G4 upgrades

[MacMusicMan69]

Ok I decided not buy a mini till OS X 10.5, and upgrading this Digital Audio 533mhz g4. Though I am not sure what would be the best one.
The OWC Mercury Extreme g4 1.33ghz or the power logix 1.6 g4 ugrades.
I looked at both chips at freescale, but I don't want to have to install OS 9.2 to do it.
Does anyone have any advice for me?
Thanks

 

[dmw007]

I checked out both CPUs at OWC and I am not sure that you actually have to use Mac OS 9 to install.

Regardless, between the two chips, I think that I would go with the 1.6GHz Model. It has twice the L2 cache, its 300MHz faster, and is a 7447A not a 7455B. I am not that knowledgeable about the types of G4 processors/upgrade cards, but I think that the PowerLogix is the better of the two.


Here some links to the the CPUs I presume that you are talking about-

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/PowerLogix/PF47S1600QD/

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEG41213L2S/

 

[dmw007]

Oh, and the 1.6GHz Power Logix CPU is $20 cheaper to boot.

 

[MacMusicMan69]

Thanks

The 1.6ghz ones probally going to be it, I checked out the benchmarks on it.
Compared it with the Mac Mini benchmarks, the Power Logix 1.6 is about the same speed as the dual mac mini, a tiny bit slower but not much.
The main difference was the boot time the mini boots in like 15 seconds, 30 seconds for the power logix.
Being 20 bucks less is also a big plus.

Thanks.

 

[dmw007]

The 1.6ghz ones probally going to be it, I checked out the benchmarks on it.
Compared it with the Mac Mini benchmarks, the Power Logix 1.6 is about the same speed as the dual mac mini, a tiny bit slower but not much.
The main difference was the boot time the mini boots in like 15 seconds, 30 seconds for the power logix.
Being 20 bucks less is also a big plus.

Thanks.

No problem, glad to be of assistance MacMusicMan69!

 

[Lord Blackadder]

I'll just add my 2 cents.

Last year I bought an OWC 1.4GHz 7455-based CPU for $299. It was a 1.33GHz chip factory overclocked to 1.4GHz. It has been running for a year with no problems. Before buying it I researched benchmarks exhaustively and found that the 1.4GHz 7455 CPUs were running just as fast as the 1.7/1.8GHz 7447 CPUs, so the L3 cache made up for the speed difference.

I bought the OWC upgraded based on the fact that (according to the large database of reviews on xlr8yourmac.com) the OWC products had a significantly better reliability record over PowerLogix. Things have changed since then, and I've heard that PowerLogix has improved.

I think that the performance between the OWC 1.3GHz and PowerLogix 1.6Ghz will be very similar. The only other difference that might be important to you is the fact that the PowerLogix CPU is a 1.25GHz chip overclocked to 1.6, whereas the OWC 1.3GHz chip is running at its rated speed. This may have an effect on reliability down the road, though a number of Mac users have been running overclocked G4s for years now without trouble.

Either way you'll probably be satisfied with the performance.

 

[livingfortoday]

For most upgrades, you're going to need to boot up with OS 9 in order to update your computers firmware, unless Apple released an OS X firmware update for it. My Cube needed to be booted into OS 9 when I put in my Powerlogix upgrade back in the day.

While I'm *pretty* sure that Powerlogix was actually bought by OWC (so maybe new products are better), I know that the Powerlogix dual 1.5Ghz G4 upgrades I got for my Cube were faulty as heck. The first one constantly gave me kernel panics, and the replacement stopped working after about two weeks of use. They had an extremely long turnaround for the return (1+ month), so take that in to account when ordering. Oh, and make sure you get better cooling! They'll run HOT compared to stock!

 

[Lord Blackadder]

There was a time during 2003-2005 when PowerLogix seemed to have a LOT of trouble with their products...for one thing, a lot of their CPUs were running a heavy overclock (some still do), and they were hot and unreliable. I am pretty sure also that OWC bought them and more recent reports indicate that reliability is up.

OWC has always been very good to me service-wise, and I've bought a lot of stuff from them over the past 3 years or so. I am happy to give them my business.

I had already updated my firmware when I bought my G4, so I didn't need to do it...but if you do, you will need to boot OS 9 to perform the update. This is true for all CPU upgrades IIRC.