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G4 Gigabit Ethernet Processor Upgrade

N

Neil Rankin

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 8, 2008
6
0
IThe questions I have relate to my G4 450 Dual tower.
I really love this machine. Over some time I've upgraded the memory to 1.5GB with PC-133 cards, the hard drive to Western Digital 80GB 7200 rpm, and the Graphics card to Radeon 9000 pro. I've also a DVD burner and one slot of USB 2.0 ports. Fairly thrifty upgrades to this point.
But if decide to take the plunge and upgrade the CPU, I'm interested in learning all my options. The Dual 1.8 Maxpower is getting mighty close to 300 bucks. Boy, that sure is tempting. But, my first question is, would the Dual 1.8 be worth it compared to a cheaper CPU for a machine with a 100 mhz bus speed?
Or how about, would I notice a distinct difference if said processor(s) were installed on the Digital Audio logic board? Is it possible to just stick the Digital Audio logic board in the Gigabit Ethernet? If not, no worries. I can trade in the GE for a DA on eBay for no cost. Would I notice the difference with the extra 33 mhz on my other components?
On a side note, I'm not interested in being scolding by anyone for doing an uneconomical upgrade, so don't waste our time by telling me I'd be better off buying a "blah, blah, blah." There is enough of that in the forum archives for eternity. Thanks so much.
 
Welp. If you are going to upgrade an unsupported and outdated machine, might as well drop the 300 for the dual 1.8. That should be fairly decent.
 
I was thinking that myself. But is the bus speed going to limit the upgrade to the point of being bogged down somewhere else? Will the extra 33mhz of a Digital Audio logic board help?
 
The dual 1.8s are pretty solid, but if you can find one of the dual 1.3s, you sacrifice very little in (practical) speed and gain 2mb of lvl3 cache per processor, which IMO helps, but there are of course differing opinions on the matter. I went with the dual 1.3 in my Sawtooth, but again, they're harder to find now.

Love your G4 for as long as you can! It's still a supported machine with the upgrade, and it's a definite performer (mine keeps up pretty well with my G5 and is on par with my intern's 2007 Macbook).
 
disconap said:
The dual 1.8s are pretty solid, but if you can find one of the dual 1.3s, you sacrifice very little in (practical) speed and gain 2mb of lvl3 cache per processor, which IMO helps, but there are of course differing opinions on the matter. I went with the dual 1.3 in my Sawtooth, but again, they're harder to find now.

Love your G4 for as long as you can! It's still a supported machine with the upgrade, and it's a definite performer (mine keeps up pretty well with my G5 and is on par with my intern's 2007 Macbook).
Click to expand...

I agree. Go with something cheaper and lower than Dual 1.8.. you'll pay a good bit less, and won't sacrifice much in ways of speed. Good deal.
 
Hey, thanks. I'll have to get eyes out for those smaller CPU upgrades. Not as easy to find, or is it just me?
 
That looks like a sweet processor, but I am thinking of something a little less powerful, and a little less expensive as well. I'm looking at the 1.2 Ghz single processor from owc for 200 bucks. I think it would give me what I'm after. I'm running Panther on it now. Would consider going to Tiger with a bigger CPU, but maybe not. I run Photoshop 7, but not very intensively, and I have a massive music file on Itunes. I got it mostly for scanning medium format black white film for previewing purposes (I print in a darkroom). It does OK with all of that, but the scanner software kind of blows, and I'd love to see if I could get some increased performance out of my baby. I'm hoping the CPU upgrade will give me a bit more fluidity with Radeon 9000 Graphics card, but I'm not interested in getting nuclear with video information.
Someone chimed in about "outdated and unsupported machine." That is definetly true, when it comes to being unsupported. I rarely feel supported by corporations anyways. As far as being outdated, I'm not sure what that means, but the machine feels pretty alive when I'm riding it.
 
Neil Rankin said:
That looks like a sweet processor, but I am thinking of something a little less powerful, and a little less expensive as well. I'm looking at the 1.2 Ghz single processor from owc for 200 bucks. I think it would give me what I'm after. I'm running Panther on it now. Would consider going to Tiger with a bigger CPU, but maybe not. I run Photoshop 7, but not very intensively, and I have a massive music file on Itunes. I got it mostly for scanning medium format black white film for previewing purposes (I print in a darkroom). It does OK with all of that, but the scanner software kind of blows, and I'd love to see if I could get some increased performance out of my baby. I'm hoping the CPU upgrade will give me a bit more fluidity with Radeon 9000 Graphics card, but I'm not interested in getting nuclear with video information.
Someone chimed in about "outdated and unsupported machine." That is definetly true, when it comes to being unsupported. I rarely feel supported by corporations anyways. As far as being outdated, I'm not sure what that means, but the machine feels pretty alive when I'm riding it.
Click to expand...

I would strongly recommending upgrading to Tiger... it's a better OS, and even a little bit faster... and Spotlight is a really great feature. It also supports a ton of software that Panther simply doesn't.

