[MasterBlaster]

a

 

[Britnell]

some things don't deserve to be upgraded.

in order to get the full speed, what about the bus, the disk speed, and the RAM speed.

before you run out and spend $700, ask yourself if buying a new(er) machine might not be better

 

[MasterBlaster]

a

 

[monokitty]

It depends on what you have currently invested in your machine. Like MasterBlaster, if I had so much already installed in my machine, I'd rather get a CPU upgrade over a newer machine as well if the price was right.

By the way, MasterBlaster, the G3/800 ZIF from PowerLogix for just $410.00 CDN is a good deal, as well. As the G4 isn't much (if at all) faster than the G3 unless you use Velocity Engine-based applications. It's 512k L2 cache also runs @ 800 MHz. I was looking at this myself for the longest time.

 

[MasterBlaster]

a

 

[monokitty]

It'd probably be $500 with tax; if ordered within Canada. Not sure where to get it, though.

 

[Gerbill]

Unfortunately, you're throttled by the bus speed - only 66 Mhz on a beige G3, 100 Mhz on a B&W. A 1 Ghz upgrade will certainly improve things, but it won't give you the same performance as a new 1 Ghz G4. I'd prefer to spend my money on an actual G4 - a Sawtooth is under $1000 around here these days. Then, later on, spend your next whack of cash on a 1 GHz upgrade for the Sawtooth - upgrades will be cheaper by then, anyway, right? (I know that the Sawtooth still has a 100 Mhz bus, but the whole motherboard architecture is superior, and don't forget the AGP!)

Cheers :-> Bill

 

[monokitty]

I wouldn't recommend anything over 800 MHz for the Beige G3 because of the bus speed, but for the 100 MHz bus Blue and White G3's, it's not so bad.

 

[Klaatu]

Normally I'd consider this upgrade but, after careful thought and research, it's really a bad idea. The bus speed is a big bottleneck but if you check out www.xlr8yourmac you'll notice some have already reported problems of a different sort -- heat. Basically the machine was never designed to deal with that kind of heat and, in the long run, you'll probably end up spending close to $1000 to fry your Mac.

If you have $800 to spend on Sonnet upgrade, then you have some money to call up Macdoc and see what he recommends. He suggested to me a wise upgrade to a blue and, if I wasn't saving up for a 1.25 G4, I'd do it.