no bus speed reduction. Not bad for the price.