[Congo_Jack]

Hello. I own a 450mhz Sawtooth G4 tower, with maxed out ram and memory (and a gigadesigns CPU upgrade in the mail )

But, what I'm wondering is: is the upgrade to Tiger really worth it? I'm running Jaguar now, and I think it's quick and reliable, (It's why I never switched to Panther), but with Tiger out, I'm considering the 200$ pricetag...

Are there are significant performance gains? Also, I wouldn't have to re-install my Jaguar-installed software, would I?

Any help would be appreciated.

[jamil5454]

I'm sure you will feel a night and day difference between Jaguar and Tiger. Also, now that Tiger is out, developers will slowly stop supporting Jaguar as much. Go ahead and buy it - you won't regret it.

[Lateralus]

$200? It's $129.

And yes, the move to Tiger will be worth it. Hell, you missed out on a lot by not jumping in on Panther. I can't see passing two revisions over when each has offered such a big leap over their predecessor. Especially when you're sinking hundreds into hardware upgrades.

[winterlandia]

Originally Posted by Congo_Jack

Hello. I own a 450mhz Sawtooth G4 tower, with maxed out ram and memory (and a gigadesigns CPU upgrade in the mail )

But, what I'm wondering is: is the upgrade to Tiger really worth it? I'm running Jaguar now, and I think it's quick and reliable, (It's why I never switched to Panther), but with Tiger out, I'm considering the 200$ pricetag...

Are there are significant performance gains? Also, I wouldn't have to re-install my Jaguar-installed software, would I?

Any help would be appreciated.

I upgraded a Sawtooth G4 from Jag to Tiger and it feels much much faster. I would say it's worth it. It pushes the video card pretty hard (the Rage 128 just can't make the expose effect happen very smoothly) but for a machine that old, what can I expect!?

[mikemako]

YES by all means you should upgrade. Tiger is an excellent upgrade over Jaguar. The system will feel faster and more refined. If you use Safari, you will notice that webpages will load much more quickly than when using the version of Safari in Jaguar.

It is possible to do a simple (dirty) upgrade and not have to re-install your applications and settings, but it's not a good idea. For best results, I would recommend choosing the "archive and install & preserve user settings" option, which puts a clean version of the system on your computer, and moves all your old files to a "previous system" folder. You can then copy over your documents and such as necessary. I believe you will need to reinstall your applications using this method.

[LeeG]

I also have a sawtooth G4 (500/AGP), that I have upgraded quite a bit: added pioneer 104 superdrive, extra HDs, flashed PC Radeon 8500, other world computing 1.4Ghz upgrade. I think my experience could help as we have similar machines.

Here's been my experience - Jaguar to panther - BIG improvement, not just in speed, but in the OS experience. Panther to Tiger - NOT nearly as big a change. Don't get me wrong, I love Tiger, and I know there's all kinds of goodness under the hood, but it wasn't as dramatic as panther. The OS under Tiger does feel quicker in terms of opening/closing windows, etc, but again, not earth shattering.

From Jaguar to Tiger straight you will DEFINITELY notice a big improvement, but if you're looking to save a few bucks, and not tax your hardware as much, you could buy a used copy of Panther from someone (hint hint, PM me if interested), and you'll still see a big improvement over Jaguar.

I agree with the abover poster also - the 128 graphics card is a definite bottleneck in the system. It does not support QE. Even my Radeon upgrade doesn't support coreimage in Tiger.

Let us know how you make out, and your impressions-

Lee

[Kristoff]

Pros: Everything

Cons: Nothing

[BZ]

I am running Tiger on a very upgraded Sawtooth G4 and it runs great. Much faster for everything from the GUI to searches, web browsing.

I did an upgrade.

BZ

[rhombus]

I just upgraded from 10.2 to 10.4 on a similar machine to yours, a 450Mhz DP G4. There's a noticable boost in speed in the GUI, and the new features introduced in 10.3 and 10.4 are worth the upgrade price. Do an archive and install - you won't need to reinstall applications, but your much less likely to encounter problems than on a simple upgrade.

[macintologist]

Do you have an AGP g4? If so, you should try to upgrade your video card. Get rid of the Rage 128 and put in a Geforce 4 Ti or something, with 64MB.

[cgc]

I have a AGP Sawtooth with 400Mhz G4 upgraded to 1GHz via Gigadesigns and a Radeon 8500. Tiger runs at least as fast as Panther 10.3.9. GET TIGER!