# Mac users: looking to upgrade my Sawtooth G4, advice needed! **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 8, 2005, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-users-looking-to-upgrade-my-sawtooth-g4-advice-needed/311602 "2005-07-08T16:14:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Hippy\_Hollow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hippy_hollow/32/4841_2.png) [@Hippy\_Hollow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hippy_Hollow)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2005, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-users-looking-to-upgrade-my-sawtooth-g4-advice-needed/311602/1 "2005-07-08T16:14:01Z")
First time posting in this forum, I hope you mac gurus can help! I have a Sawtooth AGP G4 that is a great machine. 1.5 GB RAM, 2 MB L3 cache. I upgraded to 1 GHz with a Giga Design upgrade card 2 years ago, which gave it new life. Since Panther though I have been encountering that damn spinning beach ball more and more, and with Tiger it’s even more evident. I run Onyx and Cocktail regularly, keep drives clean with DiskWarrior, repair permissions, so I’m confident the software side of things are in order. I need more power it seems. Typically I have Entourage, EyeTV 1.8, Safari, Unison, MacPAR and/or UnRAR running simultaneously. Occasionally I’ll pop open VLC or DVD player, and usually something freezes up, so I have to force-quit. I’ve invested A LOT in this G4 as far as drives, accessories, etc. so I do not want to upgrade to a G5, so please don’t suggest that I do so. So my questions are: 1. Should I look at a single-processor upgrade or dual? (Giga Designs just announced a 2 GHz upgrade.) 2. What kind of performance boost can I expect with a 2 GHz card? Or a 1.6 GHz dual? 3. Since my memory is maxed out, are there any other hardware upgrades I can do? thanks for your help! (Incidentally, if you think Entourage is a memory/CPU hog, any suggestions of a versatile e-mail program would be appreciated…) ---
**Author:** ![Hippy\_Hollow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hippy_hollow/32/4841_2.png) [@Hippy\_Hollow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hippy_Hollow)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2005, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-users-looking-to-upgrade-my-sawtooth-g4-advice-needed/311602/2 "2005-07-08T16:15:25Z")
as you’ll note from my post count, this actually isn’t my first post in GQ. As you can figure I’m cutting and pasting to many forums… ---
**Author:** ![leandroc76](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bb73d2/32.png) [@leandroc76](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leandroc76)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2005, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-users-looking-to-upgrade-my-sawtooth-g4-advice-needed/311602/3 "2005-07-08T19:09:17Z")
I have had a PM Blue and White G3 upgraded to 550MHZ G4 for about 6 years now. It still runs like a champ. I do video editing with Final Cut Pro without a hitch. Your sawtooth g4 has a 233 Mhz Front side bus, so a 2 GHZ upgrade is just gonna make your GUI faster and that’s about it. I’m talking serious bottleneck. Reset your PRAM by rebooting and pressing OPTION + COMMAND + P +R until it chimes about 4 or 5 times. If you haven’t done this since Tiger, you should have. Restart and press command+S to get into single user mode then type: fsck -y -f This will run permissions better. Tiger should have improved performance by a a large percentage, because you have an older system. That’s system is a rock, so you shouldn’t be getting a spinning wheel. The only other thing I can think of is that Tiger is indexing Spotlight, which will take 2 to three weeks depending amount of data on your harddrive. You still have a lot left in that machine believe it or not. I wouldn’t spend anymore money on it. If your gonna get a 2Ghz machine get an iMac or PM G5, they utilize the cpu power much better with much wider buses. PowerMacs G5’s always have a 2:1 CPU to FSB ratio. That equates to awesome bandwidth, allowing you to do more much faster. if you want to spend less than $500, get a Mac Mini, and run synergy between both computers. That’s what I do. Much more productive.