Advice for Mac n00b. Gigabit Ethernet

Hey guys and girls. Im new to the Mac OS so I apologise if these questions are a bit thick!
My mate gave me an old G4 tower as a christmas present. As far as I can make out its a G4 400Mhz Gigabit Ethernet model. It has been upgraded with 2 20gig hard drives and 512MB (4x128 sticks) of ram. It has been completely wiped and is now running 10.3.9.
I was thinking of upgrading to tiger and have a couple of questions
Is it worth it on this machine? Is 10.4 different enough to warrent an upgrade?
I have seen some posts that recommend making sure that the firmware is up to date. Checking system profilier it seems mine is quite old, version 3.xxx . Will this have to be upgraded? Its running panther fine at the moment. Also i have heard the some DIMMs can be disabled after the upgrade is there an easy way to check if my memory will work?
If the firmware should be updated I need advice on how best to install OS9. I have the 2 grey cds that came with the mac. Software install and software restore. Could I install os 9 onto my empty second hard drive?
sorry for the long post and thanks for any help
graham
P4 3.2GHz/512MB Ram/160GB SATA HD   Windows XP  
P4 3.2GHz/512MB Ram/160GB SATA HD   Windows XP  

thanks, yeah i know where the firmware updates are. Just wanted to know if its necessary. Still away from mac but the boot rom is def reported as 3.something and from this page
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58418
its definately a gigabit ethernet. looks identical. Well its either agp or gigabit ethernet, but as it has an adc connector i guessed gigabit.
cheers anyway
graham

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