Picking a G3 or G4 Upgrade

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Korin Hasegawa-John - 2001.08.13

If you are looking into upgrading the processor in your daughtercard- or ZIF-based Power Mac or clone, you have several of options. The biggest one is processor type.

G3 or G4?

Whether you choose the G3 or G4 depends on what you are doing. In general, G4s aren't as cost effective if you don't use AltiVec (Velocity Engine in AppleSpeak) optimized programs. Most programs that are optimized are programs such as Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, and other multimedia apps. If you are just upgrading your computer to get a speed boost for games, FileMaker, Word, and other non-multimedia programs, a G3 is probably a better bet, because they are much less expensive.

If you are planning to run OS X, I recommend a G4, because X is AltiVec-optimized. Prices range from $130-300 or more for G3 cards, and $250 and up for G4 cards.

Cache

All current G3 and G4 cards include an L2 cache. However, size and speed vary. A processor card's specs are usually written like this: G3/400/133/512k. The first space is the type, next the clock speed, then the speed at which the processor accesses the L2 cache, and finally the size of the L2 cache itself. Most cards have an L2 cache running at either one-third or one-half of the processor's speed. Some cards let you change the L2 cache's speed as well. A larger cache makes your Mac faster. The faster the speed at which the cache and processor exchange information makes you Mac faster as well. Here's an example. There are two cards, both G3s running at 400 MHz. One costs $169; the other $199. What's the difference? The more expensive card has twice the L2 cache running at a faster speed, making it faster than the other card.

Speed

Most importantly, you need to know what speed of processor card you want. Right now, 400 MHz is the "sweet spot" for the G3 cards. These cards will make any daughtercard Mac much faster without breaking the wallet. A 500 MHz card costs much more and won't make your computer a whole lot faster than a 400 MHz card.

With a G4, it's hard to say. Most G4 cards are fairly expensive, with 400 MHz being the low end of the scale and costing $250 or more. Of course, if you depend on your Mac to make you money with multimedia, faster is always better.

It all depends on what you want to do with your Mac. Hopefully, this has given you an idea of the different factors that are important in processor upgrades. There are a lot of upgrade card choices out there, and if you look around enough you can probably find one to suit your needs - unless, of course, your needs run in the range of dual 800 MHz G4s. :-)

Not sure if you should upgrade your old Mac or replace it? Check the Mac Daniel index to see if we've already addressed your problem.

Recent Mac Daniel columns

Bringing G3 iMacs and other G3 Macs into the Tiger Age, Dan Knight, 12.07. Tips on hard drives, memory, WiFi, and getting Mac OS X 10.4 installed on G3 iMacs and other older G3 Macs.
Multiple users on the same Mac at work, Dan Knight, 11.15. How to set up a Mac so multiple users can log in and use it - and use the same pool of work files.
1 working eMac from 2 broken ones, Dan Knight, 11.14. A pair of matching eMacs, each with a different failure, results in one working eMac and lots of leftovers.
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