Question on a G4 800

tman

I just bought a refurbished G4 pm 800mhz from Small Dog. Picked it up for $1,300.00. It will be replacing my B/W G3 400mhz and will hopefully hold me over until the G5, Power 4 or whatever comes forth whenever. My question is how the new box will compare performance-wise with the old. My G3 has 1mb of L2 cache- the G4 has 256 on chip L2 cache and no L3 cache like the 933 & dual 1-ghz. Is that a major thing? I use my mac mainly for buisness record keeping,WP and spreadsheet stuff but I do like to play the latest games and play with Photoshop when I have a chance and that is where I push it and need the performance.

xaqtly

You'll be fine. Is that a single or dual processor 800? Dual is better than single obviously, especially in terms of OS X and Photoshop. In any case I'm sure it will suit your needs very well.

tman

[quote]Originally posted by Xaqtly:

<strong>You'll be fine. Is that a single or dual processor 800? Dual is better than single obviously, especially in terms of OS X and Photoshop. In any case I'm sure it will suit your needs very well.</strong><hr></blockquote>



It's a single processor. I was just a little concerned about the lack of the L3 cache. Like I said, my g3 has a much larger L2 cache than the g4. But maybe the speedier proc., increased throuhgput etc. more than make up for that. Can an L3 cache be added? Probably not.

xaqtly

I wouldn't worry about it. the 800 MHz G4 will be more than just a little bit faster than your G3 is.

paul

the l2 cache on the G4 is backside cache which runs faster then the regular L2 cache on the G3 so having 256 wont make a difference as it can be accessed much faster then the 1MB of L2 on the G3

altivec_2.0

What is the L1 cache really used for? Is it really needed. If so, how come it's such a small amount.