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Apple Archive

Processor Upgrades a Waste of Money?

- 2002.03.05

Three or four years ago, it was popular to upgrade a 601 or 604e Mac with a G3 processor upgrade card. This gave you added performance for about $300 and allowed you to run applications that needed more power than the 601 or 604e processor could deliver.

Keep in mind that at the beginning of 1999, the fastest Mac you could buy ran at 450 MHz and was based on a G3 processor. Today you can buy a dual 1 GHz G4.

Which brings me to my question: Are processor upgrades worth getting nowadays? Two or three years ago, the fastest processor upgrades run at higher speeds than the latest Macs. In 2002, that is not the case, as every processor upgrade tops out at 500 MHz - the speed of the $799 iMac.

To upgrade an older 7500 to a G3 or G4 and have it be a close match to the specs of the iMac would cost a lot. Memory costs around $100, a hard drive around $175, a USB/FireWire card is $80, a CD-RW drive about $300, and the processor upgrade itself about $250. That's a total of $914 to upgrade an older machine - a new iMac can be had for $100 less (or about $100 more for the slightly better model) with a faster bus speed, faster graphics, faster memory, and support for OS X.

Unless you have done all of the upgrades to your machine except for a processor upgrade, I see no way that a processor upgrade cam be considered worthwhile (and even if you have upgraded it extensively, how much more can you really do with it?).

If your favorite band released a new album, would you buy the album, or would you search around the Internet to find a compilation CD with three songs from the new album for $3 less?

The processor upgrade card is like the compilation CD - it is a compromise until you can afford to buy the real thing. However, if you spend $8 on the compilation CD, and the album costs $12, you have $8 less to spend on that album, so when you get the extra $4 you needed, you still won't be able to buy the album because you already spent $8 on the compilation CD.

When you spend $200 on a processor upgrade, you have $200 less to spend on a new Mac. When you would have had enough money to buy a new machine, you won't be able to because you spent $200 upgrading an old one.

A new machine has many benefits over an older one. Even a new iMac will run faster than an old 9600 with 500 MHz G3 upgrade card.

G4 upgrade cards? A "real" 400 MHz G4 will be faster than a 500 MHz G4 upgrade card on a pre-G3 Power Mac. The important factors are bus speed, memory speed, and hard drive speed (older Macs had slower hard drives). Since there is no way to upgrade the first two, no matter what else you upgrade in your older Mac, it will never be as fast as a new one.

A processor upgrade is never - and never has been - a replacement for a new machine.

Recent Apple Archive articles

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More in the Apple Archive index.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: Mac mini Core Solo, Feb. 2006 - The only Mac to use a Core Solo CPU, this model ran at 1.5 GHz, has integrated graphics, and includes a Combo drive
Group of the Day: SuperMacs is for those using Umax SuperMac clones.
November 24 in LEM history: 98: Microsoft's heavy hand - 00: Looking at the iMac - 04: The best Mac for the holidays - Picking the right replacement for a dead mouse - Better battery for 15" AlBook
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Best Xserve Deals, 11.18. Used 1 GHz dual G4, $649; 2.3 dual G5, $795; 3.0 4-core Xeon, $1,899; refurb 2.26 4-core, $2,499; new, $2,888; refurb 8-core, $2,999; new, $3,449; more.
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