[Got-A-Vision]

I'm new to this forum, but an old-time Mac user. Got my first Mac (an SE with 1MB RAM, 20MB HD) in 1988.

I am a graphic designer and use Photoshop and other pro-level design programs every day. My computer is in desperate need of an update, though. (As an example, as I finished typing this message the first time, the cursor froze and I lost the whole message and had to reboot). I have a blue & white G3, which has been updated to a 500mhz G4 (via a Sonnet Encore/ZIF). I have 384MB of RAM (256+64+64) and an 80GB HD (which regularly has 40GB free).

I need to make my move in the next few weeks... either update my current system (add RAM, install new Sonnet 1ghz processor upgrade, change CD-RW drive for CD/DVD burner)... to the tune of maybe $1,200 (including installation)...

OR... purchase a new dual-processor G5 with a SuperDrive and plenty of RAM.

Now this may seem like a no-brainer, but I'm not a tech-addict, and I rather not head into a glitchy new system and risk disappointment. I'm thinking that at half the cost, a single-processor 1ghz system will still seem mighty fast to me!

In addition, I have 3 children (2 in college) and I need to watch my pennies. I bought the G3 initially because of its upgrade-ability, and I think I might find a lot of satisfaction in getting a couple more years out of it. Of course, a zippy new G5 would be real "fun," too!

I'd appreciate your opinions and input (also some info on DVD burners, about which I am clueless!)

Thanks a lot!

[Lateralus]

I'd upgrade. It doesn't sound like you need or want a G5, and with some lovin, your B&W could last you a while longer.

First off... please do not even consider the Sonnet GHz upgrade. It drops the bus speed of the system down to 66MHz from 100MHz, which makes a huge difference, and Sonnet's firmware patch to use the upgrade has been a disaster, many people have been unable to use their systems at all after attempting installation. Head over to XLR8 to read some of the feedback.

I strongly suggest the newly announce 1.1GHz PowerPC 750GX G3 upgrade from PowerLogix. It is $350 and well worth it. The 750GX is very fast, and would definately be faster than the Sonnet GHz G4.

And as far as optical drives, get the Pioneer DVR-107D from NewEgg.com. It is the same drive that Apple ships in the G5, so you wont run into any support issues. Just pop it in and you're good to go.

And yes, RAM would definately help, as would a Radeon PCI card so that you could take advantage of Quartz Extreme (via PCI Extreme which enables PCI Macs to take advantage of Quartz Extreme).

$350 for 1.1GHz GX
$86 for SuperDrive
$50 or less for 256MBs of RAM.
$70ish for a flashed Radeon 7000 64MB PCI from eBay
-----------------------
$556

Not too bad, I'd say.

[Got-A-Vision]

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:
I strongly suggest the newly announce 1.1GHz PowerPC 750GX G3 upgrade from PowerLogix. It is $350 and well worth it. The 750GX is very fast, and would definately be faster than the Sonnet GHz G4.

Wow! Thank you for all the great info! I was poking around on the PowerMac board and came across something about this upgrade that concerns me. I am currently running a Sonnet G4 upgrade at a speed of 500mhz with 100mhz bus speed.

I saw something that said that on a G3 upgrade, you can't run iDVD. Will there be other things I can't do on a G3 upgrade? Also, I'm not familiar with iDVD. Do I need it to burn DVDs? I am concerned about going from a G4 back to a G3 processor, not knowing the implications for each program I use.

The Sonnet upgrade I was looking at is the EG4-1000-1M-U, which is listed as G4/1GHz 1MB/250MHz. You referred to the bus speed dropping to 66MHz. Is that the tested speed? I'm not as technical as I should be! Please explain...

Also, just for the info, I'm using OS 10.2.6. (I have been cautious about upgrading to 10.2.8, as my system has not had too much weird glitchiness in a couple years now, and I've read some unnerving things about upgrading to 10.2.8 on the Apple user boards.)

Thanks for your valuable advice!

[Lateralus]

Each motherboard operates at a difference bus speed. The bus speed determines the speed at which the processor communicates with the main memory and just about everything else. The B&W is natively a 100MHz board. But in order to get the 7455 G4 (The G4 variant used in the Sonnet 1GHz upgrade) to work with the B&W (there was an incompatability between B&W boards and newer G4s, which is why there were no new G4 B&W upgrades for so long), Sonnet had to take a page out of the Beige G3's book (the predecessor to your B&W. It's bus speed operated at 66MHz). So the necessary firmware patch to use the Sonnet 1GHz upgrade drops the bus speed down to 66MHz on the B&W, which is a major drain on system performance. It is also very risky, especially to those who have already applied firmware updates to use earlier G4 upgrades (like you would have had to do before installing your G4 upgrade, so you're in the red zone).

Technically, G3's cannot run iDVD. But I've heard there is a work around for it that somebody developed. Check around at MacUpdate.

iDVD, basically, is for burning consumer-grade DVD movies. It's for taking video, throwing it on a disc in whatever way you want, applying menus and themes and music and basically developing a navigation system. Then, burning it and popping it in your home DVD player.

I personally don't think iDVD is important enough to warrant taking the massive risk and huge bus speed performance drop by getting the Sonnet. Almost everything works on the G3, there are only a few select apps that do not, most of which come from Apple. And they probably only dropped G3 support in iDVD to drive G4 sales.

Chances are, you wont need any applications that are G4 only. They are all high-end applications.

