sonnet card in uk?

[neil conti]

hi. does anyone know if the sonnet 1ghz card is available in the uk?

and if so how much £?

[KennyB]

Yes, I've found them at www.cancomuk.com and www.2ndchancepc.co.uk - both seem to be charging £350+ for the 800 and £500+ for the 1Gig.

Seems a bit steep to me........

[neil conti]

ya that is a bit pricey - what i'm really looking for is a way to have more processing power so that i can use more plug-ins without the damn thing slowing down. not sure if the sonnet card would do that - i guess it would just make the whole system run faster?

thanx for the info on the hard disk too, kenny - i'll deffo check that out - it's a good price.

[KennyB]

From what other people are saying you WOULD get more processing power (more plugins) but for £500 I think we'd be better off trading up to a newer mac (maybe in a couple of months). Then you get improvements in things like bus speeds & L3 cache which you won't get with the sonnet upgrade.

Not to mension the resale issues selling an upgraded G4.

Just my opinion.

[jjjamison]

according to my own test and several others here on the DUC you'll get about 65% increase in performance (#of plug-ins etc.) when upgrading from g4 466 to the I ghz Sonnet. A bit expensive, yes - but available NOW.

[neil conti]

that's very impressive j, but surely for the £500 that it costs in UK i could upgrade my G4 450 to something with more power than that?

whaddya reckon, kenny?

[Burton]

Since PTLE doesn't presently take advantage of dual processors, about the only thing faster than the Sonnet board at the moment is a 1.25DP Mac, which I doubt you're going to get for 500 pounds.

[neil conti]

thanx for the advice, burton. what got me thinking about an upgrade was kenny's post -

"From what other people are saying you WOULD get more processing power (more plugins) but for £500 I think we'd be better off trading up to a newer mac (maybe in a couple of months). Then you get improvements in things like bus speeds & L3 cache which you won't get with the sonnet upgrade.

Not to mension the resale issues selling an upgraded G4."

i'd be interested to hear your views on this...

[KennyB]

This is soooo hard.

The G4 450 is probably worth between £500-£600 (depressing isn't it) so add another £500 (+vat) and you don't quite have enough for a new G4 dual 800.......... Which apparently sounds like a hairdryer when all the fans are going...........

IF you could find a "quicksilver" 966(?) machine for less than a grand, then THAT might be worth thinking about, but people seem to be hanging on to them at the moment (so I'm told).

So we're back to the Sonnet.

I guess it depends on how busy you are, & whether you have work in the near future that will pay for it. Whether you want to go through the hassle of getting a new machine running properly, hassle of selling the G4 450..........

I think I'm going to wait until the New Year and reassess the situation then. Maybe get a laptop so I can work away from home.

[KennyB]

Having just seen John H's post about a firmware update for new G4 DPP machines to improve the fan noise issue - I would probably go that route.... Dual 800meg.