How to best boost my quicksilver cheaply

dcq

Hey yall,



Not that I'm totally stupid or anything (well...maybe...anyway...), but I just want some advice.



My wife and I want to upgrade to G5 pBooks sometime within 9-12 months from now (hopefully rev B, but probably not). We currently have a single Quicksilver tower. It's not that I'm unhappy with the performance, but I want a bit more oomph if I can get it cheap. (Basically, what this is about is I want to see if I can eke out enough performance to keep it after we upgrade...and, if possible, play Blizzard's World of Warcraft ...) Here's the deal--let's see how happy yall can make me for the cheapest amount of money.



Current system:

867 MHz (single) G4

2MB L3 cache

bus speed: 133 MHz

640 MB SDRAM (128 +512; 2 RAM slots free)

GeForce 2MX 32MB AGP (original card)

Adaptec SCSI card (nothing attached anymore)

2 free PCI slots

15" Apple studio display ADC

60 GB IBM HDD (original...7200rpm??) internal; 2 GB space available

(...BTW, I can't remember the speed of my ATA bus, can anyone gimme a hint?)

160 GB Maxtor internal POS HDD (dead, died 4 weeks after the warranty ran out, rotting in the tower as we speak, too pissed off at it to give it a decent burial)

SuperDrive (Pioneer DVR-103 original)

USB (12 Mbit)

FW 400

Airport ready (not Extreme), no module

not BT ready

Peripherals (just FYI I guess):

Apple USB keyboard

Dell 2-button scroll mouse ("borrowed" from work)

iSight (permanently attached)

scanner

Fujifilm Finepix 3800 (512 card) digital cam

Canon ZR20 DV cam



-- I think more HDD space is a must; but should I go internal (cheap but has to be a slave, and therefore non-bootable; or I could buy another ATA card and make it bootable, but that's more money, or I can get an external, which is bootable and portable to any other comp, but even more $$). Which is best for storing iTunes music and working with DV video in iMovie?

-- New video card? which one? (what's my best bang for my bucks? Do any still offer ADC??)

-- processor upgrade? (is it really even worth it?)



So any thoughts? Much joyous and gushing thanks for all your help in advance.

matsu

The HDD dude! Get the biggest fastest HDD you can find for $150 (that should be at least 160GB 7200rpm 8MB cache unit. Make it your boot drive. Slave the older unit.

guartho

Quote:

Originally posted by DCQ

Current system:

867 MHz (single) G4

Me too, me too!

Quote:

2MB L3 cache

Ooooh I'm jealous. My educationally configured model has no L3 cache.

Quote:

Airport ready (not Extreme), no module

I have the Linksys 802.11g PCI card in mine. Works great and OSX recognizes it as Airport Extreme. It was about $50

Quote:

-- I think more HDD space is a must; but should I go internal (cheap but has to be a slave, and therefore non-bootable; or I could buy another ATA card and make it bootable, but that's more money, or I can get an external, which is bootable and portable to any other comp, but even more $$). Which is best for storing iTunes music and working with DV video in iMovie?

I think this is where you'd find more speed. A faster hard drive makes for quicker program loads, etc. (If you're running off of it.) I believe you're wrong about not being able to boot off of slave drives though. I have 2 HD's in mine, one with 9 and one with Panther. (9 drive slaved) I can boot from either.



I'd get a nice fast drive like the one Matsu suggested and run your OS and programs off of it. As to music and video, again, the faster the drive, the better.

Quote:

-- New video card? which one? (what's my best bang for my bucks? Do any still offer ADC??)

It depends on what you do. I just got the RADEON 9000 Pro (128meg) to replace my stock GeForce 4 mx so that I met the requirements of LightWave 8. In Lightwave or games is the only place I really notice a difference.

Quote:

-- processor upgrade? (is it really even worth it?)

With a faster Mac mini now costing close to the price of significant upgrades, I'd say no. Plus any upgrade would still be tied to the 133 SDRAM bus.

dcq

Quote:

Originally posted by Guartho

I have the Linksys 802.11g PCI card in mine. Works great and OSX recognizes it as Airport Extreme. It was about $50

Sweet. Thanks. I was thinking I would have to eBay a used, overpriced old card.

