Hi, my beige G3 just doesn't have the horsepower for OSX. 350 mhz
doesn't seem like that much more than 233 mhz. Will the Blue and White
do siginficantly better than my beige desktop?

Thanks
Jim

On Sun, 20 Jul 2003 00:06:45 -0400, Jim Kroger
<jimkkREMOVEME[at]umich.edu> wrote:

>Hi, my beige G3 just doesn't have the horsepower for OSX. 350 mhz
>doesn't seem like that much more than 233 mhz. Will the Blue and White
>do siginficantly better than my beige desktop?

I thought my G3/450 was horribly slow in OS X, but there are reports
of people using machines even slower than the G3/350, so the answer is
"it depends on you". Get 512M of RAM, then try it.

In article
<jimkkREMOVEME-38D06F.00064520072003[at]visonmassif.rs.itd.umich.edu>,
Jim Kroger <jimkkREMOVEME[at]umich.edu> wrote:

> Hi, my beige G3 just doesn't have the horsepower for OSX. 350 mhz
> doesn't seem like that much more than 233 mhz. Will the Blue and White
> do siginficantly better than my beige desktop?

It should do. It has a faster bus (100Mhz vs 66Mhz) so the access to
memory is 50% faster. If you fill it full of RAM it should be reasonable.

Of course this depends on what you want to do. Low power stuff like
word processing and spreadsheets should be fine.

I have a 400Mhz B&W and it plays DVDs just fine.

Dale

I ran OS X for a year on a Blue & White 350Mhz G3 (until I upgraded to a
1Ghz iMac). While the iMac is clearly faster, the G3 ran OS X perfectly
acceptably. Typical applications used were Word, iTunes, iPhoto, and Mail.

Wouldn't want to have done a lot of Photoshop with it but other than that
it was great. I did bump up the internal memory to over 512M and replaced
the original hard drive with a 60GB IBM DeskStar.

greg

p.s. The machine is still running, we gave it to a friend who's now using
it to write her thesis.

On Sun, 20 Jul 2003 18:14:43 +0100, EFD <eric[at]ersa-online.com> wrote:

>On 7/20/03 5:06 AM, in article
>jimkkREMOVEME-38D06F.00064520072003[at]visonmassif.rs.itd.umich.edu, "Jim
>Kroger" <jimkkREMOVEME[at]umich.edu> wrote:
>
>> Hi, my beige G3 just doesn't have the horsepower for OSX. 350 mhz
>> doesn't seem like that much more than 233 mhz. Will the Blue and White
>> do siginficantly better than my beige desktop?
>>
>> Thanks
>> Jim
>
>I have X installed and it does work, but I probably won't use it as a
>primary until I get a newer machine. I find it a little slow for me, but I
>also haven't upped my RAM (only 320M) and my vid card is a Radeon, but not
>the 7000 series Radeon which can offload a fair amount of the snazzy GUI
>tricks OS X has from the CPU.

Perhaps you mean you have a Rage 128, which was the stock card in the
B&W series. The Radeon (plain, without the 7000 name) is the faster
card of the cards one might typically use in the B&Ws (speedwise,
Radeon is first, then Radeon 7000, and way down the list is the Rage
128. )

On 20 Jul 2003 19:48:25 -0700, kroger[at]princeton.edu (Jim Kroger)
wrote:

>foo <foo[at]bar.com> wrote in message news:<ekmlhv4b8vbvlkji2jm29r9sg6p9g74vdb[at]4ax.com>...
>> On Sun, 20 Jul 2003 18:14:43 +0100, EFD <eric[at]ersa-online.com> wrote:
>>
>> >On 7/20/03 5:06 AM, in article
>> >jimkkREMOVEME-38D06F.00064520072003[at]visonmassif.rs.itd.umich.edu, "Jim
>> >Kroger" <jimkkREMOVEME[at]umich.edu> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Hi, my beige G3 just doesn't have the horsepower for OSX. 350 mhz
>> >> doesn't seem like that much more than 233 mhz. Will the Blue and White
>> >> do siginficantly better than my beige desktop?
>> >>
>> >> Thanks
>> >> Jim
>> >
>> >I have X installed and it does work, but I probably won't use it as a
>> >primary until I get a newer machine. I find it a little slow for me, but I
>> >also haven't upped my RAM (only 320M) and my vid card is a Radeon, but not
>> >the 7000 series Radeon which can offload a fair amount of the snazzy GUI
>> >tricks OS X has from the CPU.
>>
>> Perhaps you mean you have a Rage 128, which was the stock card in the
>> B&W series. The Radeon (plain, without the 7000 name) is the faster
>> card of the cards one might typically use in the B&Ws (speedwise,
>> Radeon is first, then Radeon 7000, and way down the list is the Rage
>> 128. )
>
>How do you get it to offload some of the OSX operating system graphics
>stuff, as the poster mentioned?