Photoshop 7 was a fun version... best splashscreen ever :D
 
Firefly2002 said:
I would strongly recommending upgrading to Tiger... it's a better OS, and even a little bit faster... and Spotlight is a really great feature. It also supports a ton of software that Panther simply doesn't.

Photoshop 7 was a fun version... best splashscreen ever :D
Click to expand...

The machine is outdated (meaning there are newer machines out there) and unsupported (meaning apple doesn't acknowledge it anymore). There is nothing wrong with what I said, and I offered my advice which was to get the most out of the old machine. Not to throw it out.
 
disconap said:
For the record, I hate hate hate Spotlight. I know I'm in the minority on this, but I miss the old search.
Click to expand...

I do believe that you can still use Sherlock (the old search) in Tiger. You may have to get if off of a Panther Disc, or just use the Find Dialog in Finder.

TEG
 
I'll have to try Tiger again. I ran it on the machine for a week or so a while back, but it ran like a snail compared to Panther. Startup, file moving, opening apps, closing apps. It was sloooowwwwer. So I went back to Panther. Since then, I've added a gig of memory and a faster hard drive and the Radeon 9000. So, maybe it would be sweeter now.
Hey Zmttoxics, no offense taken nor intended. I couldn't agree with you more about being outdated and unsupported. Thanks for your opinion. It just sounds so cold, 'outdated and unsupported.' It sounds like death itself. My G4 used to be smoking hot. Boy, computer years are way worse than dog years. Except that it still is great at what it does, and it makes me happy (kinda like my dog Calypso)...that was my only point. Peace.
 
Neil Rankin said:
I'll have to try Tiger again. I ran it on the machine for a week or so a while back, but it ran like a snail compared to Panther. Startup, file moving, opening apps, closing apps. It was sloooowwwwer. So I went back to Panther. Since then, I've added a gig of memory and a faster hard drive and the Radeon 9000. So, maybe it would be sweeter now.
Hey Zmttoxics, no offense taken nor intended. I couldn't agree with you more about being outdated and unsupported. Thanks for your opinion. It just sounds so cold, 'outdated and unsupported.' It sounds like death itself. My G4 used to be smoking hot. Boy, computer years are way worse than dog years. Except that it still is great at what it does, and it makes me happy (kinda like my dog Calypso)...that was my only point. Peace.
Click to expand...

Theres a saying about old sparcs (SUN machines). They never retire, only get moved to the workbench. Just a few years ago I was still running a Sun Sparc LX, 50MHrz (64 bit mind you) with 92 megs of ram and 2 gig harddrive. I didn't retire it, the drive seized in it and I decided it paid its own. Good luck with the G4. Even if OS X doesn't support it, there are still linux projects (YDL) that do so there is always an option.
 
zmttoxics said:
The machine is outdated (meaning there are newer machines out there) and unsupported (meaning apple doesn't acknowledge it anymore). There is nothing wrong with what I said, and I offered my advice which was to get the most out of the old machine. Not to throw it out.
Click to expand...

My apologies. I misinterpreted, it just sounded like you were being a little condescending. My bad :)

Neil, my guess is you didn't use Tiger for more than a couple hours, am I right? If that's the case, the reason it was dog slow was because of spotlight.... it was indexing your whole hard drive, a process taking hours. Once that's done, your processor is freed up again, and your resources no longer are hogged. It will run as fast or faster than Panther. :)
 
disconap said:
The dual 1.8s are pretty solid, but if you can find one of the dual 1.3s, you sacrifice very little in (practical) speed and gain 2mb of lvl3 cache per processor, which IMO helps, but there are of course differing opinions on the matter. I went with the dual 1.3 in my Sawtooth, but again, they're harder to find now.

Love your G4 for as long as you can! It's still a supported machine with the upgrade, and it's a definite performer (mine keeps up pretty well with my G5 and is on par with my intern's 2007 Macbook).
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's weird, I often hear almost "legendary" or magical things about the old 1.2-1.467GHz G4 upgrades, the ones based on the older CPUs and equipped with L3 cache. Whether it was that extra cache, or that maybe they were engineered a little better, in keeping with their higher price-point, I do not know; but many seem to really like them, even compared to the newer, cooler-running 1.6+GHz models.

Unfortunately, they DO appear to be pretty hard to find now, as those chips (the 7455s?) don't seem to be plentiful anymore. Still, it may be worth looking for one, if you can be assured of it's good condition (the "Powerlogix" brand ones seemed to have more than a few issues among end-users). A fellow I know used to run a 450DP that he upgraded with the "Gigadesigns" dual-1.2 unit and he says it was a screamer. In fact, he says that it compared not-too-shabbily against his later G5/2.0DP. Specifically, he says it seemed to do iTunes conversions as fast as the G5, if not even a little faster...

Keep the old thing running as long as you can -- less e-waste for the landfill!

A.
 
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