Accelerator for G3 Powerbook WS

[lineaddict]

I just installed MAC OS X into my G3 Powerbook WS. The CPU is running at around 300mhz. The performance is kind of sluggish. Wondering if putting a G3/G4 accelerator be helpful or would it create more trouble than its worth?

I am currently looking at accelerator form Sonnet.

Any of you got experience wishes to share?

 

[Cheryl]

How much RAM do yo have installed?

 

[RacerX]

I installed Mac OS X v10.2 on my PowerBook G3/266 (1 MB L2) with 512 MB of RAM last August and found it was fine for most everything I did (with that system I do web design with GoLive, Photoshop, ImageReady, Acrobat, Illustrator, LiveMotion and OmniWeb).

A few months ago after getting paid for a job I did I bought the Sonnet G4/500 (1 MB of L2) upgrade. After installing it there was a noticeable increase in the speed of the GUI (expected as the GUI in 10.2 uses Altivec). The speed of things like Acrobat and GoLive didn't change much (I was already happy with the snappiness of GoLive 6.0 in 10.2 compared to GoLive 5.0 in 8.6), OmniWeb and Photoshop became much nicer to work in, and Quicktime didn't change that much (it must be trying to use the graphics instead of CPU, which in my case is still a ATI Rage Lite with 4 MB of VRAM).

Overall, it was worth the money. I knew ahead of time that somethings that use Altivec would be enhanced which is why I chose the G4/500 over the G3/500. Knowing I could never upgrade the graphics, the Altivec enabled upgrade seemed like the best way to help the my system.

Important Note: I had never run a Classic OS on my PowerBook. The first operating system I used on it was Mac OS X Server 1.2 (Rhapsody 5.6). I used that until last August when I put Mac OS X v10.2 on it. I didn't install the drivers on the hard drive for Mac OS 9 while installing Mac OS X as I never planned on needing to use the Classic OS on that system. Sonnet's G4/500 needs to copy the ROM from the original G3 processor card to the new G4 processor card. Their utility only works when booted from an Apple hard drive running Mac OS 8.6 - 9.2.2. Fortunately I had an old 2 GB Apple drive and put Mac OS 9.1 on it to do this. I guess they didn't think having a Mac OS 8.6 - 9.2.2 only installation utility would be a problem even though they say their processor works with 10.2.x. Once the G4/500 was up and running, I dropped my old hard drive back in and haven't had any problems since.

The attached image is the results of running SpeedRun on my PowerBook after installing the Sonnet upgrade. They don't actually show any real comparisons on Sonnet's site.

 

[lineaddict]

I only have 128M in my Powerbook. It was good enough when I was running under OS 9.x. For heavy workload, I use the PowerMac in my office.

 

[mac-blog]

The more real memory the better with PowerBooks on X. PowerBook drives are VERY slow and at 128 X is using virtual memory a lot. I'd get more memory first and then think about the processor later.

It sounds like Racer wasn't having any problem with his system with a G3 at 266 mhz with 512MB of memory. Maybe that is a good upgrade path for you at this time.

 

[manab]

I have upgraded my Wallstreet Powerbook G3 /233MHz 14.1" with Sonnet Cresendo wallstreet G3/500MHz(Memory 192MB, 6GB HDD, MacOSX 10.1.5/MacOS9.2.2). It is much faster now. Window redrawing, moving, iTunes visualization, Quicktime all are fast now. Quantitatively speaking, iTunes visualization; frame rate 24 from 14 (medium, full screen, higher quality, thousands of color option). Quicktime Player: 30 frame per sec in 320x240 size compared to earlier 15-17 FPS. This are all for MacOS X 10.1.5. In MacOS 9.2.2 Full screen Video CD playing frame rate was barely 24 FPS at the peak now steady 24 FPS (max:for the VCD I used).Once the card is installed I reinstalled MacOS X once for some other reason and I did not needed any special software to install. Just installed system software as it.