[tpitts1]

I am looking to upgrade my G4/400 Sawtooth. I have 256Mb memory and a 16Mb ATI video card. I want to get the best price vs. performance, meaning I need to take in to consideration the hardware architecture before I go add a huge video card.

I am thinking of adding another 256Mb RAM and replacing my 16Mb card with a 32Mb video card. Will I see a considerable boost that will be worth keeping my machine anoter year? Any other thoughts, considerations, etc?

[nvaughan3]

Hi, i recently upgraded my g4/400 sawtooth. My advice:

Buy a stick of 512MB pc133 from http://www.18004memory.com/. That's around $50. I bought a gig, but i had less to start with than you. 512MB doesnt do OS X justice (I assume you are on it?), but 768 should do fine.

Second, buy a radeon 8500 LE (PC) and flash the ROM to mac. You can get that at banana PC-this one works well-http://www.bananapc.com/Products/product_info.asp?product_id=5297.

That's $82 and will give you Quark Extreme acceleration, plus a decent card that should last the lifetime of the machine.

With those two boosts my machine is noticably more responsive. I'm considering overclocking but I mostly work with PC where I can set the clock frequency and FSB by BIOS, and the thought of soldering just to overclock gives me quite a pause.

[D'Espice]

I'll have to agree with nvaughan3, everything he said is correct. Only, I would like to add one thing: You might wanna get more RAM, the more RAM you get the faster OS X feels.

Also, you only need the Radeon 8500 in case you're running Jaguar, it won't speed up anything but games on any previous OS. And if you're not playing any games, it won't do you any good.

[Todd Madson]

My G4/400 has:

1.5 gigs of PC133 SDRAM
105 gigs of 7200 rpm hard drive space

An ATI Radeon 8500 64 meg video card

And: a colorful multi-LED fan!

[ReggieX]

Don't bother with PC133 RAM, stick to PC100 because that's the speed it's going to end up anyway. Just make sure it's Mac compatible, I bought some 133 from a local PC dealer and it didn't work at all. A quick trip to OWC for a guaranteed success is much better.

Having said that, I also have a flashed Radeon 8500, but it has problems with Jaguar and deep sleeping. I haven't had the time to sit down and troubleshoot it yet, but that's not a disrecommendation.

Personally, I don't see trying to upgrade the processor in my G4/400, I'll just sell it intact and buy a new machine when the time comes.

[D'Espice]

Wow, unfortulately I can't beat that. My PowerMac G4/350 AGP has 640MB of RAM, a 40GB Seagate Barracuda IV (7200rpm), a 32x Sony CD-RW, a nVidia GeForce2 MX, an internal Iomega Zip100 and a 17" miro LCD



I don't have the cool power supply, but don't have Bobby, the cool dog

[nvaughan3]

Originally posted by ReggieX:
[B]Don't bother with PC133 RAM, stick to PC100 because that's the speed it's going to end up anyway. Just make sure it's Mac compatible, I bought some 133 from a local PC dealer and it didn't work at all. A quick trip to OWC for a guaranteed success is much better.

No, but you cant find PC100 much cheaper, so why not go pc133? The memory I referred to is guaranteed to work in the g4 and is pretty cheap as well.

[bseely]

Originally posted by nvaughan3:



No, but you cant find PC100 much cheaper, so why not go pc133? The memory I referred to is guaranteed to work in the g4 and is pretty cheap as well.

Get whatever is cheapest - the PC133 memory is just going to run at 100mhz when you put it in your Sawtooth anyway, so it really doesn't matter which one you get speedwise...