The graphics cards in the machine automatically do it (or rather,
those that can, do - those that can't, don't.) For a PCI-based Mac,
the Radeon (not -7000) is the best you've got right now. It still
won't do QE without a hack, which isn't suggested, so if some of
Panther's effects are a big deal to you, get an AGP Mac with a 32MB
graphics card.

"Jim Kroger" <jimkkREMOVEME[at]umich.edu> wrote in message
news:jimkkREMOVEME-38D06F.00064520072003[at]visonmassif.rs.itd.umich.edu...
> Hi, my beige G3 just doesn't have the horsepower for OSX. 350 mhz
> doesn't seem like that much more than 233 mhz. Will the Blue and White
> do siginficantly better than my beige desktop?

The processor improvement will help a bit, but my experience has been that
anything less than about 256 MB of RAM really slows down OS X. An AGP
graphics card with 32 MB or more of RAM will enable Quartz Extreme, but I
don't remember if the B&Ws had AGP. RAM and Processor are the most important
though.

Cheers!

On 7/20/03 7:10 PM, in article ekmlhv4b8vbvlkji2jm29r9sg6p9g74vdb[at]4ax.com,
"foo" <foo[at]bar.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 20 Jul 2003 18:14:43 +0100, EFD <eric[at]ersa-online.com> wrote:
>
>> On 7/20/03 5:06 AM, in article
>> jimkkREMOVEME-38D06F.00064520072003[at]visonmassif.rs.itd.umich.edu, "Jim
>> Kroger" <jimkkREMOVEME[at]umich.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi, my beige G3 just doesn't have the horsepower for OSX. 350 mhz
>>> doesn't seem like that much more than 233 mhz. Will the Blue and White
>>> do siginficantly better than my beige desktop?
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>> Jim
>>
>> I have X installed and it does work, but I probably won't use it as a
>> primary until I get a newer machine. I find it a little slow for me, but I
>> also haven't upped my RAM (only 320M) and my vid card is a Radeon, but not
>> the 7000 series Radeon which can offload a fair amount of the snazzy GUI
>> tricks OS X has from the CPU.
>
> Perhaps you mean you have a Rage 128, which was the stock card in the
> B&W series. The Radeon (plain, without the 7000 name) is the faster
> card of the cards one might typically use in the B&Ws (speedwise,
> Radeon is first, then Radeon 7000, and way down the list is the Rage
> 128. )


The Radeon "plain" is the slower of the two radeons and was somewhere
sub-par to a GeForce 2 TNT. It was the first radeon released for the Mac
and the 7000 is the most scaled back of the 2nd-gen and siginificantly
faster radeons (c. GeForce 3 to 4 depending on the series). Some of the
GUI-bloat in MacOS X is absorbed by the 2nd-gen Radeons, because ATI and
Apple worked together on development and ATI has optimized some of its
acceleration effects for Quartz and OpenGL with X in mind.

Quartz was nowhere near release when the first-gen Radeon PCIs hit the
streets and two my knowledge ATI has never offered a firmware update to
provide Quartz acceleration in the older cards. It will see general
improvements from any OpenGL work that Apple does in OS X.

Reviewing some of the old update files, they did go back and turn on
Quickdraw acceleration for acceleration with Rage Pro... I can't imagine
trying to suffer through X with a Rage Pro card.

