Early G4 hardware question....

N

NickBurns

Mac Abuser
Hey guys,

I have one of the very 1st G4 tower's, its a 400mhz, 10gig drive, and 64meg. I have a few questions. I am told that these early one's were made from the later G3 motherboards, and that they are not as good as the G4's actually on the G4 motherboard? Can anyone confirm this? I have a chance to get a used G4 700mhz, and am wondering if it would it be a noticeable difference? I know there are other factor's....

Any help would be appreciated,
Thanks
 
'I have a chance to get a used G4 700mhz, and am wondering if it would it be a noticeable difference?' - yes. In addition to increase in speed, is a slot for an (original) airport card, a higher capacity power supply, and up to 1.5 GB maximum RAM capability. Also, the supplied hard disk drive of the 700+ MHz G4 will be larger than that of the 400 MHz model.

To view all the differences and similarities of the 400 MHz and 700+ MHz G4 models - consult 'MacTracker' (freeware).

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Edited to incorporate a correction based on ElDiabloConCaca's input below.
 
No G4 700MHz machine can use a drive greater than 128GB on it's internal ATA bus -- the first G4s to support 48-bit LBA were the later MDD ("Mirrored Drive Door") G4 machines. That particular G4 will need a PCI ATA card in order to use drives greater than 128GB in size.

I have the exact machine in question (the 400MHz, PCI graphics G4 machine). No, the processor isn't any different from other G4s (although there were a LOT of G4 processors with slight differences), but like barhar said, the memory bus isn't as fast as later G4 ("AGP-based" G4s) and you're limited to a maximum speed of 600MHz in terms of upgrades (yes, they have 1GHz G4 upgrades for this machine, but they slow the bus speed down from 100MHz to 66MHz).

I would recommend getting the 700MHz, as it's got a much better upgrade path than the PCI-based 400MHz version.

Of course, to make things even more complicated, there was a 400MHz machine that had the faster memory bus and AGP graphics slot -- which would be almost identical to the 700MHz machine, notwithstanding the processor speed.

Here's how to differentiate between some of the early G4 models:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58418
 
And for what it's worth: I'd wait a little longer and save towards either a brand-new or used Mac mini. You'll get much better performance. The new Mac minis even can take processor upgrades. I.e.: Buy the 1.67 GHz core solo version now and upgrade to a Merom 2.16 GHz dual core processor later this year (or later, of course...). While I understand that if you have a large investment in PCI-cards you might want to stay with PCI-slot hardware, I think for _anyone else_ it's simply a way to stay with louder, bigger and _slower_ hardware.
 
Well turns out work ended up giving me the G4 i mentioned, but it is a 500mhz. 25g, DVD-rom,zipdrive. I opened it up to swap some ram, and it looks totally different than my G4 400....Any opinions on this new one?
 
It's better than your old one. It has an AGP bus for better memory card performance, wider memory "pipe" for more advanced and faster memory management, and can take processor upgrades up to a G4 2.0GHz (as opposed to 600MHz on your older G4).

I say, if you've got the cash, upgrade the hell out of it. I would do the processor first, then max out the RAM at 2.0GB, then upgrade the video card, and finally, put in a PCI ATA or SATA card for maximum drive performance. If you need recommendations for any of these, I'd (and everyone else here) would be more than happy to suggest upgrade paths. With that machine you have there, you can still get some serious horsepower out of it.
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
It's better than your old one. It has an AGP bus for better memory card performance, wider memory "pipe" for more advanced and faster memory management, and can take processor upgrades up to a G4 2.0GHz (as opposed to 600MHz on your older G4).

I say, if you've got the cash, upgrade the hell out of it. I would do the processor first, then max out the RAM at 2.0GB, then upgrade the video card, and finally, put in a PCI ATA or SATA card for maximum drive performance. If you need recommendations for any of these, I'd (and everyone else here) would be more than happy to suggest upgrade paths. With that machine you have there, you can still get some serious horsepower out of it.
Click to expand...

Great! Thats exactly what i wanted to hear...I have been using that other G4 since the wheel was invented..LOL.

Thanks again for the help.....
 
More like driving your car until all the tires are worn, the engine knocks, and the turbo spits oil out the exhaust....

It takes $$$ to go fast!
 
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