And I would not be worried at all about going back to the G3. IBM has been developing the G3 over the years, just as Motorola has been developing the G4. The G3's design is the only one that has actually improved over the years. The G4 in your machine is the 7400 or the 7410. They were the fastest G4s ever developed. Motorola had to change the design of the G4 to get past 550MHz, and after changing it they came up with the 7450/7455 (What the Sonnet uses). The 7450/7455 design is much more inefficient than the 7400/7410 design. A 550MHz 7400/7410 can keep up with a 733MHz 7450/7455. The reason for this is something called pipeline stages. The pipeline is basically what the data moves down to get processed. The longer the pipeline, the long it takes for data to get processed. The 7400/7410 used a 4-stage pipeline design. The 7450/7455 uses a 7-stage design. So it takes data much longer to get processed on the 7450/7455 than it does on the 7400/7410.

While Motorola had to jump to a 7-stage design to break 500MHz, IBM has been much more resourceful with the G3 and has been able to stick to a 4-stage design while going all the way up to 1.1GHz. For this reason, and the fact that the 750GX G3 has 1MB of L2 cache which is 4x what the Sonnet in question has, the 750GX G3 is faster than any G4 clock-for-clock in non-AltiVec tasks. Meaning, if you're an OS 9 user, or you don't use any high-end or AltiVec optimized applications, the G3 would be the faster choice. And even if you do use any of the above applications, the drop in bus speed to 66MHz with the Sonnet is such a drain on performance that it negates the AltiVec performance boost in many-many areas.

So, like I said, I think the G3 is for you. You run no risk of killing your motherboard, just pop it in and boot up and you're done. And your bus speed is allowed to run at it's full speed.

[wily]

Sounds like you're happy with the G3 and upgrade path. If you choose to do so, chances
are good that you'll be satisfied and content with it.

However, I'd like to offer another point of view on getting a G5 - and this from a colleague - I too am a designer.

If your clients are using you for simple graphic design - logos, simple graphics, etc. fine. However, if your clients have any interest in multi-media or complicated, multi-color
design, the G5 wins hands down.

To be realistic, a 5 hour job will not turn into a 2 hour job just because of the G5. However, 1 minute renders will turn into a few seconds and that really helps grease the
creative process along.

Think through too your tolerance to "hassle factor" when upgrading components. When you go through an upgrade path, you multiply error/incompatibility possibilities with each
independent purchase.

It also looks like you take good care of your machines and expect a great deal of use from
your machines - a G5 may cost double your stated $1,200, but over 4 years, it's still not a
large price to pay to dole out an additional $350 per year to get the warranty and speed.

In a nutshell, think about how often you find yourself back logged by your cpu and weigh
that against your frustration factor. Going from a Blue & White to G5 will just about eliminate them.

Personally, I upgraded from 867 Quicksilver to Dual G5 because I'm a speed junkie. The
investment was a write-off.

Anyway, best wishes to your business and family.

[Waragainstsleep]

If you go the upgrade route *the list suggested above was less than half your 'available' budget), you might consider a hard drive upgrade. The G3 will run the OS faster than your current G4, so that will help balance out the Altivec advantage slightly. A SATA PCI card and HD (or a fast SCSI setup, if you can find a cheap one) would speed things up even more. Plus Photoshop is disk intensive, so again more speed there too. Since alot of your space is already unused, and you can keep hold of it anyway, a Western Digital Raptor drive would be the fastest SATA drive you could get. And you could get the smallest 36GB version to save cost.

[indigoimac]

I would compromise between the two and get a new G4 dual processor $1600 simply can't be beat.

[fiesta cat]

I have a B&W. I reached a point where I said screw it and bought a 1.6G G5 from Apple/refurb for $1300 (which I should be getting tomorrow). I looked at the value of what I was going to put into the B&W to modernize it and what it would get me a few years down the road if/when I sold it, versus going all new. It was like a car. I could put a $1000 into it, but when I sold it, I sure wasn't going to get all of that money back.

I could have went to the dual 1.8, but I have a limited budget and decided I needed the additional HDD space and memory that the price difference would allow me to buy, than I needed dual 1.8s.

[veryniceguy2002]

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:
I'd upgrade. It doesn't sound like you need or want a G5, and with some lovin, your B&W could last you a while longer.

First off... please do not even consider the Sonnet GHz upgrade. It drops the bus speed of the system down to 66MHz from 100MHz, which makes a huge difference, and Sonnet's firmware patch to use the upgrade has been a disaster, many people have been unable to use their systems at all after attempting installation. Head over to XLR8 to read some of the feedback.

PowerMacMan, does Sonnet do the same 100MHz -> 66MHz bus trick on the 800MHz G4 upgrade?

Sounds a bit like if I want to get my B&W G3 a new lease of life with Processor + Hard Disk + DVD burner to do video editing etc work, I might be better off with a new G5??

[Chinasaur]

I too had a speed bumped B&W and had an ~$1200 budget.

I opted for a used Quicksilver2K2 as it could take dual proc's down the road, had a 133Mhz bus and AGP. Add the fact I didn't need a G5 and the late model G4 was right for me. And it cost much less than my budget. Maybe you as well?

There were some QS's offered in Marketplace last week for good prices.

Best of luck.

[Komisar]

I agree with indigoimac, why not meet half way get the dual g4 with a dvd burner a decent graphics card a gig of ram. I don't think it would come out to be that mucc. But with a machine like that you would do just as good with 512. Check them out over at the apple store.