How Does This Sound?

This will eventually be my new mac

Blue And White
1.0GHz G4 upgrade
1GB RAM
300GB SATA 10000 RPM HD
SATA PCI card
ATI Radeon 7000 PCI (w/PCI Extreme hack)
Dual Layer SuperDrive
Tiger
Studio MX
Adobe CS
^^^^^have the software already, fed up with Mac Mini

if you don't want the mac mini sent it my way...please!
nice set up, what do you plan on doing with it?

Sounds just about like the Blue & White I just upgraded. Won it on eBay for $42 ($65 after s/h) last month. Came G3/400Mhz, 256RAM, 10Gig HD.

G4/700Mhz.
768RAM
Radeon 7000 32MB PCI
Still using my external 60GigHD and DVD-R I had for my iMac for now.

That set up you listed should run very well. I've been running Maya6 ( a very demanding program) and it's blazing through it without a studder. Can't beat the blue & white cases for top looks either.

PS- I'm new here and this was my first post.

yeah i may be needing to use Maya and i know from past experience it will falter on mini.

benyaimin said:

yeah i may be needing to use Maya and i know from past experience it will falter on mini.

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The only bad thing I've heard about the 1GHz G4 upgrades is that they drop your system bus speed down from 100 MHz to 66 MHz. They are still just a little faster (for most things) than the G4 600 MHz upgrades running at 100MHz bus speed. If you want to read some good reviews check out the database at www.xlr8yourmac.com.

Personally, if your starting with a new machine rather than one that is lying around, I'd get a digital audio G4 and upgrade all heck out of that. The B&Ws are nice ( I have one at my office), but they have more age related hardware issues than the G4s. Not to mention that they have PCI video rather than AGP. The digital audios have an extra expansion slot too. They'll take >1GHz upgrades and dual processor upgrades as well. The souped up B&W will save some $$ though and they look sort of retro (in a less than 6 years ago is retro now kind of way).

One last bit of advice then I'll shut up... You might want to add a USB2.0 or usb2/FW combo PCI card to your shopping list. at least if you use usb2 periferals.

If you really intend on out performing the mini, get a real G4 with AGP, DDR Memory and at least a 100Mhz bus and mod that.

A close friend of mine has a G4 DA that he modded into a 1.8Ghz G4 with Radeon 9800 Pro. In some tests it beats my Mini but in some it's still a bit behind for some reason, and a DA uses AGP 4x, PC133 Memory and is a lot faster than any G3 modded or not. The Mini is just as fast in most tests to any G4 of it's same clock speed. The only time I have seen it slower is if the G4 system has a faster AGP card than the 9200 Radeon that is in the mini and faster Hard drives.

Get a good G4, the Digital Audio is a good starting point as it has AGP 4x and 133Mhz Memory. Get a fast Sonnet CPU and at least ATI radeon 9000 for it.

My friend paid I would say the price of 2 Mac Minis to upgrade his DA G4 to where it is.


Who makes 10K RPM 300GB SATA drives?

benyaimin said:

300GB SATA 10000 RPM HD
SATA PCI card
ATI Radeon 7000 PCI (w/PCI Extreme hack)

Click to expand...

Oh I almost forgot... Don't mess around with the quartz extreme hack. It causes to many problems to actually be useful and some tests have shown that it actually slows down graphics performance in games.

I don't think your set up you listed will actually out perform a mini. The clock and bus speeds will just be to much lower for the faster HD to make any kind of impact. If you want something faster than the mini, but you can't afford a new G5 system, you have three options.

1. As previously mentioned upgrade a PM G4. You can get much faster gfx cards and processors (up to 2 GHz now!) into those suckers.

2. Keep the Mini and upgrade it to use until you can save up enough for a G5 or a Macintel. Install a 60GB 7200 RPM Hitachi HD and (if they make one) a slot loading notebook sized DL superdrive in the mini if you want better performance. And max out the ram if you haven't already.

3. Get a used G5.

but then it would be fun to play with the inards of that B&W! :headphone

jhelm007 said:

but then it would be fun to play with the inards of that B&W! :headphone

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Yeah, It is a lot of fun messing with old systems like that and improving them. I just for the fun of it bought a G3 B&W off Ebay for $22 to mess with. I figured for $22 I would have a blast messing with it and seeing how much I can improve it.

Go to www.xbench.com. run xbench on your mini and see if you can find a B&W that beats it in the system comparison section. If you find one, build one just like it... and tell us please!

Mine is called Big Blue and has a G4 500MHz and Radeon 7000.

.......Opps