How Best to Spend Money Upgrading G4

I'm running a G4 "Sawtooth" w/AGP at 450 mhz with 256K RAM and the original graphics card, which I believe is a Rage128Pro. Best I can tell according to the SL minimum requirements, I shouldn't be able to run SL at all with this configuration. Miraculously I can, albeit with lots of lag and frequent crashes.

I have a very limited budget but am looking to upgrade my Mac, rather than biting the bullet and buying a super cheap <cough> Windows box/laptop. Please save me from this fate by sharing any upgrading wisdom with me.

Given my pathetic configuration, where is my money best spent in upgrading FIRST for maximum benefit in running SL; more RAM, a faster processor or an updated video card? Any specific brands/models of upgrade items you can recommend? Are all of these potential upgrades doable by myself, someone who has never cracked open a case before?

Your help is GREATLY appreciated. Thanking you in advance!

I can only tell you what I did.
I have a G-4 'mirror front' .... add more ram... I have 1.5 Gig.
I also upgraded to an ATI Radeon 9600Pro graphics card w/ 256Mb DDR,(AGP Bus) but that was $300 Dollars, so I don't know if it would be worth it for you. But the improvement was dramatic.........I still get the occasional freezes and crashes, but fps was up and movement was much smoother. and I haven't had any wonky textures or things like that...
good luck... let's see what other people say....
oh yeah, check out the knowledge data base, or was it in this Mac forum(?), with info on how to set preferences for better performance.

Gday, due to the cost of new macs, ive always used macs which are at least one generation older than the current stuff available, but to me its stil far better than using windows.

From my experience the best upgrade definitely would be add more ram to the G4. A processor upgrade is tricky and quite expensive making it an unviable proposition.
256 MB is definitely not enough to keep up with what is required by a PC by todays standards. The G4 sawtooth can handle up to 2GB of ram (4 X 512 MB) so loading uo the ram to this amount would make the G4 run a lot quicker and smoother than it is now. Your machine takes PC100 SD ram which is pretty much obselete now so it is pretty much impossible to buy it new. Im not sure how much it sells for used, but it may be cheap if u shop around and get it from someone who specialises in used pc's. It doesnt have to be original mac ram, as long as it is pc100 sd ram its ok.
Also make sure your OS is running smoothly by re installing your harddrive or at least run some disk utilities such as techtool or disk warrior to optimise performance. Run your OS as stripped down or barebones as possible ie. run as few applications as possible at the same time, with no "bells and whistles" stuff such as desktop skins etc. Also run no antivirus programs and switch off the firewall as these truly slow down your machine... OSX is virus free pretty much.
The only other upgrade i suggest is to get the highest speed broadband available.

Whether it will be enough to run SL smoothly? ..... maybe.

I have a dual processor MDD 867 G4 with 2GB of ram and it is ok for SL, but it still crashes sometimes and has some bad lag days. But to me its still tolerable.

So whether its worth upgrading the ram depends on how much you can buy it for. Personally I wouldnt bother unless you can pick up 3 slots of 512MB to add to the 256MB you have, any less wont cut it, and i wouldnt pay any more than $100 USD for the 3 pieces in total.
You have to weigh it up because the money spent is on obselete technology which you cant take with you to your next PC.... but its still a lot cheaper than a new mac though.

Check out these sites which specialise in using and upgrading older macs -

http://www.lowendmac.com/

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/

Gool luck to ya!

The Sizzler

Thanks so much for your help and advice, Glorfindel and Sizzler. I was leaning towards upping the RAM since that seems the easiest and cheapest first step. If there is a noticeable difference, I'll try a new video card next, when funds allow it. I know so little about what a 450mhz processor can handle I didn't want to invest in something that would be overkill, given its limitations. But I definitely wanted to give this baby a fightin' chance before I stoop to purchasing one of THOSE other machines.

Gotta love Mac people.

I had to fire up SL again on my old G4 after reading this thread. Christine, I have the same model G4 (Sawtooth with 450 MHz) that I keep in a backroom (can't seem to part with it!). While it has 1.25 GB RAM, it seems barely playable (choppy and sloow, NOT smooth). I think the lack of a newer video card (say something made after Y2K!) is the main problem. However, I'm just amazed that it even loads while I've had newer PC machines refuse to load SL.

In a skybox location where downloads of textures and objects have stabilized, it can barely get over 2.0 fps (topping out at maybe 3.0 fps) while a newer Windows XP PC running SL with a much newer video card can maintain well over 100 fps within the same surroundings. At 1.8 or 2.2 fps, walking around can be difficult in avoiding walls or other avatars.

I think that the video card seems to be the most bang for the buck in terms of playing SL for your system ($100-200 for a used or firmware modified Radeon 9800 Pro on Ebay, perhaps?). However, I would probably vote for saving funds for another machine rather than upgrading parts of your old G4. It might be overkill for the Sawtooth.

Good luck.

MacMall has a Radeon 9800 that's open box for $150.
http://www.macmall.com/macmall/search/search.asp?search=radeon+9800&NavID_Search=false&submit1.x=0&submit1.y=0&CurDSN=simple&calledfrom=1&incimage=on

That, plus a stick of memory, would make you ecstatic!

Just toss in a GeForce 8800 GTS (under $300) and 2-4 Gig's of RAM & yer good to go!

IMO that's a good approach: more RAM then replace that 16MB Rage128 card.

I'm running a G4/400 Sawtooth, 1.09 GB RAM, 10.3.9, but still using the Rage128 card. I have to avoid av-busy areas, and wait until the packet loss drops before teleporting otherwise a crash is likely.

I'm hoping to find a 2nd-hand Radeon 8500 64MB, a 4X boost in texture capacity alone should be very helpful to performance and stability. The price on a 8500 seem to vary from $25 to $100.

Good luck!

deffenetly upgrade the video card. even with a 1.467GHz G4 and 1.5GB of ram i was still only getting 3fps with a rage 128.