cpu upgrade worth it for g4 450 sawtooth?

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trioxin 245

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hi.

i am considering upgrading my g4 450 to a 1ghz plus via sonnet or similar upgrade. is it worth it with the bus speed on my machine or should i buy a quicksilver at least and upgrade that?

if i install a pci ata or sata card to get better speeds off my discs/drives am i still going to be let down by the bus no matter what speed upgrade i purchase?

thanks in advance
 
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Why not sell your g4 and by a macmini, it'll be worth it!
 
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trioxin 245 said:
hi.

i am considering upgrading my g4 450 to a 1ghz plus via sonnet or similar upgrade. is it worth it with the bus speed on my machine or should i buy a quicksilver at least and upgrade that?

if i install a pci ata or sata card to get better speeds off my discs/drives am i still going to be let down by the bus no matter what speed upgrade i purchase?

thanks in advance

Upgrading the CPU and disks will make it significantly faster, yet the bus will always be the bottleneck.
If you don't need upgradability, go with the Mac mini, put 1GB of RAM in it and maybe add an external HD for space.

Allthough, if you have some PCI cards you still want to use, or if you simply need the upgradability of a tower, sell your Sawtooth and try to get a Quicksilver with dual CPU or a more recent MDD. They have a faster bus, faster AGP slot, and the MDD can take 4 HDs internally. It just depends on your budget. But either way, you will not be able to use your Sawtooth's memory.
 
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I have an upgraded G4 450 sawtooth (radeon 9000, 80+10+8gig HDs, ATA133 pci card, 1.4GHz gigadesigns processor...) and I'm very happy with it, but I upgraded long before the mini came out. I think now I would go with the mini as it is pretty cheap compared with the cost of multiple upgrades. especially if you sell your sawtooth to offset the cost.

As to whether or not the bus is a major bottle neck: The upgrades usually have highspeed 1 to 4 MB caches installed on the card so the slower system memory becomes less of an issue unless you use really memory intensive software.
 
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I've upgraded my G4 400 mhz to Sonnet 1 gig. It purrs like a Kitten. I dont do any intensive programming. I do run Vectorworks CAD program and I have absolutely no problems. I aslo have 768 megs of memory. I am very happy with my system and it's performance. Me personally do not like the Mini's. This reason only being expandiblity issues. I am very much a hardware type of guy. I like to upgrade or swap parts to test mt machine. In my opinion the upgraded processor may be the way to go.
 
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maltbalz

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I had a Sawtooth 350mhz, then upgraded it with an OWC Mercury Extreme 1.4gig upgrade processor. It feels like a completely different machine, then I dumped in a Radeon 8500 64 meg card, now it runs like a scalded monkey. I love my sawtooth, and would beat anyone senseless that tried to seperate me from my machine.
 
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trioxin 245

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thanks for the replies. in response to those who have recommended it, i've looked at buying a mac mini vs upgrading my g4 450 sawtooth.

after sussing out the specs on the mac mini and how much it would cost to upgrade the hd and optical drive in it, plus the fact it only has a 166 bus speed anyway and no dual monitor support, i think i'll just stick with upgrading my current g4. perhaps i'll even sell it to get a cheap quicksilver for the faster 133 bus and then upgrade that. i've impulse bought many products many times in the past and at this moment in time purchasing a mac mini would just be the continuation of a bad habit.
 
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maltbalz said:
I had a Sawtooth 350mhz, then upgraded it with an OWC Mercury Extreme 1.4gig upgrade processor. It feels like a completely different machine, then I dumped in a Radeon 8500 64 meg card, now it runs like a scalded monkey. I love my sawtooth, and would beat anyone senseless that tried to seperate me from my machine.
Hey Maltz your set up is simialr to mine. I am also interested in upgrading my video card. How much did your video card run you?
 
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prasys

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i got b&w g3..upgraded it to 1GHZ G3...Fast . but the graphics it sucks..if you ask me.is it worth

i would say [ yeah ]
 

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