Overclocking B&W G3 Love

Eidorian · Dec 31, 2005

Wow, I love jumpers. I didn't realize that the "Do not remove" sticker meant THAT much to Apple. I would have overclocked this thing ages ago.

I got ahold of my second Power Mac G3. My first one was a Rev. A 400 Mhz one. The second one was a 350 Mhz Rev. B with two hard drives and a Super Drive I popped into it from a dead Quicksilver.

I just popped the G3 400 Mhz CPU into my Rev. B machine and overclocked it to 450 Mhz.

I'd like to get some more CPU power but all of the upgrades are G4 CPU's or REALLY high speed G3's. (900-1000 Mhz)

I've found some 450 Mhz G3's on Ebay and I was wondering if I could clock those up to 500-550. PCI Extreme would be nice too once they get it working with 10.4.3 and I get a Radeon.

I wouldn't mind adding some fans and painting my case either.

Rocksaurus · Dec 31, 2005

YMMV, but be really careful with this. I OC'd my 400 to 450 way back in the day and had data corruption as a result. Some OC better than others, of course. Also, don't expect to OC your PCI to PCI-X (and especially not PCI-E) speeds. Sorry.

Eidorian · Dec 31, 2005

Rocksaurus said:
YMMV, but be really careful with this. I OC'd my 400 to 450 way back in the day and had data corruption as a result. Some OC better than others, of course. Also, don't expect to OC your PCI to PCI-X (and especially not PCI-E) speeds. Sorry.

Well I don't crunch numbers 24/7 and I don't game on it. I just use it for web browsing and watching the ocassional DVD. I've been monitoring it and the overall CPU usage has dropped since I swapped out the old 350 and overclocked the 400 to 450. I don't plan on overclocking the PCI bus either. It's fine at 100 Mhz. So I have 4.5 x 100 = 450 Mhz.

Rocksaurus · Jan 1, 2006

Eidorian said:
Well I don't crunch numbers 24/7 and I don't game on it. I just use it for web browsing and watching the ocassional DVD. I've been monitoring it and the overall CPU usage has dropped since I swapped out the old 350 and overclocked the 400 to 450. I don't plan on overclocking the PCI bus either. It's fine at 100 Mhz. So I have 4.5 x 100 = 450 Mhz.

Sounds good. If you notice a drop in stability though I'd recommend you clock it back down.

Eidorian · Jan 1, 2006

Rocksaurus said:
Sounds good. If you notice a drop in stability though I'd recommend you clock it back down.

I got kernel panic from PC Logitech keyboard.

diddy · Jan 2, 2006

450 was as high as I was able to get my ol' B&W G3 400, no matter what bus speed or CPU clock I tried. Anything over that won't even boot for me. However, I've read reports (don't ask me where) of folks getting upwards of 700 Mhz (!!!!!

!!!!!) out of this chip. It seems to depend on when the chip was made and who made it IIRC.

If I only had 100 Mhz more I could get smooth DVD (VIDEO_TS) playback. I just know it. It's really a shame that all we have available as far as G3 CPU upgrades these days are more than 200 bucks.

Ahhh...my B&W living room media Mac...

...someday.

Rocksaurus · Jan 2, 2006

Eidorian said:
I got kernel panic from PC Logitech keyboard.

Yeah careful now. If it keeps acting crashy I'd really downclock it unless you actually notice the 50 MHz, which is doubtful...

Eidorian · Jan 2, 2006

Rocksaurus said:
Yeah careful now. If it keeps acting crashy I'd really downclock it unless you actually notice the 50 MHz, which is doubtful...

Nope, OS X wouldn't recognize the keyboard and it then just locked up. I boot it with a new Apple USB keyboard and it runs perfectly for 5-8 hours. I web browse and watch video. I think it just hates that PC keyboard.

disconap · Jan 4, 2006

diddy said:
If I only had 100 Mhz more I could get smooth DVD (VIDEO_TS) playback. I just know it. It's really a shame that all we have available as far as G3 CPU upgrades these days are more than 200 bucks.

I might be missing something, but I was able to find an old OWC G4 500mHz upgrade on ebay for like $80...

Eidorian · Jan 5, 2006

disconap said:
I might be missing something, but I was able to find an old OWC G4 500mHz upgrade on ebay for like $80...

I likewise. Though it 's a toss up between super fast G3 or mid-range G4. I want to use Handbrake to encode but you NEED A G4. I don't want to mess with firmware. I do have OS 9.2.1 discs now though. So I could...

diddy · Jan 5, 2006

disconap said:
I might be missing something, but I was able to find an old OWC G4 500mHz upgrade on ebay for like $80...

No, your not missing anything.

In order to use G4s in the B&W, you have to remove a firmware restriction, and this can only be done in OS9, like Eidoreian said. Right now its running Tiger and I don't have an OS9 disc.

Plus, the 1.0 and 1.1ghz G3s actually had better benchmark scores than the G4 ZIFs on xlr8yourmac.com. (At least the ones that will allow you to keep the 100mhz bus).

Eidorian · Jan 5, 2006

Hey, if the G3 upgrade is seemless. I wouldn't mind a 600 Mhz one. I'll need to find one though.

