Wow. Thanks a lot Michael. That was all really useful. I think I'd rather go with a new 700Mhz iBook with the better video card than upgrade my pismo... I think there would be a greater speed difference and if I sold my pismo on ebay I'd only be spending one or two hundred dollars more than getting the upgrade...and you get a new machine (better screen, I think) and a better video card.
Ineresting. Justin >> So my question, because I'm seriously considering this, because I like >> my >> Pismo and don't want a TiBook - will this do me any good? I can >> afford it a >> lot more than a new laptop, and I do a lot of things that would work >> better >> with a G4 - Photoshop, OS X, iTunes, iPhoto - and for sure it would >> beat the >> pants off of my 400Mhz G3. But is there a possibility of faster >> upgrades >> downstream? > > No one can =say= for sure whether or not there will be faster upgrades > down > the pike, I would doubt it for a long while (due to > architecture/economic > reasons) but who knows? A lot of the below is conjecture, but through > past > history and common sense. > > Here is the problem with an upgrade like this- the G4 isn't a bad > processor, > but it is focused. Extremely focused. Especially when you are plugging > it > into an older architecture, you end up not getting the same speed > increase > you would if you took a 733mhz G4 and added a dual 1ghz card to it. > > You have a 400mhz G3, and this would be a 500mhz G4. That is a 25% clock > rate increase. You can expect (because you are plugging it into an older > architecture) around a 20% speed increase across the board when you > factor > in the limitations of your drive/bus speeds and video card. Those are > basically your points of failure (you can see this in G4 upgrades in > older > machines): bus speed, drive speed, video speed, etc... Those three > things > are what can keep performance from being way up there. Lets go through > the > exact applications you use. > > photoshop: > Don't think you are suddenly going to be using it 50% faster. Most of > Pshop > is not altivec accelerated (and can't be easily). Some filters are. > When you > see the big benchmarks saying on average with altivec it can be 30-50% > faster, it is because some of the filters benefit drastically and screw > up > the curve. :) And a lot of the drastically accellerated ones are not the > most commonly used (ie, a gaussian blur or unsharp mask doesn't benefit > tremendously). Scrolling won't see that much of a benefit due to your > video > card and other issues, using the application itself will see 20% tops. > If > you have to sit through long, long filter processing then you could > see a > big benefit right there. > > In fact you can see this by going and looking at the benchmarks around > between the 400mhz pismo and the 400mhz G4 from old- hardly any increase > except in photoshop, etc and that was "batch processing testing". > > itunes: > Yeah, itunes sucks up a crazy amount of resources just playing > background > music. But most of that is not altivec accelerated whatsoever. Where > you can > see massive gains with a G4 is in ripping tracks from your G4, types of > conversion. But those are dependant on a lot of factors... Ie, will you > be > ripping from your internal drive? Chances are your G3 is close to > saturating > the speed of the drive, and the G4 will top out... And your internal > hard > drive- if it has to wait while it processes stuff to your internal > drive... > > iPhoto: > Will definitely help, as a lot of the app is altivec accellerated > (things > resize faster, catalog viewing, etc) but its not night and day... It > can be > the difference between frustrating as hell and usable though. > > OSX: > Things will be snappier, such as shadows drawing and others things. But > you > are so limited by your drive it isn't funny- OSX is constantly using > it. I > saw hardly any improvement between a 500mhz tibook and a 667 > (pre-cache) but > putting a 5400rpm drive in showed an across the board improvement. > > In closing, if it makes sense to you and you are willing to put up with > all > the potentials (a company that has proven unreliable, untested product, > etc) > then go for it. Really you have a bunch of ram (one of the main things > you > can do to improve performance) so about the best thing you could do to > see > big across the board gains would be to upgrade the internal drive to a > 5400rpm model. > > Anyways, hope it helps. > > > Michael Bryan Bell -- G-Books is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Check our web site for refurbished PowerBooks | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-Books list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-books.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-books%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