On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 23:03:17 +0100, EFD <eric[at]ersa-online.com> wrote:

>On 7/20/03 7:10 PM, in article ekmlhv4b8vbvlkji2jm29r9sg6p9g74vdb[at]4ax.com,
>"foo" <foo[at]bar.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 20 Jul 2003 18:14:43 +0100, EFD <eric[at]ersa-online.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 7/20/03 5:06 AM, in article
>>> jimkkREMOVEME-38D06F.00064520072003[at]visonmassif.rs.itd.umich.edu, "Jim
>>> Kroger" <jimkkREMOVEME[at]umich.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi, my beige G3 just doesn't have the horsepower for OSX. 350 mhz
>>>> doesn't seem like that much more than 233 mhz. Will the Blue and White
>>>> do siginficantly better than my beige desktop?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks
>>>> Jim
>>>
>>> I have X installed and it does work, but I probably won't use it as a
>>> primary until I get a newer machine. I find it a little slow for me, but I
>>> also haven't upped my RAM (only 320M) and my vid card is a Radeon, but not
>>> the 7000 series Radeon which can offload a fair amount of the snazzy GUI
>>> tricks OS X has from the CPU.
>>
>> Perhaps you mean you have a Rage 128, which was the stock card in the
>> B&W series. The Radeon (plain, without the 7000 name) is the faster
>> card of the cards one might typically use in the B&Ws (speedwise,
>> Radeon is first, then Radeon 7000, and way down the list is the Rage
>> 128. )
>
>
>The Radeon "plain" is the slower of the two radeons

That's not correct; the 7000 is the slower of the two Radeons, by a
significant amount.

http://www.barefeats.com/gr7000.html

shows that fact in clear detail. 81 fps for the 7000 vs. 118 fps for
the Radeon. They're both dog slow, but the 7000 is even worse.

>and was somewhere
>sub-par to a GeForce 2 TNT. It was the first radeon released for the Mac
>and the 7000 is the most scaled back of the 2nd-gen and siginificantly
>faster radeons (c. GeForce 3 to 4 depending on the series).

That's absolutely false, as the above graph shows. You might be
thinking of the Radeon 7500 rather than the Radeon 7000, but that
won't compare to the GF3. The Radeon 9000/8500 were close to or
essentially similar to a GF3.

>Some of the
>GUI-bloat in MacOS X is absorbed by the 2nd-gen Radeons, because ATI and
>Apple worked together on development and ATI has optimized some of its
>acceleration effects for Quartz and OpenGL with X in mind.

QE and the Radeon's increased speed helps out in OS X.

>Quartz was nowhere near release when the first-gen Radeon PCIs hit the
>streets and two my knowledge ATI has never offered a firmware update to
>provide Quartz acceleration in the older cards. It will see general
>improvements from any OpenGL work that Apple does in OS X.

QE has nothing to do with a firmware update; it requires the Radeon's
fuller instruction set, 16M, and an AGP bus. There's a hack to get
around the last requirement, but it is debatable what good the hack
is. In any case, it can be hacked to work with Radeon PCI cards -
either of them.

>Reviewing some of the old update files, they did go back and turn on
>Quickdraw acceleration for acceleration with Rage Pro... I can't imagine
>trying to suffer through X with a Rage Pro card.

Anyone with a beige G3 does exactly that. :)

In article <fc7khvkfj480mkei8m0pfi17n2pkiv8087[at]4ax.com>,
foo <foo[at]bar.com> wrote:


> I thought my G3/450 was horribly slow in OS X, but there are reports
> of people using machines even slower than the G3/350, so the answer is
> "it depends on you". Get 512M of RAM, then try it.


I am running 10.2.6 on a 233 Mhz rev. a iMac with the original
2 MB Rage card -- and a lowly 66 Mhz bus.

With 384 MB of RAM, and a just-installed 7200 RPM Seagate 80 Gig
hard drive with an 8 MB buffer, program launches and screen-draws
are *just as fast* as they are on a friends 1 Ghz 17" iMac,
and both the 1 Ghz eMac and iMacs I have played with in the store.
The only difference I have noticed thus far is that the "genie effect"
(sending open programs to and from the dock) is the tiniest bit slower
on my machine. (obviously, processor-intensive tasks are MUCH slower)

Overall "snappiness" is much better better than a friend's slot-loading
350 Mhz with 640 MB of RAM, and 8 MB video card, and 100 Mhz bus.

Someone on XLR8yourmac.com mentioned the 8 MB buffer on
the hard drive being good for OS X.
If that's what's making my machine run 10.2.6 so well,
then I would have to agree!

Hardman Knott