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Fastest G4 Ever
- Thread starter TyleRomeo
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Weird... well I wouldn't discredit the G4 as being dead just yet. Even for Macs, there is still a big G4 after market. I can't find it now but Sonnet suggested a while back that 2ghz is not the ceiling for the G4 line.
I had a 2ghz G4 AGP with a Radeon 9800 and it was really really fast. I was quite satisfied doing Photoshop, Quark, and Final Cut Pro work on that machine.
I had a 2ghz G4 AGP with a Radeon 9800 and it was really really fast. I was quite satisfied doing Photoshop, Quark, and Final Cut Pro work on that machine.
TyleRomeo said:
Macsales.com has live bench tests so you can compare processors. They're obviously not 100%, but on my system the one I bought outperformed the single 2.0gHz substantially, and held its own with the dual 1.8 (it may have even beaten it in some tests, but I doubt it). The price difference between the 1.3 and the 1.8 duals also had an effect on my choice as well, since I'd rather not spend $500 or $600 upgrading a G4 when I can get a G5 for $1000...
I think it's all just what works for you. I got the bump I needed, so I'm happy. Though again, it is rather warm in here these days.
dpaanlka said:
Yeah I vaguely remmeber that statement also but I can't find any link to it. If anyone does please feel free to post it.
If you were happy with a single 2.0 on a 100MHZ bus than a dual 1.8 on a 167MHZ bus can't be that bad. But if there is any hope that 2.0 is not the limit than I might hold of for at least true dual 2.0GHZ g4s with hopefully the 7457 chips with 2MB of L3 per chip. Time for some google research. Thanks dpaanlka for the glimmer of hope.
I recall getting into a long telephone conversation with a Sonnet person about the L3-less G4s, and I pretty much walked away feeling confident in the performance of the G4 with more L2 but less L3. He said that the newer L3-less G4s were optimized to make better use of L2 (and had more of it) and therefore negated the benefits of having an L3.
The 2ghz G4 on the 100mhz murdered my 1.5ghz PowerBook G4 with a 167mhz bus in all my tests.
My 1.5ghz PowerBook G4 also murdered my 1ghz PowerBook G4, which had the L3 cache.
Wasn't even close.
The 2ghz G4 on the 100mhz murdered my 1.5ghz PowerBook G4 with a 167mhz bus in all my tests.
My 1.5ghz PowerBook G4 also murdered my 1ghz PowerBook G4, which had the L3 cache.
Wasn't even close.
Here's a post about the new 7448s that Daystar are working with:
http://www.daystar-forum.com/forum3/68.html
They're still buggy and there is apparent difficulty with OS support, but current specs imply a minimum 2.2-2.3gHz as attainable...
http://www.daystar-forum.com/forum3/68.html
They're still buggy and there is apparent difficulty with OS support, but current specs imply a minimum 2.2-2.3gHz as attainable...
dpaanlka said:
I never live tested a 2.0, but for what I need it for I get a lot more out of a lower dual. I'd be curious to play with a 2.0 upgrade, but it's not worth the money for me at the moment...
For what it's worth, the brief time I had a 1.6 w/o L3, it ran a bit faster than my 1.1 w/ L3, but it was also a 1.6. I never benchmarked, and honestly the speed difference was only noticable in Adobe apps...
dpaanlka said:Wow that sounds like fun! Link didn't work for me though
yes it sounds fantastic, but the link is not working for me either. 2.2-2.3 GHZ g4s would compete quite well against dual 2.0 g5s and that would mean quite a bad ass G4 system. Is there any links or info on what daystar freescale are planning on releasing these chips, even if its not for another year, I'll hold off since 7448s have 1MB of L2. Which would make me completely forget about g4s ever having an L3.
Still too strong..
Hi Tyler,
finally an CPU upgrade for the G4 MDD! How cool is that! I have waited so long. But you know what, -I still don't feel like upgrading. I have the G4 Dual 1,42 Gig with the L3 cache and the 9800/256MB ATI card. My rig runs so fast and smoothly I am still happy as I can be. Unless someone is interested in my Dual 1,42 Gig CPU with the heatpipe, I don't see a reason to upgrade on the CPU side.
