Upgrading Gigabit dual 450 G4

I recently purchased a Gigabit tower w/ dual 450 MHz G4 processor w/ 1 gig of RAM and two hard drives off ebay. I think I got it for a good price which was $49.99 plus shipping. I have already taken the liberty of upgrading the RAM to 2 GB. The computer is a little slow when bringing up some web pages that have complex graphics and such. My question is, what would be the best thing to do now that the RAM is maxed? I thought about buying the ATI Radeon 9200 Pro from OWC thinking that it may help speed up my system when rendering web pages. I'd also like to purchase a new HD however I don't have an OS X install disc. BTW, I'm running OS X 10.3.9 which had been preinstalled on the system. I had considered just buying a new system as I have been calculating up the cost to upgrade this old G4 but I seem to have a soft spot for these older G4 Macs. Anyway, any input on what I should do next would be greatly appreciated. I have been an avid Mac fan and user for about 12 years.

G'day and welcome to the forums. Stacks of help here with no criticisms.

Firstly look to see if you can get a full retail install copy of Tiger - the black discs and not grey which are model specific. It is a far better (and faster) operating system.

The 9200 might be a bit of overkill. A 9000 with 128MB VRAM would work nicely and it has the Apple Direct Connect (ADC) if you use an LCD or CRT Apple display. These appear on eBay regularly.

After you get Tiger see if you can find say an 80GB 7200 rpm drive.

Hello, harry

Would it be possible to use a program such as Superduper, or something of that nature to transfer my OS X 10.3 to a new 80 GB 7200rpm HD then just remove the old HD and boot from the new? Also, if I do get the 9200 do you think I will see any difference in the speed that my G4 renders complex web pages? The dual 450 shouldn't really have problems loading web pages should it?

Install new hard drive in slot 2, set up as slave, and use SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner or even Disk Utility to copy OS to new drive. Remover both, rest new drive to master, and install. Lookout for an external firewire case and use old drive as your backup.

The DP GE will handle web browsing no problems, however broadband will be naturally quicker than dial up if you can run to it. Complex web pages may need the later graphics card than the standard Rage 128Pro with 16MB VRAM. Many 9200 are PCI slot cards, make sure you get an APG 2X compatible. AGP is about twice as fast as PCI .