OWC G4 Overclocking via dipswitches

It all depends on the heat. Is there anyway you can monitor it?

It reduces the life of the processor when you over-clock it (or so I heard)

Overclocking a CPU is certain to reduce its life. However, careful overclocking (as is often done with CPU upgrades) can yield a reliable CPU.

If the computer starts crashing or shutting off randomly, you will know that you are overheating the CPU and need to turn it down.

Otherwise, it's probably fine; but bear in mind that an overclocked CPU could run 5 years, 5 months or five minutes...the only way to prevent failure is to keep an eye on heat and be conservative - knocking the speed down by 100MHz might mean the difference between long life and rapid demise.

FWIW, my OWC CPU upgrade is a 1.3GHz-rated 7455 running mildly overclocked from the factory at 1.4Ghz. It has run for a couple years now with no issues.

9Charms said:

I've been checking the temperature of the CPU heat sink every so often and everytime it is barely warm to the touch. The card has 2 fans built into the heat sink, so it keeps it nice and cool...

The only thing I noticed is a few spinning beach balls when I try to have too many web pages open at once. But that may be a RAM issue...

As an aside does it matter that I only have 256K of L2 cache? The more expensive cards on the OWC site had 512K of L2 or 2MB of L3.

Click to expand...

The 2MB of L3 Cache give you a nice performance boost, that's all I know.

I've heard that if one has a 1-1.5 ghz G4 with a 2MB L3 cache that it would be equal to a 1.8-2.0 Ghz G4 with 512k of L2 cache.