Upgrade Advice: PowerMac Beige G3

progmacprogmac
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Ok, the system I finally ended up with is a Beige 300mhz G3 PowerMac. It runs OS 9 pretty well, but seems a little sluggish at times. I'm too scared to put OS X on it. It has an 8GB hard drive, zip drive, 336MB ram and factory video.



What do you all recommend as upgrades to this system? Would a new video card help? If so, what specific performance improvement would i notice (i don't play to many games).



It is hooked up to a 20" AppleVision Monitor.



Thanks!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 10
    pastapasta Posts: 112member
    [quote]Originally posted by progmac:

    <strong>Ok, the system I finally ended up with is a Beige 300mhz G3 PowerMac. It runs OS 9 pretty well, but seems a little sluggish at times. I'm too scared to put OS X on it. It has an 8GB hard drive, zip drive, 336MB ram and factory video.



    What do you all recommend as upgrades to this system? Would a new video card help? If so, what specific performance improvement would i notice (i don't play to many games).



    It is hooked up to a 20" AppleVision Monitor.



    Thanks!</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Get a Radeon PCI video card, it will be a huge performance improvement. Also look into a CPU upgrade for that machine.
  • Reply 2 of 10
    pyr3pyr3 Posts: 946member
    Another 128meg RAM stick would help, but isn't necessary. The video card and proc upgrades are the most vital.
  • Reply 3 of 10
    jeremiah richjeremiah rich Posts: 853member
    I have a 266 MT I overclocked to something ~292 mhz with an 82 mhz bus speed, or something close to it. It runs X great. I think you should be able to overclock yours to at least 350 mhz without a problem.. If it is an IBM made chip, it could clock even higher. Also, you would want to upgrade the vram in the system with a chip from, argh, cannot remember the name. Otherworld computing I think. (Unless it is already done) Or get a PCI Radeon. All in all, mine seems to run X pretty nicely for what it is. Now, part of that I am sure is the 192 megs of ram I have in it.
  • Reply 4 of 10
    progmacprogmac Posts: 1,850member
    [quote]Originally posted by pasta:

    <strong>



    Get a Radeon PCI video card, it will be a huge performance improvement. Also look into a CPU upgrade for that machine.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Can i get a new Radeon PCI with a ColorSync out in lieu of the VGA?
  • Reply 5 of 10
    tomahawktomahawk Posts: 178member
    Check the amount of VRAM. If you want to stay really cheap upgrade it to the max amount (I think it is 6 megs). It will help some. We have X running on a 266 and it seems to work pretty well. I'm sure if you wait for the speed improvements in Jag it might be OK.
  • Reply 6 of 10
    xaqtlyxaqtly Posts: 450member
    My personal Mac at home is a beige G3/233. I've done pretty much all I can for it... it currently has 576 MB of RAM, an ATi Radeon 7000 Mac Edition video card (PCI), a PCI USB card and a Sonnet 500 MHz G4 upgrade card. It's pretty quick, but not as quick as an actual 500 MHz G4 tower. Raw processor speeds are about the same but the beige G3s have slower busses, and it makes a difference.



    I'm still running 9.2.2 - I haven't wanted to go to OS X on this Mac yet for a number of reasons, not the least of which is my MIDI setup, which undoubtedly would not be supported in X. If I weren't hampered by the MIDI stuff I would definitely put X on this Mac, and I think Jaguar would run pretty well on it. But it's no substitute for a real G4 Mac with faster busses and more/faster cache. In fact I'm holding out till August to see what Steve-o announces in the way of towers, because that's where it's at if you need to run OS X at its best.



    But, for what it's worth, you can make a beige G3 considerably faster with the upgrades I've done. I consider this Mac very usable, even for processor-heavy stuff like photo editing and MP3 ripping... AltiVec, you know. I capped the package off with a Logitech USB two-button scroll wheel mouse and it's actually a very satisfying system... it never crashes, I absolutely LOVE Sonnet's upgrades in this regard. Every single one I've installed has worked flawlessly. But when I get serious about OS X at home, it won't be on this Mac, it'll be on a newer tower.
  • Reply 7 of 10
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    [quote]Originally posted by progmac:

    <strong>



    Can i get a new Radeon PCI with a ColorSync out in lieu of the VGA?</strong><hr></blockquote>



    I've got some spare parts I'm trying to get rid of... I'm open to offers if you're really thinking about upgrading that beast...



    o Radeon PCI 32MB PCI card. Has VGA and DVI connectors.

    o 128MB DIMM for a beige g3

    o An XLR8 466MHz G3 upgrade



    All of that stuff is sitting in a beige g3 at the bottom of my closet currently. it works. I'll take offers on any of it
  • Reply 8 of 10
    jet powersjet powers Posts: 288member
    Cash it in and get an old g3 iMac in a color you like (you'd have to add a few more bucks to the kitty, but if you were thinking about spending $$$ on upgrades.....).



    Personally, I'd get a Ruby.



    ting5



    [ 07-25-2002: Message edited by: Yet Another Registration ]</p>
  • Reply 9 of 10
    dartblazerdartblazer Posts: 149member
    you gotta look at it from a logical point of view. what is the slowest part of your computer. the floppy drive and then the hard drive. and since the floppy doesnt actually hurt system performance, upgrade your hard drive.



    Get a nice pci ide card and a 7200 rpm large(80GB) hard drive. After that then get a nice pci video card, whatever you can fit in your budget. then if you still have oogles of cash left over get a G3 or a G4 upgrade.
  • Reply 10 of 10
    progmacprogmac Posts: 1,850member
    i'm not quite sure what i'm going to do yet. Probably either a video card / hard drive upgrade...butttt, that would set me back $175 or so and I could probably sell this thing for $250 and tack on that $175 i could spend on upgrades and I could probably get a 400mhz iMac. Hmmmm, what to do, what to do...
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