[firefly]

Which upgrade is better value for a Quicksilver?

- Newer G4/7448 2.0GHz (~$400 at OWC)

- Sonnet DUAL G4/7447A 1.8GHz (~$500 at OWC)

P.S. Dual 7448 is out of budget. P.P.S. Mac isn't really used for rendering or anything just everyday tasks (sometimes editing large files in Photoshop CS2).

[Lateralus]

The 7448 is a nice improvement to the G4 line, and I wish Apple had opted to use it in the final PowerBooks so it would have seen at least limited use in Macs.

Regardless, the many performance improvements it offers over the 7447A aren't enough to make up for an entire additional CPU.

I'd go for the Sonnet between the two. But if you're looking to spend that much on a CPU upgrade, if at all possible you should try to get a 7448 Dual, regardless of clock speed.

You also may want to consider this Dual from Giga. Its performance will rival that of the Sonnet because of its L3 cache, and it's $100 cheaper.

[GSixZero]

I'm not sure what all your concerns are, but I would say deciding the value in upgrading to new g4 card seems like penny wise pound foolish.

Why not invest the $500 in a new iMac ($1199) or a used g5 (~$1000)?

[DrBoar]

Unless your Quicksiver is maxed out with 1.5 GB RAM ATI 9800 card etc you get more bang for the bucks even with a macmini than spending 500 on upgrading a 5 year old computer.
4 years ago I bought a 1.2 GHz GigaDesign upgrade for my Sawtooth (it already had ATI 8500 and lots of RAM and HD for the time) Then 1.2 GHz and ATI 8500 could run any application and game. And PPC was still the future

Now PPC is a dead end for Apple and some apps are Intel only and this will only increase. So think really hard about investing in G4

[Cadaver]

Several years ago I bought a dual 500MHz Gigabit PowerMac G4 off eBay to use as a second computer at work (didn't have a Mac at my office at that time, so I decided to buy one myself). This was in the OS X 10.3 days. I think within a month I upgraded the CPU to a 1.4GHz PPC7447B from OWC. Also maxed out the RAM with left over sticks I had laying around from various old machines. Ran like a champ.

About 5 months ago, my 7 year old daughter says she wants a computer of her own. So I haul the G4 out of the basement and connect a spare monitor. Crash city. Turns out the fan on the Radeon 8500 in the machine has stopped running and the chip was overheating. Turned to eBay and bought a $100 Mac-flashed 128MB Radeon 9800. Now the machine is running Leopard quite well (hooray parental controls). Not a digital video barnburner, but for web surfing its works perfectly.

So while spending $100 on what is otherwise a very old machine is worth it, I'd personally would take the $400-$500 the OP was going to spend and buy a base model Mac mini instead. Unless you need to run two displays or need a certain PCI card, a Mac mini will likely do everything several times faster than your Quicksilver can do, even upgraded.

But, if you're sold on upgrading the G4, I say go dual-processor. While a bigger L3 helps offset the relatively slow bus speed of the G4 machines, if you're doing any sort of multi-tasking, the dualie will be better in the end. If you aren't doing any real multi-tasking at all, then the 7448 will probably suit you just fine. You mention Photoshop CS2. You should check any filters you use on a regular basis are multi-processor aware.