[claydillinger]

My long awaited roundup is finally done. ZIF Review
Someone in the XYM forums wrote this, which may typify some misconceptions from the review:

In reply to:

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After reading through the review, I am glad I did not wait for the "better" upgrades, since they are clearly not better for the money. Geez! How disappointing.
My OWC G4 ZIF clocked at 600 appears to be the best overall value. This is a matter of opinion, each upgrade appeals to different users
Those Sonnet contraptions are real heart breakers. That 66MHz bus blows for games especially.

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IMHO, the Sonnet 1GHz is sufficient for everything up to and including Quake III (and Quake III based games). In UT2K3 it suffered, but performed relatively well in Halo.
IMHO, the Powerlogix upgrades provided significantly fast speed- especially in noticable the UI as you can see in the XBench graph.
If I had a faster HD interface, I think you might see a greater disparity in the scores in many of the tests, as the ATA/33 seems to hold many of the processors back.
Also, the pricing is pretty competitive in my opinion - G4/G3 1GHz+ chips are expensive but would be well worth it to many people. Any one of the upgrades is a good choice, depending on your needs.
Questions? Comments? Email me at streetrat at (no spam) gmail dot com

[vinny1701]

The link didn't work, but after having installed a G4/600 chip a couple of weeks ago, I have nothing but great things to say about it. My B&W moves so much faster now, particularly Photoshop, Illustrator, iPhoto and SETI At Home. I ordered the new Radeon 9200 Video card yesterday and I'm positive now I'll be able to squeeze out another two years out of it before it's time to upgrade to another machine.
Michael

[Jack_of_All_Trades]

Nice review Nate. 2 things that hit me:
1.) On the games page, I was a little taken aback by just how much better the Radeon MA (7200) showed compaired to the 7000. (Especially in the Halo test...)
2.) While I expected it in some cases, I was still somewhat surprised just how well the G4 550/600MHz kept up with the G4 800MHz. To me the G4800 just doesn't make any sense for the price...
In my personal opinion, I'm always most interested in the game tests. My feeling is that games push all areas of the machine more than anything else, therefore the better the game performance, the faster the machine as a whole. (Specific functions souped up with Altivec aside of course...) I would be insterested to see if the (hopefully forthcoming) Radeon 9200 PCI could push Halo above 30fps.
JoAT

[claydillinger]

I'll tell you now do not expect that kind of performance.

[claydillinger]

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G3CARDS/G31.1GHzvs[u]G41GHz_review/index.html

[lemac]

In reply to:

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1.) On the games page, I was a little taken aback by just how much better the Radeon MA (7200) showed compaired to the 7000. (Especially in the Halo test...)

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The answer is clear, the Radeon 7000 is a piece of junk. This is the sole reason why I wanted ATI to replace it (and not because PCI has tons of life in it, though it can probably handle something a tad better then the Radeon 7200).

In reply to:

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2.) While I expected it in some cases, I was still somewhat surprised just how well the G4 550/600MHz kept up with the G4 800MHz. To me the G4800 just doesn't make any sense for the price...

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The G4/800 has a small market, the Beige G3. The G4/550 ZIF doesn`t perform as well in these machine as the 100 mhz system bus macs (B&W + Yikes). A Beige with a G4/800 might perform as well as a G4/600 Yikes...

[Jack_of_All_Trades]

In reply to:

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The answer is clear, the Radeon 7000 is a piece of junk. This is the sole reason why I wanted ATI to replace it (and not because PCI has tons of life in it, though it can probably handle something a tad better then the Radeon 7200).

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I had heard that repeated over and over, but I never went looking for any benchmarks to back it up. I'm hoping ATI does come out with something better, as this Rage 128 really is starting to show it's age...
JoAT

[claydillinger]

Again, any B&W or PCI G4 owners should check out my review here.
Hard numbers are so much more valuable than objective opinions.

[Jack_of_All_Trades]

Wow, you're really plugging that article hard. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif
/forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
JoAT

[claydillinger]

I just bumped it because someone was asking about ZIF upgrades and they obviously had not read my review... I spent a lot of time so people with that dilemna would have something to base their decisions on.