1.6 GHz, anyone? :D

ZeeOwl · Jun 5, 2003

I just saw this on MacBidouille, complete with "About This Mac", Powerlogix CPU Director and Carbon Fractal Demo screenshots.
http://www.macbidouille.com/niouzcontenu.php?date=2003-06-05#5719

For the French impaired

, here's the translation:

"We're currently testing the Giga Designs 1.4 GHz [G4] upgrade card.

As expected, this card is overclockable. It's been behaving quite well at 1.5 GHz for several hours now.

It wouldn't take much to get it to run at 1.6 GHz. The machine boots, runs benchmarks, but is unstable. Tweaking the core voltage doesn't help. Upgrading the heatsink/fan would probably be necessary.

Meanwhile, it's the first time I see a Carbon Fractal Demo result above 6000 on a single-processor machine!!

The best is yet to come: This is the first single-processor upgrade card to wake from deep sleep on my G4!

Lionel"

This makes for a very interesting upgrade for people with a modeling/audio/Photoshop workstation, as dual-processor doesn't make a big difference in real-world speed, in these cases. Especially when you take upgrade card price into consideration. Rendering is another story.

Another thing of interest, is that judging from their screenshots, they were trying it on an old PowerMac G4 with the 100MHz bus. The more recent 133 MHz bus machines should make this upgrade a fair bit zippier, since the processor won't be so starved for data.

The thing that I find very educational about this though, is the 6 Gflop benchmark result. According to Motorola's literature, a 1.6 GHz G4 should get a much higher score. This just underlines how badly the slow FSB cripples the processor. The 1.8 GHz PPC 970 is rated at 14.4 Gflops. But with it's 450 Mhz (900 Mhz effective) bus, I'm sure the final product will actually deliver close to this performance.

cb911 · Jun 5, 2003

cool. would people be likely to OC these though? could be good, this might start a Mac OC'ing cult.

Dont Hurt Me · Jun 5, 2003

thanks for the translation, also mercury extreme has a 1.4 g4 and it has a very unique fan heat sink combination. OWC sells this upgrade for about 600 bucks. when you look at our upgrades its pretty sorry they cost 2-3 times what the Intel upgrades cost. I think these prices will plummet when the 970 shows itself and then these chips will be very cheap.

maradong · Jun 5, 2003

huh, is that a dual 1.4 oc to 1.6 ? how does it perform compared to a dual 1.42 ?

hvfsl · Jun 5, 2003

There are people that have managed to overclock to 1.8Ghz with the use of watercooling. However the watercooling kits need to be adapted so they can fit on top of the G4 chips because PC chips are bigger.

ZeeOwl · Jun 5, 2003

Re: OWC Mercury Extreme

Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
thanks for the translation, also mercury extreme has a 1.4 g4 and it has a very unique fan heat sink combination. OWC sells this upgrade for about 600 bucks. when you look at our upgrades its pretty sorry they cost 2-3 times what the Intel upgrades cost. I think these prices will plummet when the 970 shows itself and then these chips will be very cheap.

You're welcome

I thought the Mercury Extreme was rated at 1.33 GHz...

Honestly I don't think G4 upgrades are that much more than PC upgrades. A Pentium 4 3GHz goes for about 450$US, and the newly annouced 3.2GHz for about 670$US. And that's just for the processor. Doesn't include the upgrade card and cache, etc. Of course, they're faster than a (single) G4, but still more expensive too. If you're comparing the price of a 1.4 GHz G4 upgrade to a 1.4 GHz Pentium, it's much more expensive. But a G4 will run circles around a Pentium with the same clock speed.

I don't think the G4 upgrades will go down much when the 970 comes out though, because the G4 chips cost as much (apparently more) to manufacture than 970s. They'll probably just dissapear, as they won't be competitive anymore. Most likely be replaced by IBM 750GXs in the 1.5 to 2 GHz range, which will be cheaper. And eventually by the 750-with-AltiVec (760GX?). I doubt we'll be seeing 970 upgrade cards for current PowerMacs, as it would probably be too complicated to make a card using them that would work in a 32-bit Mac.

ZeeOwl · Jun 5, 2003

Re: Single or dual

Originally posted by maradong
huh, is that a dual 1.4 oc to 1.6 ? how does it perform compared to a dual 1.42 ?

