On Jan 5, 2011, at 7:13 PM, Jasiu wrote: > I have a 400 MHZ G4 Sawtooth that I would like to upgrade. Switching > the processor is prohibitively expensive. What kind of video card can > I stick in this? What about a SATA card? Thanks
The effectiveness of a video card upgrade may depend on which OS you're running. I believe Quartz Extreme and Core Image debuted in Tiger, and are used extensively throughout the UI. For a while, I was running a Radeon 9700 in a Sawtooth (with a 1GHz CPU w/ no L3 cache) and Leopard, and performance was quite good. My processor upgrade was not terribly expensive, though not cheap either(~$100) and was well worth the money. Problem is, a decent graphics card with Quartz/Core Image support isn't going to be that much less expensive than a low-end CPU. Watch LEM Swap for deals, though CPU upgrades don't seem to appear all that often. As for the SATA card I believe any Mac-compatible SATA PCI card will work. Watch to make sure that the card you get is bootable, if that's important to you. A more economic upgrade may be to get an altogether new Mac with a faster CPU. G4 towers (and even some G5's) are dirt cheap these days. Eric -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
