DDR Front Side Bus Upgrade

[CMillerERAU]

I bought a Dual 1GHz PowerMac and have been absolutely thrilled at its performance but with all of teh reports that a 970 can't be grafted on it has been dissapoiting. I was reading Mac OS Rumors (say it ain't so!) and there was talk of G4's using DDR FSB instead of its current SDR FSB which basicaly renders the DDR RAM crippled as far as speed is concerned. Now, I'm no expert so I was wondering if upgrade comanies will be able to offer new processors with the new DDR Front Side Bus or is this something on teh main board and can't be upgraded?

PS: Speaking of 970's, if their performance is so great, will this be like when the old 68K processors instantly became useless with new software designed for PowerPC? Lets hope not being that so many of us are stuck with our relatively new G4's.

[CMillerERAU]

Also...I'd like to appologize for the spelling, this was written on the fly without a spell check javascript:smilie(':eek:')

[gbojim]

Originally posted by CMillerERAU
Now, I'm no expert so I was wondering if upgrade comanies will be able to offer new processors with the new DDR Front Side Bus or is this something on teh main board and can't be upgraded?

PS: Speaking of 970's, if their performance is so great, will this be like when the old 68K processors instantly became useless with new software designed for PowerPC? Lets hope not being that so many of us are stuck with our relatively new G4's.

It is pretty unlikely that upgrade companies will be able to drop in a processor with a DDR based FSB. The controllers on the main board would most likely not support it.

Moving to PPC970 will not be like moving from 68k to PPC. The PPC has a totally different ISA than 68k which is the reason for incompatibility in that case. The 970 uses the same ISA as the Gx so software will be 100% compatible. Reportedly, IBM put in a lot of effort to ensure there is no performance hit running 32 bit apps.