That's a single processor 1.4.

I don't have any comparison numbers to give, but my educated guess would be that at 1.6 it would perform at about 80% the speed of a 1.42 dual, as most tasks aren't helped very much by dual processors. Rendering and very complex PhotoShop filters are about the only ones. Also that dual processors share the same slow FSB handicaps them a lot.

ZeeOwl · Jun 5, 2003

Re: Ocing.

Originally posted by cb911
cool. would people be likely to OC these though? could be good, this might start a Mac OC'ing cult.

My Blue & White G3 300 has been overclocked to 350Mhz for 4 years now.

Runs fine.

I'm anxiously waiting for my replacement Powerlogix G3 800 to get here. They apparently run fine at 850, and 900 with a fan.

yzedf · Jun 5, 2003

Re: Re: OWC Mercury Extreme

Originally posted by ZeeOwl
You're welcome

I thought the Mercury Extreme was rated at 1.33 GHz...

Honestly I don't think G4 upgrades are that much more than PC upgrades. A Pentium 4 3GHz goes for about 450$US, and the newly annouced 3.2GHz for about 670$US. And that's just for the processor. Doesn't include the upgrade card and cache, etc. Of course, they're faster than a (single) G4, but still more expensive too. If you're comparing the price of a 1.4 GHz G4 upgrade to a 1.4 GHz Pentium, it's much more expensive. But a G4 will run circles around a Pentium with the same clock speed.

Your lack of knowledge wrt PC hardware is rather scary. L1 and L2 cache are on the processor. There is no "upgrade card" you can plug a new P4 3.2GHz chip into any mobo with same style of socket (although new mobo is better). As to pricing, remember that 1 P4 at 3.0GHz is being compared to 2 G4's at 1.42GHz (benchmarks and such).

Funkatation · Jun 5, 2003

Re: Re: Re: OWC Mercury Extreme

Originally posted by yzedf
Your lack of knowledge wrt PC hardware is rather scary. L1 and L2 cache are on the processor. There is no "upgrade card" you can plug a new P4 3.2GHz chip into any mobo with same style of socket (although new mobo is better). As to pricing, remember that 1 P4 at 3.0GHz is being compared to 2 G4's at 1.42GHz (benchmarks and such).

and your knowledge isn't much better...

the new P4 chips require a new motherboard that runs at 800mhz fsb, only a few 845PE's run at that (and thats overclocking them a bunch, not a supported fsb on that chip)

with most releases of each new p4 chip it has required a new motherboard because of fsb increases or socket changes or the addition of hyperthreading.. (only 1 socket change so far) so if you have a 2 year old P4 system, it will most likely run a current processor. they do make some adapter chips (from powerleap) that allow you to use newer chips on some older motherboards but YMMV with these things. and then on top of that with the faster fsb, it requires faster ram, so you have to buy that to, when you upgrade a pc (unless you do it every month i guess) you pretty much have to build a new one every time. amd has been a little better until the new 333mhz fsb and 400 mhz fsb chips came out. but thats the price you pay for the latest and greatest.

im the type of person who would rather upgrade the entire system to get the full performance out of the chip, rather than stick a speedy chip on a slow fsb/memory, but to each his own.

ZeeOwl · Jun 5, 2003

Re: Re: Re: OWC Mercury Extreme

Originally posted by yzedf
Your lack of knowledge wrt PC hardware is rather scary. L1 and L2 cache are on the processor. There is no "upgrade card" you can plug a new P4 3.2GHz chip into any mobo with same style of socket (although new mobo is better). As to pricing, remember that 1 P4 at 3.0GHz is being compared to 2 G4's at 1.42GHz (benchmarks and such).

The L1 and L2 cache are on chip in the G4 also. But what about the L3 cache? Is that on the motherboard? Sorry, but I haven't opened up any recent PCs. A Pentium 4 3GHz is 450$ just for the chip (and I assume that price is wholesale, in 1000s, not retail.). So how much is it retail? And when you buy a G4 upgrade, you get a bigger and faster L3 cache, not just a processor. How do you upgrade the L3 on a PC?

