At 1:10 AM -0500 on 8/31/03, J. Blanton wrote: >You can do a lot with a 9500. You've got more than enough RAMfor all but >the most serious computing. You could upgrade the SCSI hard drive fairly >cheap. Macresq.com has pretty good deals on 50 pin SCSI drives. You can >get 18 gigs for about $50. The processor, like you mentioned, can be >upgraded to 800 mhz g4 BUT you've still got that 50 mhz system bus ( like >most pci powermacs) and that's where your performance will suffer. The >system bus speed is the main bottleneck on these oldermachines. An ATI >rage 128 card 16 mb video card (from a blue and white g3 or an early G4) >would be good for your video if you didn't want to spend $100 dollars on ATI >Radeon 7000 32mb. > >Howeve, my advice (as a mac user for 17 years) to you would be NOT to spend >the money upgrading the 9500 and save up (or get, if you've got the money) a >"Sawtooth" G4 for about $600. Check out baucom.com for good deals. > > Here are the advantages to a G4: > >1) faster system bus: 100 mhz vs. 50 mhz > >2) AGP 2x Video: AGP video is WAY faster than PCI video which is what your >pretty much stuck with on a old PCI powermac. Newer AGP video cards like >the nVidia Geforce 3 or 4 support way more video memory than an old PCI >power mac > >3) ATA hard drive: ATA drives are cheaper than SCSI, you can get a lot more >storage for you money.
I bought an 8600/300 in June. I have added memory and a big hard drive both of which I think are essential to getting things done these days. I have also added a radeon 7000 which lets me play some games that would not run on the built-in video. I'm happy with what I've done and I think it's reasonable, but the fact is the more you upgrade, the sooner you run into the cost/benefit ceiling as noted above. That's why I got the 8600 instead of upgrading the 5400 I have. The CPU upgrades are trickier. Several of the games I run "require" at least a G3/300 or faster. Only one of them is sluggish with the stock CPU in my system. I expect it (and maybe even some of the others) would run better with a faster CPU, but I don't know how much of a difference it would really make. I've noticed that many people on this list have upgraded with a G3/G4 card. And a recent issue of MacWorld suggested buying a sub $100 pci Mac and building it up with a G4/700, Radeon 7000, Tempo Trio and large hard drive. They say for about $700, you would have the "equivalent" of a $1200 PowerMac G4. But I've seen CompUSA closing out older, but still brand new, G4s (not eMacs) for $500 recently. That's the kind of thing that makes spending $250 for a G4/700 upgrade hard to justify, but, then again, it may be just what you need. Jim -- PCI-PowerMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Sonnet & PowerLogix Upgrades - start at $169 | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PCI-PowerMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/pci-powermacs.shtml> --> 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/pci-powermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