Spock · Jan 9, 2006

diddy said:
If I only had 100 Mhz more I could get smooth DVD (VIDEO_TS) playback. I just know it. It's really a shame that all we have available as far as G3 CPU upgrades these days are more than 200 bucks.

Ahhh...my B&W living room media Mac... ...someday.

My B&W is overclocked from 350 to 400 and I can play Video_TS without a problem, just as smooth as my iMac G5. I love my ol' B&W

ReanimationLP · Jan 9, 2006

Pop a Radeon 7000 into your Blue G3.

You'll have buttersmooth playback then.

Eidorian · Jan 10, 2006

ReanimationLP said:
Pop a Radeon 7000 into your Blue G3.

You'll have buttersmooth playback then.

Even without Quartz Extreme? Is the bottleneck here the video card or the CPU? The video card is SO much cheaper.

Azurael · Jan 14, 2006

What you want is an FX5200

Eidorian · Jan 14, 2006

Tell me where to get a flashed PCI 5200 and how to enable PCI Extreme on 10.4.3.

macg4 · Jan 14, 2006

i have a blue and white with a 350mhz that i have overclocked to 400mhz

diddy · Jan 15, 2006

Spock said:
My B&W is overclocked from 350 to 400 and I can play Video_TS without a problem, just as smooth as my iMac G5. I love my ol' B&W

Are you using DVD Player or VLC or what?
OSX doesn't want to install DVD Player because I have no DVD drive.

VLC is choppy (Altivec?)
If DVD Player is the key, can I install it manually with Pacifist, or some other trick?
(EDIT

Yes, this works. But, now the app opens and tells me I have no DVD hardware (I know.) Any way around this?

As for the video card, I just got a Radeon 7000 from a fellow MacRumorer.

joecool85 · Jan 15, 2006

I love older machines. I OC'ed an old 266mhz beige g3 to 315mhz and it runs 10.2.8 smoothly. I'm thinking about upgrading it to Tiger using Xpostfacto. A buddy of mine is running Tiger on a 266mhz G3 AIO and he says its fine. Plus, the beige I have has a 16mb Rage128 card, 320mb of ram, and like I said, is OC'ed. Anyway, good luck with your PM.

Eidorian · Jan 15, 2006

joecool85 said:
I love older machines. I OC'ed an old 266mhz beige g3 to 315mhz and it runs 10.2.8 smoothly. I'm thinking about upgrading it to Tiger using Xpostfacto. A buddy of mine is running Tiger on a 266mhz G3 AIO and he says its fine. Plus, the beige I have has a 16mb Rage128 card, 320mb of ram, and like I said, is OC'ed. Anyway, good luck with your PM.

Upgrade the CPU. You can get a 400-450 Mhz G3 for under $50 if you're good. VLC runs fine for me at 400 and 450 Mhz. I use it to play .ogm and .mkv dual audio files.

frankblundt · Jan 15, 2006

350 > 400 no issues whatsoever (wouldn't boot at 450).
Never had a problem with video_ts either (even at 350) using the cheapest dvd read/writer i could find (Benq).
I did get it to crash, once, by trying to rip, compress and image dvds simultaneously

Struggles a bit with the 400G iTunes (running off an ACard RAID) on top of the web serving but nothing more than a bit of spinning wheel every now and then.
love it. best NZ$300 i ever spent.
saw a 300 for $150 today...

Azurael · Jan 16, 2006

Eidorian said:
Tell me where to get a flashed PCI 5200 and how to enable PCI Extreme on 10.4.3.

My card is a PNY FX5200 PCI, which they no longer sell (though their replacement FX5500 PCI card ought to work fine with this ROM too). I used the 128-bit ROM from http://littlevampirebites.com/fxflash but had to decrease the memory clock a little using nVidia BIOS editor under windows because PNY used below-spec RAM on this card. After that, it works fine under 10.4.3. Core Image & Quartz Extreme (?!) are enabled by default, though I hve no idea why the PCI extreme hacks aren't enabled beside the theories I included in my posting to XLR8YOURMAC.

Eidorian · Jan 16, 2006

Azurael said:
My card is a PNY FX5200 PCI, which they no longer sell (though their replacement FX5500 PCI card ought to work fine with this ROM too). I used the 128-bit ROM from http://littlevampirebites.com/fxflash but had to decrease the memory clock a little using nVidia BIOS editor under windows because PNY used below-spec RAM on this card. After that, it works fine under 10.4.3. Core Image & Quartz Extreme (?!) are enabled by default, though I hve no idea why the PCI extreme hacks aren't enabled beside the theories I included in my posting to XLR8YOURMAC.

Complicated...I thought it was you with that article on xlr8yourmac.

Spock · Jan 18, 2006

diddy said:
Are you using DVD Player or VLC or what?
OSX doesn't want to install DVD Player because I have no DVD drive. VLC is choppy (Altivec?)
If DVD Player is the key, can I install it manually with Pacifist, or some other trick?
(EDIT Yes, this works. But, now the app opens and tells me I have no DVD hardware (I know.) Any way around this?

As for the video card, I just got a Radeon 7000 from a fellow MacRumorer.

I am using DVD player but my B&W has a DVD-Ram Drive so it installed fine

Overclocking B&W G3 Love

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