G3 900 or G4 500 Upgrade?

[studiobellezza]

Hi!

Need some buying advice here!
I have a B&W G3 400mhz with 640ram running 10.3.2
What do you think the best bang for the buck would be
G3 900 or a G4 500 upgrade? I wil be using it as a home
machine for web and music. I have a quicksilver G4 allready
for the more heavystuff.

Regards

Stuart Sharman

 

[chevy]

90% chances that the G3 900 MHz will help you more than the 500 MHz G4. And you'll have less compatibility problems.

 

[Zammy-Sam]

Definitely G3 900!

 

[Randman]

G3

 

[GraphicUmp]

G3 900. It's faster than the G4 500 (which isn't that much faster than what you have).

The G4 500 would only be a better choice if you used graphic-intensive applications all the time, like Photoshop, that take advantage of Altivec.

 

[Krevinek]

Nah, the G4 500 isn't a better choice, period... the boost even from Altivec isn't enough to match the G3 900. Go with the G3 900 and you will be glad you did. The only reason why I would opt for the slower G4 is if you do development and want a proper testing senario for Altivec code.

 

[naodx]

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G3CARDS/powerlogix_G3_800/index.html

This is a series of tests between a g4/500 upgrad and a g3/800 upgrade, it should give you an idea of which one will suit you best.

Of course you could always go with one of the newer g4 upgrade cards, now up to 1 Gig.....

 

[Viro]

I'm actually quite surprised that the G4/500 does that well. I had expected the G3/800 to stomp all over the G4/500 but it doesn't appear to be the case. And that's with OS 10.1.5. AFAIK, Panther did add more Altivec optimizations, so you might get better scores if those benchmarks were run on Panther.