Hi all,

I have a G4 350Mhz Sawtooth for the kids.

It's got 896MB of RAM and a Radeon 7000 video card. The kids have been complaining that the computer is soooo slow when playing web based games and I must admit it does take some time for graphics to scroll and refresh.

Internet connection is fine (hardwired connection on ADSL2+) and connection from video card to monitor is via DVI.

I have uploaded the latest ROM for the video card from the ATI website.

Other than the obvious fix to speed up the graphics (buy a new Mac or upgrade CPU), is there any way to speed up the graphics and to extract some more life from the Sawtooth? The machine otherwise runs fine on 10.4.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Give Firefox a shot, it might help
I know Safari sometime lags like hell on Flash.

Thanks for that Decryption. I forgot to mention that I have tried Firefox and Camino as well and it hasn't made much difference either.

assuming the web based games are flash then there is not much you can do. Flash is just very slow on all macs especially older ppc's.

The cheapest mods:

- Disable Dashboard and Spotlight
- The Radeon 7000, while supporting Quartz Extreme, doesn't accelerate much - this includes Flash. You might be able to flash over a PC Radeon 8500 or Geforce 5200 which do provide faster hardware acceleration (5200 would be ideal, and under $50).

There isn't much else - and as iSlayer noted, Flash is terrible on all but the fastest G4s and Intel Macs.

JB

Thanks guys. The games ARE unfortunately flash based.

Byrd: is a GeForce FX5200 same as an nVidia FX5200??

nVidia manufactures the GeForce range. So basically, yes.

I assume, since you're saying $50, you mean a PC one which then has to be flashed to work with a Mac...?

vwl, have you enabled Quartz Extreme on the Radeon card? OSX by default does not allow Quartz on PCI cards, you need to turn it on with 'PCI Extreme'.

That said, you still won't see much of a performance boost one way or the other, nor will you see much of a performance boost even if you change the videocard to something that's Core Video compliant (and contrary to what the lads above say, a 5200 won't improve things -- whilst it does support Core Video (just) it is woefully slow at doing so.)

The only real way you're going to get any faster Flash performance is by boosting the CPU speed, and for the price of a decent G4 upgrade, you can replace the entire G4 with a 1 GHz eMac.

Upgrade the kids' machine to soemthing a little more modern, and retire the Sawtooth to server duties or such-like.


Brains

If it is a Sawtooth, then the graphics slot is AGP. Only the Yikes had a PCI slot. Furthermore, things like Bus speed also make a difference.

As suggested above, I'd shop around for a better machine. As a kids machine, you might even be able to pick up a cheap core solo Mac mini. That way you don't have to ditch the monitor etc.

Thanks everyone, looks like the practical long term solution is to upgrade.

Look out for a Sawtooth in FS forum......

Cheers