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1.7ghz G4 upgrades

Interestingly, the PPC 7447A used in the 1.7GHz upgrades doesn't support L3 cache. Although it does support twice as much L2 cache, with the slow bus that the G4s run on that L3 cache does a lot for performance.

According to Gigadesigns, the 1.7GHz 7447A (no L3) is about the same performance-wise as a 1.47GHz 7455 (w/L3), and as such they're not even bothering to make upgrades for the MDD using it. The situation is the same for Sonnett, if you look at the card's specs.

Of course, Gigadesigns also notes that the new chips draw 40% less power than the older ones, so even if there's no real-world speed advantage, they're still worthwhile for some power- or cooling-limited applications (the Cube, most obviously).

They're not likely to look terribly impressive next to a 1.6GHz G5, though they should draw significantly less power.
 
i'd steer clear of giga they are being sued at the moment and may go under leaving you with an unsupported card, if your going to upgrade your cube powerlogix is supposedly coming out with a dual 1.4GHz card for about $600 with 4MB L3 cache.
 
I noticed with the Giga, they made some sort of stipulation that the upgrades were 1.4 GHz upgrades but they were tested at 1.7 GHz. That didn't sound quite right.

PowerLogix is more trustworthy.
 
they are overclocked cards, motorola designs there chips for small embedded markets and those embedded markets dont have the space in there products fro giant heatsinks like the upgrades come with so motorola rate them according to that usage, g4's are fairly overclockable chips especially post 7455 chips that can go from 1.25GHz to 1.6GHz.

now weather giga is being careless and overclocking too much to match sonnet's upgrade is don't know and can't say until there are some temperature and reliability tests done, if giga were not being sued at the moment i would say buy away as they are being sold with warrenty so they seem to think they will work but if i were on my last legs i would sell cards that are crazy fast but fail in the next few months too make some quick cash to fuel the lawyers.
 
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