My next upgrade will be the SATA HD controller with two 150 gig / 10K Raptors. I think with that I will blow away any G5 on the planet now matter what. Since my verax fan is in, I won't need a new mac for a very long, long, long time. My G4 was defenitly built with magic, I don't know why its so fast.
I am a G4 lover!
Hi Tyler,
finally an CPU upgrade for the G4 MDD! How cool is that! I have waited so long. But you know what, -I still don't feel like upgrading. I have the G4 Dual 1,42 Gig with the L3 cache and the 9800/256MB ATI card. My rig runs so fast and smoothly I am still happy as I can be. Unless someone is interested in my Dual 1,42 Gig CPU with the heatpipe, I don't see a reason to upgrade on the CPU side.
My next upgrade will be the SATA HD controller with two 150 gig / 10K Raptors. I think with that I will blow away any G5 on the planet now matter what. Since my verax fan is in, I won't need a new mac for a very long, long, long time. My G4 was defenitly built with magic, I don't know why its so fast.
I am a G4 lover!
AlexMaximus said:Hi Tyler,
finally an CPU upgrade for the G4 MDD! How cool is that! I have waited so long. But you know what, -I still don't feel like upgrading. I have the G4 Dual 1,42 Gig with the L3 cache and the 9800/256MB ATI card. My rig runs so fast and smoothly I am still happy as I can be. Unless someone is interested in my Dual 1,42 Gig CPU with the heatpipe, I don't see a reason to upgrade on the CPU side.
My next upgrade will be the SATA HD controller with two 150 gig / 10K Raptors. I think with that I will blow away any G5 on the planet now matter what. Since my verax fan is in, I won't need a new mac for a very long, long, long time. My G4 was defenitly built with magic, I don't know why its so fast.
I am a G4 lover!
ok..i keep hearing about this verax fan for G4s...does it work? is the wind tunnel sound gone? is it super quiet as advertised?
AlexMaximus said:Hi Tyler,
finally an CPU upgrade for the G4 MDD! How cool is that! I have waited so long. But you know what, -I still don't feel like upgrading. I have the G4 Dual 1,42 Gig with the L3 cache and the 9800/256MB ATI card. My rig runs so fast and smoothly I am still happy as I can be. Unless someone is interested in my Dual 1,42 Gig CPU with the heatpipe, I don't see a reason to upgrade on the CPU side.
My next upgrade will be the SATA HD controller with two 150 gig / 10K Raptors. I think with that I will blow away any G5 on the planet now matter what. Since my verax fan is in, I won't need a new mac for a very long, long, long time. My G4 was defenitly built with magic, I don't know why its so fast.
I am a G4 lover!
I concur - my dual 1.42 is still such a fast machine. I have 2 gb of RAM now, and I added a USB 2 four port card, but I haven't upgraded the video card, so that is one upgrade I still might make. It's such a tank build wise, has those wonderful short pipeline fast G4s and was assembled in the USA. It seems to me to have several years of productive life left. I like the Raptor upgrade path - I've toyed with adding one (that or an SCSI 3 card with 15,000 rpm drives - my goodness, can you imagine?).
AlexMaximus said:Hi Tyler,
finally an CPU upgrade for the G4 MDD! How cool is that! I have waited so long. But you know what, -I still don't feel like upgrading. I have the G4 Dual 1,42 Gig with the L3 cache and the 9800/256MB ATI card. My rig runs so fast and smoothly I am still happy as I can be. Unless someone is interested in my Dual 1,42 Gig CPU with the heatpipe, I don't see a reason to upgrade on the CPU side.
My next upgrade will be the SATA HD controller with two 150 gig / 10K Raptors. I think with that I will blow away any G5 on the planet now matter what. Since my verax fan is in, I won't need a new mac for a very long, long, long time. My G4 was defenitly built with magic, I don't know why its so fast.
I am a G4 lover!
