PowerMac 8600/9600 Speed?

statewolfstatewolf
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Hi all,



My primary computer is a PowerMac G4 (Sawtooth) and I have a secondary computer which is a PowerMac 5260/120. I am looking to replace the 5260 with something that has quite a bit more power. If I were to buy a 8600 or 9600 how much faster would this computer perform? (in comparison to the 5260)



If I were to install a Sonnet Tech G4/450 w/ 1MB L2 cache card and an ATI Raedon 7000/32MB could I expect "real G4 performace" or something resembling it? :confused:



Thanks a lot!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Oooh! Another member from NC State. Nice to meet you. I'm thinking about moving into Bragaw for the spring semester.



    Anyway, I'm not an expert on older hardware and CPU upgrades, but I can try to make some educated guesses here. The 8600 (I used to have one - t'was a good Mac) has a bus of only 50 MHz. While a CPU upgrade can help some in crunching raw numbers, the bus is still going to be a key bottleneck. The same applies with the video card; it's not going to perform nearly at its peak in an older system. Of course, pure speculation...



    <a href="http://www.xlr8yourmac.com"; target="_blank">accelerate your mac</a> has oodles of information about every kind of Mac hardware upgrades along with a rather large database of user reviews. Here is the CPU upgrades' <a href="http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/cpureview.lasso"; target="_blank">review search page</a>. I did a quick search and found that several users have had pleasant experiences and good performance with Sonnet G4s in the 8600s and 9600s.



    [ 11-11-2002: Message edited by: Brad ]</p>
  • Reply 2 of 3
    chychchych Posts: 860member
    It will be very slow (to today's standards); there come a point where the processor becomes "too much" for a system and makes no difference, the old Macs you speak of suffer from that reality.



    Will it be usable? Yes, moreso in OS 9. Hacking to get PCI Quartz Extreme may help a bit in X.



    I speak from using a Beige G3/266 -&gt; G3/466 -&gt; G4/583 with Radeon 7000 in X and 9, which outclasses an 8/9600.
  • Reply 3 of 3
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    Compared to the 5260, the 8600 or 9600 will be much faster. The 5260 uses a very peculiar motherboard architecture that essentially makes it the least powerful PPC Mac out there, slower than some fast Quadras. It won't hold a candle to your G4, but it'll be a whole lot faster than the 5260. Also, the 5260 only runs at 75 MHz, while the 8600 and 9600 run at least twice as fast, normally 180 MHz to 300 MHz.
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