How well will my "new" PowerMac G4 handle Tiger?

I'm picking up a copy of Tiger tonight and was curious how well it would run on a Gigabit Ethernet G4 with a Dual 450mhz, 896MB of RAM, and an 80GB HDD? I guess the one thing I worry about most is the ATI Rage 128 or whatever that came with it. The computer itself came with 10.1 and it was sluggish so that's why I bother to ask. From what I have seen by searching it should be decent but will the video-card slow down features such as Expose' etc? Thanks, I plan on upgrading to a Radeon something if it is needed but I'm not using this computer for gaming just an everyday surfer, music, and maybe light photoshop.

Another worry I have is about the firmware. I didn't check to see what version was on it when it had 10.1 on it. Since then I have installed a openSUSE Linux and wiped the drive. If 10.1 was running does that mean the firmware was up-to-date or compatible with 10.4? I don't have OS9 that's why I'm a bit worried.

If it is running 10.1 the firmware has been updated.

Tiger will run fine, but consider a little more RAm if you can

Expose will only work with AGP cards, is your graphics PCI?

As you can see by my specs, Tiger isvery good on older G4 hardware

As louishen advises if you have been running OS X no problem with firmware. AN AGP model should read Boot ROM Version 4.2.8f1, the technical name for the update.

Your machine will have 4 memory slots so Tiger will run extremely well if you install 4x512MB over time. The Rage card will handle Tiger but later you might like to look for a faster ATI card such as a Radeon 9000. There are quite a few offered on eBay as MDD and FW800 users ditch that card, which was standard, to ibnstall a Leopard Core Image compatible card.

The HDD will be just great and more than adequate for Tiger.

It has AGP 2x. Tiger is installing right now so we'll see

It's working now and updating, but the Boot ROM (I guess this is the firmware) is version 3.3.4f1 so I guess I'm stuck with it? Is there another way without OS9?

Well fingers crossed all goes well. If it is an AGP model it does require 4.2.8, however if it is a PCI model that uses a PCI video card, that model does NOT require and update.

Here is a list of update from Apple and if it is necessary yes you do have to do it from OS 9.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1395?viewlocale=en_US

Install of the 10.4.11 update went fine now just updating safari, itunes, etc. Guess I got lucky? oh well Tiger is amazingly faster than 10.1 was and a lot cooler looking. The graphical stuff (genie effect, dashboard, etc) stutters a little but not much. I'm hoping more ram and a video card will fix that. Birthday is in two weeks and the day after is payday. Maybe I can talk the fiancee into getting me some old mac parts Any must have applications I should go get? Free of course ;D Any kind of themes/skin program etc? Thanks for the support

For starters download Onyx, a maintenance program, and NeoOffice which is MS Word compatible. Also Adobe Reader, Stuffit Expander and Firefox are handy.

Anyone have any recommendations on a video card for this computer?

The ATI Rage 128 in it already is fine for what you want to use it for.

I would like to upgrade a little to have better screen animations when minimizing etc

I suspect that could be down to the slowish hard drive bus and older CPU.