9800 PRO in Sawtooth and a new processor?

I want to upgrade my G4 400mhz Sawthooth with a flashed ATI Radeon 9800 pro, however it requires a direct connection to the power supply and recomends a total of 300 total system watts.
So my question is, can my system handle the power requirments of this card, and will it also be able to take a processor upgrade and a seconed hardrive? Could I use a 4 drive RAID configuration and have enough power?

I would also like to know how hard it is to replace the power supply with an ATX one, and what is the best guide to do so?

I have not encountered problems upgrading my Digital Audio G4 (see the signature) to its current specification and it has been highly reliable (18 days uptime and it was only rebooted for update to 10.4.6)—as I use a flashed 'PC' 9800 Pro too (£75 vs. £205—hmm a no brainer!), and run a 2 drive striped RAID on a Sonnet Tempo RAID ATA133 card, etc. and it works fine.

That said, the Sawtooth's power supply is rated at 200W apparently, and the DA 338W. I am not 100% certain about the Power Supply specification but it would make sense for it to be a standard ATX power supply. I will try and check tonight for you.

Your best bet is to get the card and plug it in (after modding the required pins on the AGP connector) and seeing what happens and slowly add stuff, carefully noting the stability of the system—hopefully all will be well.

As for the RAID setup, consider carefully only running two master drives on it instead of a master pair and a slave pair as the slave pair will slow down a striped RAID setup (that said—I don't wish to come across patronising if you already know this!) I have two WD 160GB Caviar SE drives on this and the thing absolutely tears through anything needing drive access. In effect, two large, fast drives might be a good idea.

Vicky

Bluesmudge said:

I want to upgrade my G4 400mhz Sawthooth with a flashed ATI Radeon 9800 pro, however it requires a direct connection to the power supply and recomends a total of 300 total system watts.
So my question is, can my system handle the power requirments of this card, and will it also be able to take a processor upgrade and a seconed hardrive? Could I use a 4 drive RAID configuration and have enough power?

I would also like to know how hard it is to replace the power supply with an ATX one, and what is the best guide to do so?

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure it will work in the Sawtooth with no PS upgrade, but I'm not certain. Running the 9800 with a 4drive raid might be pushing things a bit though. There is an article on www.xlr8yourmac.com about installing an ATX PS in a sawtooth, and it looks like a royal pain in the... I've also heard of people replacing the PS with one from a Digital audio or quicksilver, but I don't remember where I saw that.

I'd say give it a try and see if it works. Good luck!

I cut it down to 2 larger drives. Sounds like that will work. Thanks!
Anybody know how much better the 9800 is than the 9200?

The 9800 Pro wipes the floor versus the Radeon 9200.

Vicky