ZeeOwl · Jun 5, 2003

Re: Re: Re: Re: OWC Mercury Extreme

Originally posted by Funkatation
and your knowledge isn't much better...

the new P4 chips require a new motherboard that runs at 800mhz fsb, only a few 845PE's run at that (and thats overclocking them a bunch, not a supported fsb on that chip)

with most releases of each new p4 chip it has required a new motherboard because of fsb increases or socket changes or the addition of hyperthreading.. (only 1 socket change so far) so if you have a 2 year old P4 system, it will most likely run a current processor. they do make some adapter chips (from powerleap) that allow you to use newer chips on some older motherboards but YMMV with these things. and then on top of that with the faster fsb, it requires faster ram, so you have to buy that to, when you upgrade a pc (unless you do it every month i guess) you pretty much have to build a new one every time. amd has been a little better until the new 333mhz fsb and 400 mhz fsb chips came out. but thats the price you pay for the latest and greatest.

Lol. Thanks for the info. I'm less than familiar with the specifics of PC MB design. Well, I'm just about to plunk a brand-new 2003 model PPC750FX chip in my 5-year-old PowerMac, without having to upgrade or modify anything else. Just replace the old ZIF with the new one, and I'm done. The 750FX has an on-chip L2 running at full processor speed (900MHz), compared to my old 750L 350MHz, with an external 233 MHz L2 on the ZIF board. That should more than double my machine's speed for only 300$. The 750FX works just fine on machines with 100MHz FSBs. Actually, it will even work on older Macs with 66MHz FSBs. And IBM announced that within a year, they'll have the 750GX, running at up to 2GHz. Should give me about the speed of current top-of-the-line PowerMacs, or a 2.8GHz Pentium. Not too bad for "obsolete technology". Say, can you stick a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 in a 5-year-old PC?

You just gave me another reason to be glad I bought a PowerMac.

yzedf · Jun 5, 2003

Re: Re: Re: Re: OWC Mercury Extreme

Originally posted by ZeeOwl
The L1 and L2 cache are on chip in the G4 also. But what about the L3 cache? Is that on the motherboard? Sorry, but I haven't opened up any recent PCs. A Pentium 4 3GHz is 450$ just for the chip (and I assume that price is wholesale, in 1000s, not retail.). So how much is it retail? And when you buy a G4 upgrade, you get a bigger and faster L3 cache, not just a processor. How do you upgrade the L3 on a PC?

The G4 is the only proc I can think of off the top of my head that has L3 cache (not even all G4's have it).

Funkatation - I did not say it was ideal to put the new 800MHz bus P4's into last years 400MHz bus boards. Intel does state that it will probably damage the proc or the mobo. I am more than aware of the different bus and memory speeds, and the 2 different P4 sockets (478 and 423 IIRC).

Build your own with latest board, chip, and memory is always best way to go. Of course, I am a AMD guy myself...

Gymnut · Jun 5, 2003

Originally posted by hvfsl
There are people that have managed to overclock to 1.8Ghz with the use of watercooling. However the watercooling kits need to be adapted so they can fit on top of the G4 chips because PC chips are bigger.

Can you provide a link?

MacBandit · Jun 5, 2003

Re: 1.6 GHz, anyone?

Originally posted by ZeeOwl
.................The thing that I find very educational about this though, is the 6 Gflop benchmark result. According to Motorola's literature, a 1.6 GHz G4 should get a much higher score. This just underlines how badly the slow FSB cripples the processor. The 1.8 GHz PPC 970 is rated at 14.4 Gflops. But with it's 450 Mhz (900 Mhz effective) bus, I'm sure the final product will actually deliver close to this performance.

GFlop tests are totally dependant on the benchmark being done. That said the numbers that Motorola and Apple quote are the maximum theoretical output based on the the specs. In reality my Dual/GHz/DDR PowerMac has achieved 8Giga Flops with the Fractal tests.

ZeeOwl · Jun 5, 2003

Re: Re: 1.6 GHz, anyone?

Originally posted by MacBandit
In reality my Dual/GHz/DDR PowerMac has achieved 8Giga Flops with the Fractal tests.

That's exactly what I mean. This 6 Gflop result was obtained with a 1.6 GHz single processor running off a 100MHz FSB. You get 8Gflops with a 1GHz dual and 166Mhz? FSB. You should be getting more like 14 to 16, according to Motorola specs. The problem is obviously the slow FSB. The AltiVec unit can do much better at that clock speed. And so my point about the 970. Even though it's AltiVec unit is clocked about the same as the G4's, I'm sure that in actual use, it will trounce the G4 (and the P4 hehe), because of the 900 MHz FSB.

