[Hobbit_Boy]

Let explain my story..Im somewhat of a lurker here (i read but never post). Recently i purchased a G4 400mzh BTO (about a month ago). I put the 13GB HD and downgraded the zip (ill just get a CR-R...holds more and more compatable). What i also did was skimp on RAM.

I know places where i can get RAM cheaper than off of apple.com. I was told by many that extra RAM for apple is just good for their profit margin. So, i only ordered my 400 G4 with 64mb of RAM

I started having problems running games...Unreal Tournament looked awfull..studdering and choppy. (regular unreal works GREAT!!!) I turned on some virtual memeory..now i have about 100mb virtual memory with the built in 64. Still nothing. I have everything set on "low" sound quality and video quality.

Another concern is that the "about this macintosh" display about my memory is OFF. I have 100mb virtual memory and 64 built-in. After i subtract the system's usage im left with less then i should have..whats up with that?

Also, under the system profiler i get a PCI slot that the Rage Pro is hooked into. Did apple send me an older 400 Yikes? It says nothing in the profiler about an internal firewire port...

Another disturbing thing is when i tried to use the new MP3 encoder by SoundJam that has been enhanced for Velocity Engine nothing was diffrent. The readme file said they got their 450 G4 up to 8x compression. Mine was a measly 5x. The read-me also said that a g3 laptop got 5x compression rate. So what, i have the quivilent of a g3 laptop here?

Could a lack of physical RAM make that much diffrence in preformace? I bumped the memory on soundjam WAAAAY up, nothing. I dont get it. Im getting a RAM uprade to 256 soon, along with that CD-R. Someone please help me out here, i dont really know whats going on!!!!

[Misha]

As far a UT goes... doesn't that itself need 64 MB of RAM? I wouldn't run UT with only 64 MB of total RAM; that's probably your problem.

Regarding the About This Mac... screen; I don't know why it says VM is off if it's on. Maybe it is indeed off... also, if you add the System's useage and the largest free block it will never add up to the total RAM because the largest free block is just that: the largest, not the total.

If it says that you have a Rage Pro 128 then you have the AGP (Sawtooth). Yikes! used a regular Rage 128. That's just System Profiler being outdated and not recognizing the AGP slot.

As far as SoundJam encoding goes, I don't know what C&G is talking about... on my G4 400 I get about 5x, sometimes going as high as 5.5x and sometimes dropping down to as low as 3x (just for a few seconds; on avg. it's about 5x). With my PowerBook G3/400 I was encoding at around 3x (max. at 3.5x). My guess is they're just trying to make their encoder look faster than it actually is...

Get the RAM and see if that fixes the UT problem... and turn VM off when you get it.

FOR GOD'S SAKE MAN, GET SOME RAM!!! OS 9 alone takes something like 40MB just to run the system. UT will run slower because you don't have a fast enough hard drive to use VM effectively. Also, make sure your settings are optimized for Open GL and not software. Then get yourself some RAM. You have a nice machine, don't cheap out now.
Check this out:
www.crucial.com

256 SO-DIMMs for about 300 bucks.

No, 256 Megs of PC100 SRAM is only $224 at Memory to Go. As I have posted before, if you want to find cheap RAM a good place to look is www.ramseeker.com.

[rezEdit]

You can tell is SoundJam is using the velocity engine at the bottom of the encoder window where it tells you the settings it is using to encode the file. You will see that it says "using Velocity".

I too got 64 MB with my G4/350, and recently purchased 64 MB more from The Chip Merchant (http://store.yahoo.com/thechipmerchant/) for $90, including postage. I had a friend install it, and it took all of a minute. 64 just doesn't cut it. If you have questions about what kind to get, call them: 800/808-2447. Very friendly.

[Avon]

I also purchased my mac with 64 megs of ram. Apple charges a rediculus 140 for 64 extra megs of ram where www.memorytogo.com charged me $114 for a 128MB dimm! The apple dimm in my computer is a PC100-322S where the dimm I bought is a faster PC100-222S.

Dont even think of buying a mac with extra ram!! The G4s ingenious case makes it so easy to upgrade!!!

Just my 2 cents: I am inclined to think that hard drive performance has a lot to do with the encoding speed in any mp3 encoder. C&G's tests must have been done on a machine with a faster G4 and an Ultra2-SCSI drive. The base ATA hard drive just can't compare with U2-SCSI.

Dornshak

[Hobbit_Boy]

Wow, thanks everyone for the great outpouring off ideas and comments. Im getting some ram soon, as soon as today, or tomarrow. Ultimatley id like to upgrade this machine with around 512mb RAM and a Ultra2-SCSI drive.

BTW, i havent checked, but how much does a 10-13 GB Ultra2-SCSI drive run?

Other than those questions im pretty impressed with the G4. I had an old quadra 650...gotta love the 68k machines. That thing could compare easily to a 100mzh pentium system..LOL.

Thanks everyone once again...BTW is getting a Voodoo3 card or at least a 32mb graphics card worth the upgrade now? I heard someplace that ATI is doing a trade-in for the 32mb cards?

[wlonh]

for RAM deals, as has been mentioned previously in this thread and many others, www.ramseeker.com just can't be beat.

for other deals, from Macs to their peripherals, see:
www.dealmac.com
and www.pricepulse.com

i know of other sites, but these have served me very well... other readers will likely post other helpful sites

[kkneisley]

Originally posted by Hobbit_Boy:

BTW, i havent checked, but how much does a 10-13 GB Ultra2-SCSI drive run?

Did you get the Adaptec U2W card with the machine?

If not, do your research before you buy! Check macgurus.com section about scsi boards and drives! It should help enlighten.

A single u2-scsi drive will not be much faster than your stock drive! Unless you are doing some serious drive duty (photoshop, video, etc) the scsi drive & card are fairly idle.

Something to think about. Just be sure to do your research.

[Hobbit_Boy]

Well I purchased 128MB of RAM off of Ramjet.com. What can i say? Unreal looks...unreal. Q3 runs smoothly. Im getting the new version of Photoshop soon...(with photoshop and macromedia flash ill be unstopable! HA HA HA!!! *Devious grin*)

Im now suffering from "after purchase blues" I recently saw the new Athlons are up to 1Gz..what does this mean for the G4? The 600Mzh athlon is about equal to G4-class processors...does apple have anything planned for us in the future? Will there be any upgrades worth getting that can boost the speed of this 400mzh G4 in the near future?

I have one last worry about my system...lets see if anyone knows about this problem...

When i runs several apps...(soundjam, AIM, Netscape, IE...) and i quit them, the memory they were using disapears. Its GONE. The machine is eating the memory. I go up to "about this macintosh" and the same ammout of memory that i had free when running all the applications is the same. (even though all the applications had been quit). Whats up with this? I have VM OFF now, thank god...caused all sorts of crashes.

I dont know what is the problem...i had this happen on my last machine, a quadra 650.

BTW, any sugestions of cool things i can do with that quadra 650? Fish tank? LOL!! This machine screams!!!

[tadd]

If you have 100MB largest unused block of memory, run 3 applications, call them aaa, bbb and ccc, each taking 20MB, now you have 40MB largest unused block of memory. If you quit aaa or bbb, you still only have 40MB largest unused block of memory. This is because the in-use memory is not reshuffled to free up space.

If you turn on virtual memory, you can get a much bigger map of 'memory' to play with while only keeping in-use data in your real memory.

I think this lack of reshuffling is actually common in the industry, only that the MacOS actually TELLS you about it.

I think that most OSs don't run at all without virtual memory turned on. I suspect that MacOS X will require virtual memory too.

Does this make sense?

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Tadd Torborg