Maxing out my G4

MAbans · #1 June 20th, 2004, 02:00 AM

I have my little ol G4 450MHZ. While I am planning to buy a powerbook soon I do want to get the rest of the juice I can out of my ol faithful Aki. Anyway I heard since the inplementation of OS X that G4's like mine (450 Sawtooth) can support up to 2GB of ram instead of the 1.5 becuase of the memory handling of OS X. Is there any truth to this? If so Then I will max her out at 2GB. Hope to hear from you all soon and thanks in advance.

bobw · #2 June 20th, 2004, 09:13 AM

Yep, you can put 2GB of ram in and it will be recognized in OS X.
You can also upgrade the processor to a single or dual 1Ghz to 1.4Ghz

http://eshop.macsales.com/Accelerators/index.cfm

MAbans · #3 June 30th, 2004, 08:37 PM

I can't upgrade to a dual before I have the wrong Revision of the G4 Sawtooth. I have 4 and you need 7 I believe. I know there is a little app to test it and I did and no dice. I am considering upgrade.

ElDiabloConCaca · #4 June 30th, 2004, 11:15 PM

A single 1.4GHz G4 would rock.

http://sonnettech.com/product/encore_stg4.html

2 GB of RAM would rock.

http://www.crucial.com/store/listpar...z%29&submit=Go

And, for the big graphics upgrade, nothing beats the Radeon 9800:

http://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_It...m=ATI100435050

Get rid of that crappy CD or DVD-ROM in the computer and slap in the newest Pioneer DVD-R/W drive for right around $100... Mac OS X 10.3.3 and above have native support for this drive, so it will be bootable and recognized by all the iApps and stuff, just like as if Apple had installed it themselves:

http://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_It...Item=PIODVR107

Also, your machine only has a 66MHz ATA bus speed. Get an ATA/133 PCI card, and you can put 6 hard drives in your machine if you're careful (if you're really serious about hotrodding your G4, check out the RAID version of the card... or hell, even add SATA to your G4):

ATA/133: http://sonnettech.com/product/tempo_ata133.html
ATA/133 RAID: http://sonnettech.com/product/tempo_raid133.html
SATA: http://sonnettech.com/product/tempo_serial_ata.html

And, get rid of that slow 5400rpm drive that Apple gave you. Put in something with some space, some angular speed and a huge cache for increased performance (hell, add two and RAID 'em!):

http://harddrive.com/search.do?searc...7+WDC+WD1200JB

I recently moved my drives off of the internal ATA/33 bus and onto a Sonnet Tempo ATA/100 card and I can tell a difference. Moving files about between 3 hard drives is lightning-quick. I get close to 50MB/sec transfer rate, which ain't too bad.

Good luck! If you've got the money to spend on that machine, go for it. With those upgrades, you can get a few more years of use out of your machine...

(By the way... I've purchased multiple items from every company I listed above and have had nothing but great prices, shipping and support. These are companies I trust and will continue to purchase from.)

Pengu · #5 July 1st, 2004, 01:23 AM

Or spend the same amount as all that on a new Mac that does more and still have the old one that currently works anyway

snipper · #6 July 9th, 2004, 12:25 PM

Exactly!

Factor41 · #7 December 1st, 2004, 02:55 PM

Am trying to get a new HD controller PCI card for my G4 Quicksilver. Have been looking at SATA as a decent route to go down so I can swap drives over when I can afford a G5. They sell cards on eBuyer for £8-12, whereas the Mac specific ones seem to start at about £60. Would a PC one do the trick in a plug-n-play stylee under 10.3.6+ or am i gonna have to fork out for extortionately priced mac-specific versions for a driver disc? Ditto for UltraATA cards as a (perhaps) cheaper alternative. Wouldn't give up my Mac for the world, but buying bits for it is still a joke.

How about the Adaptec stuff (ASH-1205 SA specifically) - they used to do decent Mac items, they still at it? Their web site only seems to bring up SCSI cards when Macs are involved and I'm not planning on spending that much. Do they support anything?!

snipper · #8 December 1st, 2004, 03:29 PM

Havn't got a clue about the cards, but.. I bought a new G5 lately, plus a 2nd HD of exactly the same type as was in it, but at a local PC shop.

Such a ST3160023AS [Seagate Barracuda] cost me about €115,-

That's only a fraction of the price of a G5.

I mean: what are you going to do when you buy the G5, rip out all usable parts of the old Mac? That would be a much greater waste of money then you save by switching the HD's.