Long live the MDD!! Sounds like you got a nice system also. I bet your RAM is maxed also. Hey you wouldn't or anyone else have a link that compares the 1.25g4 with 2MB L3 to the 1.42g4 with 2MB L3. I know macworld did one about 4 years back but I don't have the article anymore.
Getting back to the upgrade I think Sonnet, OWC and maybe barefeats will have some benchmarks comparing the dual 1.8g4, 7447A to the 7455 in the dual 1.42 and dual 1.25 with 2MB of L3. I expect the dual 1.8 to beat the dual 1.42 eventhough it doesn't have an L3 but the 512KB of L2 should be enough to balance things.
I've personally decided that unless I get a hell of a deal on a used G4 upgrade, it isnt worth it to upgrade my Digital Audio G4.
weaverra said:
A lot. Mac towers are great becuase you can upgrade almost every part of it. I'm not sure what mac you have or how long you have been using macs. But my Power Mac G4 from over 4 years ago is still my main machine and I'm using it for Final Cut Pro, Adobe CS2 and other pro programs. I've upgraded the RAM from 512MB to 2GB, the hard drives from 120GB to 1,910GB, video card from 64MB ATI 9000 Pro to 128MB ATI 9700 Pro. I've added an airport card, 3 USB 2 ports, and 8 Firewire 400 ports. It's so much fun making your old mac still keep up and get the job done with today's much faster macs.
The CPU and Superdrive upgrades are what I have left to do. My mac is one that I will never let go off, like many people who hang on to classic macs from the 80s, I plan to keep mine running and still be usable. So that's why it's important to upgrade the CPU to the fastest possible option I have. I'm just waiting to see the reviews of the sonnet 1.8 G4 upgrade to the MDD then I'll either buy that or hope that something faster comes out my early next year. A computer doesn't have to be put down after a few years, it can serve a purpose to decades if you want. Well maybe 20 years. If I can still use my powermac g4 in 2022, I will be impressed by it. Then you can do the math and see how much your computer costs you per year. If you buy a $2,000 machine and dump it after 2 years, you're paying $1,000 a year for it. Plus with some users macs become more than just a machine, you get very attached to your machine.
TyleRomeo said:
I bought my first mac in March 2006 and it was the dual G5 2.0. Not the dual core. Bought it New and onsale for $1610 at CompUSA. I have 2 Gigs of ram in it along with 320 Gigs of HD space. I have used the intels and they are fast esp the core 2 duos! I will have to say that it's amazing how the G4's perform with Tiger.
weaverra said:
Well the G4s will always run very well with OSX since OSX was built to run on a G4 chip. And with Powerbooks still using 1.67GHZ g4 chips thru 2005, the G4 chip can do plenty. The G3 will still run with 10.5. Maybe by 10.6 the G3 chip will be no longer enough. But the G4 should continue running smoothly thru 10.6. 10.7 will probably bring on a requirement for core video graphics card and that will start to phase out some older g4s. But I can see mine with 128MB of video memory on the ATI 9700 Pro card run thru all the OSX updates until system 11 ships eventually.
This is a very motivating thread for me. I have been thinking about dumping my MDD and moving on to a faster dual G5, but I have thought twice. I realize I can still upgrade the graphics card to replace the crappy radeon 9000 pro and I can still upgrade to 2 gigs of ram. I got about 700 gigs of space in this G4 right now and it's been very steady for me.
Long live the MDD G4!
Long live the MDD G4!
I still think the G4 towers are very nice looking too. My 350mhz AGP still looked better than any PC I've ever seen... very refined, professional, and yet thoroughly modern. It still drew "wows" from people right up until I sold it last month.
There is no 2.0GHz G4!!!
It's up to you what you buy, but there is no G4 rated to run over 1420MHz. The 1.67 GHz is actually overclocked. Apple & Mot/ freescale determined it is not possible to run them any faster without data corruption, heat damage, or worse...
