Kelly D. Jones wrote:
I need some advice.I�m trying to decide whether I should upgrade a PCI Power Mac or buy a newer machine. I currently have a Blue and White G3/350 on loan from my work. (They moved to PCs and the B&W was one of the last Macs purchased.) I�ve had it for the past two years and put some money into upgrades for it. I have: 512 meg RAM, OS 10.2, FireWire CDRW, Digital camcorder, USB smart media reader, USB printer, Sonnet ATA/100 PCI card, and two ATA/100 hard drives (20 gig @ 5400RPM and an 80 @7200). I also have an 8500 and a 9500, that are pretty plain machines. The 8500 has the AV stuff, but the 9500 has those 6 PCI slots. What do I use my main machine for? Typical home office stuff, plus home movies (the reason for the 80 gig drive). I�m a computer geek by trade, so I love running the latest and greatest software (OS X and I love the iApps). I did a little research tonight and found that I could upgrade the 8500 or 9500 by adding: -a PCI FireWire/USB combo card for $89 -an ATI Radeon 7000 PCI video card for $129 (I want a card that can take advantage of Quartz Extreme, suggestions?) -a PCI processor upgrade: G3/500 for $179, G4/450 for $229, or G4/700 for $299 Knowing this, I have the following questions: -How much should I worry about the bus? 40mhz for the 85/9500; 100 for the B&W -How much should I lean toward a G4? Does AltiVec work on the Sonnet upgrades? Will OSX's iApps use it? -Will the 8500, with all those upgrades, feel significantly faster than the B&W? -Would it be better to buy a G3 or G4 machine? -Will my PC100 or PC133 RAM work in these older machines? Or will I have buy different RAM? Any advice or comments will be greatly appreciated.
IMHO you would be better off buying a used AGP G4 stripped of its hard drive and moving the goodies from the B&W to it, especially since you want to use Quartz Extreme. The amount of money you would spend getting one of the PCI Macs up to speed plus what you would get selling the 8500 and 9500 would go far towards an AGP G4. Even a fully decked-out PCI Mac with 800MHz G4 processor still has to deal with a 50MHz bus, 33MHz PCI bus, slow memory, and no AGP slot.
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