I am surprised that you do not notice much of a performance improvement. I used an 8200 as a work/test machine for many years, and there is little positive that can be said about the 7200/8200 models.
My first upgrades were RAM, of course, followed by a Seagate Barracuda 4GB 50 pin SCSI disk. Even on the built-in SCSI, the Barracuda gave a noticeable improvement (your SATA/SD combination should be significantly better). I fitted a Matrox Millennium (perhaps a Millennium II) from a PC with Mac ROM flash. Again there was a noticeable improvement. Finally I fitted a Sonnet G3 card (128MB RAM or so on the card) which made it realistic to use the 8200 again for web browsing and photo editing. Aside from the Sonnet G3 card with RAM, all upgrades were recycled components. The G3 card was purchased because I wanted to try it in a Pippin (failed).
How are you benchmarking your 7200? I don't think that startup time is a realistic measure (too much time running on the PPC601). Photo or video editing etc should demonstrate improvements. For web browsing, try Classilla. Mac OS 8.6 may be quicker for performance, but I agree that Mac OS 9.1 may be most compatible overall.
My recommendations are:
* Try benchmarking again when you have a big RAM upgrade on the G3 card.
* Experiment with mid range PCI graphics cards such as the Matrox -- your 7200 will never have enough muscle to tax a high end card -- bearing in mind that the built-in graphics card is pretty good.
* Fit the Asante 10/100 PCI ethernet card if you will be transferring large files <100MB. The benefit diminishes for smaller files >10MB.
Good luck.
My first upgrades were RAM, of course, followed by a Seagate Barracuda 4GB 50 pin SCSI disk. Even on the built-in SCSI, the Barracuda gave a noticeable improvement (your SATA/SD combination should be significantly better). I fitted a Matrox Millennium (perhaps a Millennium II) from a PC with Mac ROM flash. Again there was a noticeable improvement. Finally I fitted a Sonnet G3 card (128MB RAM or so on the card) which made it realistic to use the 8200 again for web browsing and photo editing. Aside from the Sonnet G3 card with RAM, all upgrades were recycled components. The G3 card was purchased because I wanted to try it in a Pippin (failed).
How are you benchmarking your 7200? I don't think that startup time is a realistic measure (too much time running on the PPC601). Photo or video editing etc should demonstrate improvements. For web browsing, try Classilla. Mac OS 8.6 may be quicker for performance, but I agree that Mac OS 9.1 may be most compatible overall.
My recommendations are:
* Try benchmarking again when you have a big RAM upgrade on the G3 card.
* Experiment with mid range PCI graphics cards such as the Matrox -- your 7200 will never have enough muscle to tax a high end card -- bearing in mind that the built-in graphics card is pretty good.
* Fit the Asante 10/100 PCI ethernet card if you will be transferring large files <100MB. The benefit diminishes for smaller files >10MB.
Good luck.