[vatin]

Hi,
I have a friends Sawtooth G4 upgraded with Panther. The machine feels a little slow. Is possible that If i change the stock graphic card with another one that supports Quartz Xtreme, the machine will fell a lot snappier and faster?

Or do you recomend me also a processor upgrade.

Thanks a lot.

PS 640MB RAM

[aquilles10]

to my Sawtooth, and the performance change was barely noticible. In fact of all the upgrade I did to my old sawtooth, the video card was the LEAST noticible. Keep in mind I don' play many computer games though. I did upgrade the HD to a 80GB WD, and added 1.25gb of RAM previous to the video card, and those did make a big difference, so I would recommend those before the video card.

And if you have the money, a cpu upgrade card after adding more RAM and a faster HD. Careful with the cost of all this though. As a new Mac might be a better route...

[traktimino]

if u upgrade the graphics card it will probably feel snappier hraphicswise, like smoother genie effects and stuff, but otherwise things will still be the same speed. Of course if u game a lot then u would see an improvement from a graphics card. But if u have the cash i highly recomend a cpu upgrade, i just put a dual 1.2 ghz in my sawtooth and it's amazing.

[Zoom]

I've got a G4 Sawtooth running 10.3.3. Honestly, I don't have anything to compare it to, but it feels responsive enough to me. I have a 120GB HD (upgrade), 768MB of RAM and a Gigadesign G4/800 CPU upgrade overclocked to 900 MHz. It's been so long since I did these upgrades that I can't really tell you which ones had the most profound effects, but I would say try more RAM first - that's the cheapest upgrade and probably the most effective. You'll want at least 512MB and at today's prices I'd go ahead and bump up to 1 GB. (Actually, this older RAM might not be cheap anymore... I don't know, I haven't bought it for a while.)

I'm not sure the hard drive will make much difference, unless you're doing lots of video/audio editing. (What's the speed on the stock Sawtooth drive?)

You might be able to pick up a used/refurb CPU upgrade for cheap, but otherwise I agree with the previous poster - consider a wholesale upgrade. You can probably sell the G4 for some money on eBay.

But for reference, I think my system runs 10.3 fairly well. However, I'm going to upgrade to a G5 this year, probably this summer.

[GoGoReggieXPowars]

The recent line of G4 processor upgrades are pretty inexpensive and easy to install. You'd notice the difference right away.

[DrBoar]

Have had a ATI 8500 in my G4/400 since OS 9 and there it only improved games, and X was slow all the time until I got a GigaDesign 1.2 GHz now it feels as fast as the dual 1.25 at work So a good CPU will help a lot