On Nov 22, 2004, at 9:28 PM, Lou Wilson wrote:
Like you wouldn't believe. OSX takes advantage of AltiVec any chance it gets. Moving to a G4 was, bar-none,the best upgrade I ever made to my Umax S900 and Beige G3's. While you are at it, get at least a 533. OSX starts to really shine after that marker has been passed. You could probably score a 533 for around $150.hanks, all, for that.
Another question: Would I be happier if, prior to upgrading to Panther, I stuck a G4 in it first? (has a Sonnet G3)
And:
Since I can't upgrade the bus speed, would a faster G4 (ie 700 or 800) really make that much of a difference over my G3/500?
Not humongous, however, you will notice that web browsing and video playback will be substantially smoother with a faster chip, I'd say up to 800. After that, only Photoshop, video editing, and other processor intensive stuff would benefit. I wouldn't really bother with getting ever a 500MHz chip unless the price difference is around a $100 or less. Also, take your HD into consideration. If you are still using the built-in IDE bus, or worse, the original IDE HD, then your processor is going to be doing a fair bit of twiddling it's thumbs while it waits for data.
And: Is G4 the difference between being able to use Quartz Extreme, or is it the video card? Or both? Or neither?
The processor has nothing to do with QE. Only video cards with the necessary power and OpenGL specs can run QE. This means one of the Radeon (Mac Edition, 7000, or 9200?) cards. The only bearing the processor will have is in being able to process some of the window drawing faster. Also, QE requires an AGP card, which the G3 machines do NOT have. You can enable QE on a PCI card by using a utility to 'hack' the system. Be forewarned that while generally it doesn't harm anything, people's experiences vary wildly. The benchmark for YYMV, if ever I've seen it. It does have some side effects, although minor.
-Rob
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