How upgradable is a G3 Tower?

speXedy

speXedy

Think Different
I bought a G3 Tower. (blue version) it's currently running OS 10.4. It has 256 MB of RAM. 100 MHHz bus speed 400 MHz Processer. Power 3G PPC. umm and anything else you want to know feel free to ask.

Can I upgrade it to a G5? Would it be possible to do video editing better then my Intel Macbook Pro? 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM?

Could I put Leopard on it?

Would it ever run World of Warcraft?

Thanks for any of the info!

Michael.
 
speXedy said:
I bought a G3 Tower. (blue version) it's currently running OS 10.4. It has 256 MB of RAM. 100 MHHz bus speed 400 MHz Processer. Power 3G PPC. umm and anything else you want to know feel free to ask.
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This computer is ancient. It is worth somewhere between $20 and $50 USD.

Can I upgrade it to a G5?
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Nope. The farthest you can go is a 500MHz (overpriced for what it is) or 600MHz (practically impossible to find) G4 @ 100MHz bus, or a 1GHz G4 @ 66MHz bus (1GHz is great, 66MHz bus is crippling).

Would it be possible to do video editing better then my Intel Macbook Pro? 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM?
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Nothing about the G3 will ever be better than your MacBook, no matter how much money you pour into it nor how many upgrades you make. Your MacBook will always have a faster processor, better graphics, faster and more RAM, and faster hard drives.

Could I put Leopard on it?
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No. The earliest PowerMac that can take Leopard is the Sawtooth model G4s. The drivers for that particular motherboard (G3 B&W) don't exist for Leopard.

There are hacks if you're into tinkering, though:

http://www.applefritter.com/node/23084

Would it ever run World of Warcraft?
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Possibly, very slowly.
 
World of Warcraft? No, it won't be able to handle that.

System requirements for WoW on a Mac:

Mac System Requirements

OS: Mac OS X 10.4.11 or newer

Processor:
Minimum: PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core Duo processor
Recommended: Intel 1.8GHz processor or better

Memory:
Minimum: 1 GB RAM
Recommended: 2 GB RAM

Video:
Minimum: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with 64 MB VRAM Such as an ATI Radeon 9600 or NVIDIA GeForce Ti 4600 class card or better
Recommended: 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM Such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA 7600 class card or better
 
Back in the day, it was a highly upgradeable Mac (i.e. not inexpensively upgradeable), nowadays it doesn't make much sense putting _any_ money into it. If you come along a processor upgrade for free: Why not. But it's a hobbyist's computer now, not something you could really use.
 
It just makes me want to say, yes it is very upgradable, you have tons of new macs to choose from!

The price of many of those upgrades are worth just buying a newer computer that can actually come close to today's standards.
 
For two years now, I've been saying this, just generally: You want an intel Mac. Doesn't matter much whether it's a Mac mini, a MacBook, a Mac Pro, an iMac: Any intel Mac will basically run current software just fine, can run the newest operating system (and will profit from being upgraded to it as well!) and won't be in the "but I can't even run newer Firefox versions on it" category for a longer time than any old PowerPC.
 
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