Quote:

Originally posted by Guartho

I think this is where you'd find more speed. A faster hard drive makes for quicker program loads, etc. (If you're running off of it.) I believe you're wrong about not being able to boot off of slave drives though. I have 2 HD's in mine, one with 9 and one with Panther. (9 drive slaved) I can boot from either.



I'd get a nice fast drive like the one Matsu suggested and run your OS and programs off of it. As to music and video, again, the faster the drive, the better.

By "fast" do you mean a 10,000 rpm drive? Or just a 7200 but one that has good seek times? Any suggestions on brands/models? (I won't ever buy Maxtor again.)

Quote:

Originally posted by Guartho

It depends on what you do. I just got the RADEON 9000 Pro (128meg) to replace my stock GeForce 4 mx so that I met the requirements of LightWave 8. In Lightwave or games is the only place I really notice a difference.

Cool. Anybody remember what the minimum CoreImage/CoreVideo reqs were? Wasn't it a 9200? Or was it based on the amount of VRAM?



Thanks a bunch you two! (Other suggestions still welcome.)

aurora

If you think about it the quicksilver has lots of life in it. You could get a upgrade G4 or duals , pop in a modern video card like a 9800 add a another drive and presto you have a new machine thats still would about match or exceed any new mac except the powermacs.. I have a owc merc extreme 1.4 sitting in a quicksilver and it does fine and the geforce3 in it still matches or exceeds a Fx5200. Quicksilvers were cool and still are..

guartho

Quote:

Originally posted by DCQ

By "fast" do you mean a 10,000 rpm drive? Or just a 7200 but one that has good seek times? Any suggestions on brands/models? (I won't ever buy Maxtor again.)

[/B]

Well, seek time is the big deal, of course. 10,000 rpm is probably going to be faster, but also higher priced. I don't have any personal experience with 10,000's so I can't really speak to them. I have heard that they can be noisy though so that's another factor to consider.



As far as brands, I've been very happy with my Western Digitals. (Of course, I've been happy with my Maxtors too, )





edit:

I forgot to mention, my 9000 Pro has an ADC connector and a DVI.

northgate

Quote:

Originally posted by Guartho

I have the Linksys 802.11g PCI card in mine. Works great and OSX recognizes it as Airport Extreme. It was about $50

Which model number are you using? I can't find any Mac support for their PCI cards on the Linksys site.

guartho

Quote:

Originally posted by Northgate

Which model number are you using? I can't find any Mac support for their PCI cards on the Linksys site.

WMP54g, although mine looks more like the picture of the WMP54gs, it definately has MWP54g printed on it. You won't find any Mac support as it's not officially mac-compatible. It's just that the Linksys cards and the Airport Extreme cards use the same whatsit-doosit-controller chip and so it works. That's my understanding anyway.

hardhead

I always felt that the Quicksilvers had the sweetest "El Capitan" enclosures... Carry on Ladds.

dcq

Quote:

Originally posted by hardhead

I always felt that the Quicksilvers had the sweetest "El Capitan" enclosures... Carry on Ladds.

I agree. Much better than the previous B&W=>grey adaptation (1st gen G4), and IMO infinitely prettier than the MDD models that followed. That matte grey just looks so classy.



OK. So I'm going shopping this weekend (going in the new sense of sitting on my ass in front of my computer and finding the best deals on the web ) and getting something like a 160 GB internal drive (not sure the brand...I'll have to do some research) and possibly a radeon of some sort. I'll have to do quite a bit of research on that since I stopped following the video hardware race 3+ years ago after I bought my QS. I want something that's CoreVideo/Image compliant but not too expensive. I may wait until Tiger's finalized (which would be the rational thing to so since I'll know the CV/CI specs for sure, and the same hardware will be cheaper in 5 months' time...but I don't want to...)



I'll let yall know how it goes. Thanks a gig you guys. (AI roxors!)