The King Has No Clothes!

The G4/450 Sawtooth is starting to look overpriced compared to
the G4/400 Yikes and the recent Blue & Whites. (Shades of the IIfx!)

First posted 10/18/99
© 1999 Rob Art Morgan, editor of BARE FEATS
rob-art@barefeats.com

First, the really important tests...

Maybe RAGE 128 is maxed out. So here's Voodoo3 numbers:

Take a look at these CPU numbers...

Now the disk drive...

 

Conclusion: The "king" has no clothes. If you spent $900 more for a Sawtooth, you may have been overcharged. It doesn't matter what graphics board or what graphics interface or what hard drive or what hard drive interface, the Sawtooth is toothless unless you are using AltiVec or "Velocity Engine" aware applications (Photoshop 5.5)

 Counterpoint: Wait a minute. If you configure both the Yikes and the Sawtooth the same (128M of RAM, 20 Gig drive) there is only $550 difference. And you are getting 50MHz more speed, dual USB channels, extra FireWire port, AirPort antennas and stuff like that there. If you assign a value to those things, the difference in value shrinks to something like $122. Wouldn't you really rather have something with more speed potential than a "reworked" Blue and White motherboard?

 Counter Counterpoint: Oh yeah? You go right ahead and be Apple's beta tester for yet another Rev 1 motherboard. Then a few months from now, I'll sell my Yikes and get a Rev 2 Sawtooth for $1995. Editor's Addendum: This article was written in October of 1999. As of December '99, you can get a 400MHz G4 Sawtooth for as little as $1895 with the Rev 2 board and faster RAGE Pro graphics.

 

Test Configurations & Procedures

Chart Name

Computer
Graphics Cards

Sawtooth G4/450

Graphite "Sawtooth" G4/450
RAGE 128 AGP or 3Dfx Voodoo3 2000 (133MHz slot)

B&W G4/450

Blue & White G3/350 Rev 1* with jumpers set to 450MHz and G4 ZIF from Yikes
Orion RAGE 128 PCI (66MHz slot)

B&W G3/450

Blue & White G3/450 Rev 1* with jumpers set to 450MHz
ATI Orion RAGE 128 or 3Dfx Voodoo3 2000 (66MHz slot)

Yikes G4/400

Graphite "Yikes!" G4/400
RAGE 128 PCI or 3Dfx Voodoo3 2000
(66MHz slot)

B&W G4/400

Blue & White G3/400 Rev 1* with G4 ZIF from Yikes
Orion RAGE 128 PCI (66Mhz slot)

B&W G3/400

Blue & White G3/400 Rev 1*
Orion RAGE 128 PCI (66MHz slot)
*Since the Blue & White was a Rev 1, I replaced the graphics board with an Orion RAGE 128, which is essentially the same the board shipped in the Rev 2 Blue & Whites and the Yikes (sans DVD decorder plug). The G3 ZIF used in the upgrade was actually the ZIF from the G4/Yikes, since at press time no third party vendors were able to provide a G4 ZIF upgrade for testing.

 

 

 

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© 1999 Rob Art Morgan, editor of BARE FEATS
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