MacBandit · Jun 5, 2003

Re: Re: Re: 1.6 GHz, anyone?

Originally posted by ZeeOwl
That's exactly what I mean. This 6 Gflop result was obtained with a 1.6 GHz single processor running off a 100MHz FSB. You get 8Gflops with a 1GHz dual and 166Mhz? FSB. You should be getting more like 14 to 16, according to Motorola specs. The problem is obviously the slow FSB. The AltiVec unit can do much better at that clock speed. And so my point about the 970. Even though it's AltiVec unit is clocked about the same as the G4's, I'm sure that in actual use, it will trounce the G4 (and the P4 hehe), because of the 900 MHz FSB.

You missed the point. Even with and unlimited bus speed unless you have a program written specifically to achieve maximum GFlop numbers you never will. The Fractal test isn't exactly real world but it's much closer and the point is that real world numbers will be lower and not because of the bus speed it's just that the data being crunched isn't perfect it's real world. There's a big difference between potential and realistic and lab tests and real world tests. In the real world the bus isn't the primary thing holding back GFlop numbers it's the data being crunched.

WannabeSQ · Jun 5, 2003

Also, the overclock potential of that chip with the multiplier settings can't go higher than 1.6ghz on a 100mhz bus system. You need a 133mhz bus system to get higher. I think they should get a newer test mac to see how high the extreme overclock of that one can get. After all, they did get 1.1ghz out of an 800mhz giga designs upgrade, and that was a 7450, not the 7455.

Dont Hurt Me · Jun 5, 2003

Dont expect it to go far with motorola sitting on the motherboard. I would say 1.5 may be safe but after that you are asking for trouble. The thing is new machines allways have faster/bigger hardrives, wider busses,faster cpu's and better videocards, etc etc. Its tough upgrade or all new machine. If the 970 shows i will be leaning to the all new machine.

daveg5 · Jun 5, 2003

Re: Re: OWC Mercury Extreme

Originally posted by ZeeOwl
You're welcome

I thought the Mercury Extreme was rated at 1.33 GHz...

Honestly I don't think G4 upgrades are that much more than PC upgrades. A Pentium 4 3GHz goes for about 450$US, and the newly annouced 3.2GHz for about 670$US. And that's just for the processor. Doesn't include the upgrade card and cache, etc. Of course, they're faster than a (single) G4, but still more expensive too. If you're comparing the price of a 1.4 GHz G4 upgrade to a 1.4 GHz Pentium, it's much more expensive. But a G4 will run circles around a Pentium with the same clock speed.

Reply: they are much more exspensive when you consider that it takes 2 1.4 g4's to come close to a p4 3.06 in speed. they even caost more then the 970 which i hear is only $189 at 1.4GHZ in massive quanity. the p4's we are talking about are retial prices.

I don't think the G4 upgrades will go down much when the 970 comes out though, because the G4 chips cost as much (apparently more) to manufacture than 970s. They'll probably just dissapear, as they won't be competitive anymore. Most likely be replaced by IBM 750GXs in the 1.5 to 2 GHz range, which will be cheaper. And eventually by the 750-with-AltiVec (760GX?). I doubt we'll be seeing 970 upgrade cards for current PowerMacs, as it would probably be too complicated to make a card using them that would work in a 32-bit Mac.

reply: there always seem to be away with the upgrade companies, you can bet your bottom dollar that 970 upgrades will appear for the powermac g4 line next year. the pismo has a 900 g3 or 550 g4 upgrde. real oldworld pci powermacs habe sonnets 800 g4 and powerlogix's 800 g3 upgrades, biege/bw/yikes will soon have 1GHZ plus g4 upgrades and 900 g3 upgrades, heck even imacs can be upgraded to 900 g3's. it just take research and time and mullah.
how will a 970perform in a g4 tower, better then a g4 thats for sure. why not get a single 1.4970 for about the same amount as a 1.4 g4. will be limited by the slow bus/memory but still great for rendering encoding etc.

ZeeOwl · Jun 5, 2003

Re: Re: Re: Re: 1.6 GHz, anyone?