I consider the claims of a 1.8/ 2.0 GHz G4 absolute fiction, sensationalism, and BS. Since they are overclocked, and no one believes they can run at those speeds ( OK, cooled in liquid nitrogen maybe ) This is selling you a POS CPU which has died, is neglected, still on 90nm process if anyone wants one... system bus @ 167MHz and CPU @ 10x is as fast as it can get.... there is no value in overclocking one & selling it for more than a G4 tower...
Please, do NOT hack your Mac CPU. No, there will never be more G4's - thermostats, cars, don't need 800 MHz, and they cost a buck each in volume.... do NOT bother, overclock your G4 chip yourself, or better yet, avoid data corruption, errata, and over drawing power resulting in damage, or unable to boot....
Crazy!
Good luck.
LT
It's up to you what you buy, but there is no G4 rated to run over 1420MHz. The 1.67 GHz is actually overclocked. Apple & Mot/ freescale determined it is not possible to run them any faster without data corruption, heat damage, or worse...
I consider the claims of a 1.8/ 2.0 GHz G4 absolute fiction, sensationalism, and BS. Since they are overclocked, and no one believes they can run at those speeds ( OK, cooled in liquid nitrogen maybe ) This is selling you a POS CPU which has died, is neglected, still on 90nm process if anyone wants one... system bus @ 167MHz and CPU @ 10x is as fast as it can get.... there is no value in overclocking one & selling it for more than a G4 tower...
Please, do NOT hack your Mac CPU. No, there will never be more G4's - thermostats, cars, don't need 800 MHz, and they cost a buck each in volume.... do NOT bother, overclock your G4 chip yourself, or better yet, avoid data corruption, errata, and over drawing power resulting in damage, or unable to boot....
Crazy!
Good luck.
LT
Ok..this thread is making me also think twice about selling my dual g4 for a dual g5 or macpro.
so, i have 2 GB ram, i have 4 hds..plenty of space...plus externals. i have the 1.25 dual mdd.
if i get a new vid card as the one that came with it (9000 i believe?) such as this one:
ATI Technologies RADEON 9800 PRO MAC EDITION 4x/2x AGP ...
will that make a difference? i use the iapps; dvd studio pro and final cut ALOT (it's 1 of 2 working video transfer machines). would a new vid card help scrolling through my huge itunes library (23000+) and would it help rendering mpeg2s or is that entirely my processor?
i'm also thinking of getting the verax unit..does it really cool down the g4 and make it silent? b/c the wind tunnel noise is the only thing i hate about it.
also, does anyone have both the verax and the card listed? i ask b/c i saw something on the verax site that said certain cards couldn't be installed due to the size of the verax fans...
Cheers,
Keebler
so, i have 2 GB ram, i have 4 hds..plenty of space...plus externals. i have the 1.25 dual mdd.
if i get a new vid card as the one that came with it (9000 i believe?) such as this one:
ATI Technologies RADEON 9800 PRO MAC EDITION 4x/2x AGP ...
will that make a difference? i use the iapps; dvd studio pro and final cut ALOT (it's 1 of 2 working video transfer machines). would a new vid card help scrolling through my huge itunes library (23000+) and would it help rendering mpeg2s or is that entirely my processor?
i'm also thinking of getting the verax unit..does it really cool down the g4 and make it silent? b/c the wind tunnel noise is the only thing i hate about it.
also, does anyone have both the verax and the card listed? i ask b/c i saw something on the verax site that said certain cards couldn't be installed due to the size of the verax fans...
Cheers,
Keebler
LaoTzu said:
Ummmm.... Sonnet offers a 3 year warranty on their products. Newer Tech does too. Obviuosly they think the things can run just fine at 1.8 and 2.0ghz speeds.
I had a Sonnet 1.8ghz for a year and it was just fine and dandy.
So calm yourself down.
Keebler said:
Encoding Mpeg 2 is a processor-intensive thing to do. The only app I know that really eats away on the graphics card is Motion. I'm not sure if a new graphics card would make scroling easier, that's a question I'm waiting for to get answered. I'm in the exact same situation, I would like to get the same 9800 graphics card to keep the life flowing in this machine.