[jaisun]

I currently have a Mactell/Railgun G3 300/300 1Mb (running nicely @ 333/222) and I would like to know if upgrading to one of the new dual G4 cards would be worth the money. Or should I opt for a faster G3? Or maybe I should just wait until OSX consumer comes out (maybe by then the card will have dropped a few hundred $$$). I'm shopping for the long-run...

Anyway, thanks for any input.

[drewman]

What do you do with your computer? Are you feeling the wait on any part of your system doing a particular task?

If so, let's hear about that subsystem and we can talk more specifics.

Also, I believe that MacOSX with lots of memeory will run much faster even on older hardware because the Unix kernel will work the processor more efficiently.

Running Linux on a 6100 with XWindow is much faster than running MacOS9 on it.

drewman

[jaisun]

Lets see...here's my system specs:

9600/200 (w/the above processor upgrade), 3dfx V3 2000, ixMicro TT 128 4Mb, ixTV, Keyspan USB (w/xlr8 mouse), 160Mb RAM, OEM 4Gb HD, OEM 12x CD-ROM, La Cie 24x SCSI (now internal) CD-ROM, Philips Omniwriter (now internal) 2x2x6 CDRW, Apple 1710AV.

One of my plans is to buy an identical HD and stripe the two up. I am also window shopping for an additional monitor and 128-256Mb of RAM.

My ultimate plan for this machine is professional DTP, 3D rendering, video editing, and eventually (when I get a new machine to replace it) a robust home network/internet server.

Again, these goals are some time off and I can wait a while to upgrade...so I guess I've answered my own question, huh? Make the other upgrades first (HD, monitor, RAM) and wait until I really need the processor upgrade...any suggestions on that? How about an Acard or Turbomax UATA RAID setup? Would I notice a HD performance increase over my OEM SCSI?

I'm just looking for ways to harness my computers full potential. I don't feel that it's limits have been reached and there are times when I notice it more like when playing Unreal Tournament for instance. The V3 is no slouch so I'm guessing it has something to do with either the HD setup, processor, or RAM.

Anyway, suggestions or comments are welcome. Thanks

[Misha]

Given the fact that dual-G4 upgrades won't ship until June and that Apple has yet to demonstrate how well Mac OS X handles SMP, I'd say it's way too early to tell whether such an upgrade would be worth it or not. One thing's for sure, though, given the work you plan on doing with the machine a G4 would much better serve your needs than a G3.

[macopz]

Well, i think that your problems with UT are mostly because of bus speed/bus bandwidth. If you've had the chance to play with a born-and-bred G3, you'd notice the difference immediately. personally, if i were you, i'd stick it out for another 9-11 months and get a rev 2 G4 (supposedly, these will be capable of stability at over 1 GHz) this will be a GREAT machine for a good long time, certainly capable of high-speed rendering and being the server for a network.

------------------
;-) MacOpz

[zac4mac]

as far as ATA cards go, the turbomax is ATA33 and costs around 200 bucks, while the Acard 6260M is ATA66 and costs 100 bucks...kind of a no brainer in my book. i have an Acard with a 20GB maxtor 7200rpm ATA66 drive that is almost twice as fast as the narrow SCSI2 barracuda it replaced.YMMV

[drewman]

Where did you get your ACard.

drewman

[zac4mac]

sorry for the slow reply drewman...at the hospital now recovering from a 2 disk fusion so i'm on memory for this but i got the card from Mac Rentals, i think in La Jolla, don't have the phone number handy but i contacted Erik at [email protected] .e-mail Acard at www.acard.com to make sure. the card was 114.00 COD or 99.00 with a credit card.working extremely well in my mutant 8500, have a boot partition of OS8.6 and one with OS9, both boot beautifully and reliably. the card works by converting the ATA to SCSI with the result being i now have 4 SCSI busses in my mac. have not tried to see how many devices i can actually attach but i have a full SCSI chain, left address 0 open for the ATA controller and have 2 ATA drives attached so far with room for 2 more

[This message has been edited by zac4mac (edited 02-19-2000).]