Originally posted by MacBandit
You missed the point. Even with and unlimited bus speed unless you have a program written specifically to achieve maximum GFlop numbers you never will. The Fractal test isn't exactly real world but it's much closer and the point is that real world numbers will be lower and not because of the bus speed it's just that the data being crunched isn't perfect it's real world. There's a big difference between potential and realistic and lab tests and real world tests. In the real world the bus isn't the primary thing holding back GFlop numbers it's the data being crunched.

OK. I see your point. Of course, real world max speed will never attain theoretical max speed. But my point was that the slow FSB is the G4's Achilles Heel. And here's some real world numbers (ran this test myself) to illustrate what I mean.

CineBench 2003 R8.1 results:
G3 350MHz - 901.0 seconds
G4 700MHz - 632.1 seconds

I had disabled the L2 cache of both processors for this test. Both machines have 1,024 MiB of CL2 RAM, on a 100MHz FSB. Now, "in theory", the G4 should have produced the render in 450.5 seconds. There are only two explanations that I can think of to explain these results...
a) The G3 is a much more efficient design than the G4. That I doubt, because from the documention that I've seen, while each processor has it's strengths and weaknesses, they are about evenly matched (not counting AltiVec). Which reminds me that C4D R6 and up make mild use of AltiVec. So the G4, still "in theory", should have produced the render in less than 450.5 seconds. Not much less, but maybe 2 or 3 seconds.
b) The FSB can't supply the G4 running at 7x the FSB frequency with data quickly enough to saturate it's processing power. That explanation I find much more likely.

So on your dual 1GHz G4, with a 133MHz FSB, you're in an even worst position, running at 15x the FSB frequency. In the MacBidouille test, they were running at 16x, and with only 1 processor. So it's not surprising that their fractal score was lower than your's. I'll be able to compare apples with apples in about two weeks, when I get my replacement G3 800MHz upgrade. I'll compare it to the original G3 scores at 7x, 8x, and 9x if I can get the upgrade to run reliably at that speed.

Now that's why I'm very much looking forward to the new 970 PowerMacs. Because, assuming Apple implements true DDR memory into these machines, I think they'll run circles around the current line of PowerMacs. Even if they only have 200MHz DDR RAM, that's still only a factor of 4.5x for a 1.8GHz single processor, 9x for a dual. About the same as my more "efficient" G3.

A much more reasonable ratio than the current line of PowerMacs, which run at 7.5x to 17x. And if the rumours coming from MacBidouille are correct, Apple has equipped these new beasts with Twin Bank memory, which means that the 970s will actually be operating at 2.25x and 4.5x respectively. Which according to IBM's literature, is close to their designed saturation point of 2x. I can't wait to see how their real-world performance measures up to theory.

ZeeOwl · Jun 5, 2003

Overclocking.

Originally posted by WannabeSQ
Also, the overclock potential of that chip with the multiplier settings can't go higher than 1.6ghz on a 100mhz bus system. You need a 133mhz bus system to get higher.

You mean the max clock multiplier is only 16x on the new G4s? It's 20x on the latest G3s. I guess IBM's one-up on Motorola there too. hehe

Though I don't think that pushing a processor past 16x would make much real-world difference in performance. Unless it has a huge L2 cache.

Dont Hurt Me · Jun 5, 2003

zee owl has spoken the gospel is it june 23 yet??? If we get more motorola bumps after screaming,crying etc i dont know what ill do except another bump myself but i can almost taste that 970.

ZeeOwl · Jun 5, 2003

Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
If the 970 shows i will be leaning to the all new machine.

I doubt you would have a choice. I would be extremely surprised if it would be possible to build a 970 upgrade card for a current PowerMac. 970s being 64-bit, and having a completely different FSB architecture. Kind of like trying to retrofit a G4 into a PowerMac 6100.

I'm sure that Apple will have to do a major motherboard overhaul to accomodate them.

ZeeOwl · Jun 5, 2003

Re: Gospel.

Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
zee owl has spoken the gospel is it june 23 yet??? If we get more motorola bumps after screaming,crying etc i dont know what ill do except another bump myself but i can almost taste that 970.

lol Ya, me too. I got this huge rendering job coming man. I need speed.

1.6 GHz, anyone? :D

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