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G4 sonnet duet dual 1.8Ghz on ebay
- Thread starter LightBulbFun
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eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
MacCubed
macrumors 68000
bunnspecial
macrumors G3
It took a little bit of futzing around with the firmware patch(apparently I needed to hold down the power button rather than press the programmer's button) to get things going, but with that done it works perfectly in OS 9 and Leopard.
It's rock stable and blazing fast running at its rated speed-that's more than can be said of some other "Dual 1.8ghz" processors that have been on the market. Geekbench and Xbench are coming later this evening.
It's rock stable and blazing fast running at its rated speed-that's more than can be said of some other "Dual 1.8ghz" processors that have been on the market. Geekbench and Xbench are coming later this evening.
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eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
Awesome! Glad it works.
Wish it were in my Mac, but I couldn't afford it at the time. Hopefully another one will pop up when I can.
bunnspecial
macrumors G3
I hope you're able to grab one too one of these days.
It's in my Rackmount G4, which has no case fans save for the one on the PSU. Other than that, there's only the fan on the 4Ti(which may soon get transplanted to another computer so that I can put a CI card in this computer) and then the two on the upgrade. I'm probably going to stick a big case fan behind the CPU(where one would be on a Quicksilver-just bigger) but other than that cooling is pretty minimal.
Looking at this upgrade it's easy to see
1. Why Sonnet stuff still carries a premium
2. Why the Giga never worked as advertised.
To start off with, the heatsink somewhat larger than the one on the Giga-not by a huge amount, but it's still noticeably larger.
Second, I posted a while back about efforts lapping the Giga heatsink, and how much of a difference it made.
By contrast, the bottom of the Sonnet heatsink-or at least what I can see of it-is impeccable. It already has a mirror polish-much better than what the Giga had even after I'd finished working on it. There's no way around the fact that smooth surfaces transfer heat more efficiently, and I suspect this is why the Sonnet can reliably run at 1.8 while the Giga never could(there's also the fact that Sonnet started off with 1.42ghz CPUs, while Giga cheaped out and used 1.25s).
It's in my Rackmount G4, which has no case fans save for the one on the PSU. Other than that, there's only the fan on the 4Ti(which may soon get transplanted to another computer so that I can put a CI card in this computer) and then the two on the upgrade. I'm probably going to stick a big case fan behind the CPU(where one would be on a Quicksilver-just bigger) but other than that cooling is pretty minimal.
Looking at this upgrade it's easy to see
1. Why Sonnet stuff still carries a premium
2. Why the Giga never worked as advertised.
To start off with, the heatsink somewhat larger than the one on the Giga-not by a huge amount, but it's still noticeably larger.
Second, I posted a while back about efforts lapping the Giga heatsink, and how much of a difference it made.
By contrast, the bottom of the Sonnet heatsink-or at least what I can see of it-is impeccable. It already has a mirror polish-much better than what the Giga had even after I'd finished working on it. There's no way around the fact that smooth surfaces transfer heat more efficiently, and I suspect this is why the Sonnet can reliably run at 1.8 while the Giga never could(there's also the fact that Sonnet started off with 1.42ghz CPUs, while Giga cheaped out and used 1.25s).
bunnspecial
macrumors G3
glad to see everything is working out 😀 its interesting OS X sees them as 7455As I wonder if it the boot rom patch does that or they use the NVRAM thing to report them as such so OS9 will boot... (OS 9 will lock up on a 7447A CPU unless you tell the computer to report it as a 7455 its one of the steps I used to boot OS 9 on my iBook G4)
bunnspecial
macrumors G3
And the bad thing is that photo was taken at the drive-through line at Fazolis 🙂
I can't say too much-I'd just spent 3 1/2 hours driving back from Louisville(thanks to an accident shutting down I-64 that left me and the rest of the world taking 2-lane US 60) and was worn out. 🙂
(I really need to clean out my car)
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
Ohhhh!!!! Bad enough the man has the dual 1.8 I want (just kidding) but he has to go and rub Fazoli's into it!!!!
I LOVE FAZOLIS!!!
Unfortunately, the economy killed the chain in Arizona and California. The two Fazoli's we had here in Phoenix closed about five or six years ago and have never returned. The closest Fazoli's to me is a few hundred miles away in Las Vegas!
There's a running joke in our family where we refer to it as "the tomato" because my son could not pronounce the name so just called it that when he was small.
Ah well I hope it was good! 😀 😀
bunnspecial
macrumors G3
Every last bite 🙂 🙂
Sorry to hear that they are no longer around in your area any more. What can be better than "fast" food Italian?(of course, fast is somewhat a loose term)
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
Yeah, the closest one was like five minutes from my house!
I like spaghetti, so I always got that, their salad and breadsticks.
Even if they wanted to come back there now they can't. A retail electronics firm bought the land and razed the building to put their giant box on it. One of those local chains that advertises TVs you won't ever buy because they are too damn expensive.
Same thing happened with Krispy Kreme too. Lots of locations, one day workers showed up to work only to find out that Krispy Kreme had left Arizona entirely.
Ah well. I still have the Old Spaghetti Factory. 😀
To bring this back on subject, I am glad you are seeing the quality of Sonnet.
I have a single 1.2 and that particular Sonnet has been as solid and dependable as the original CPU for my QS. I would daresay it's probably even better. I have never had any heat management issues with that CPU. Other than the fact that it's one CPU less and 0.6mhz less than what I want I love it.
bunnspecial
macrumors G3
Baked Spaghetti is my "drug" of choice, plus of course breadsticks(if you go through the drive through they are stingy with them and charge you for extras).
As for Krispy Kreme-they are sparse in this area but around. There are two in Louisville(fortunately one close to campus, and you can see the "hot donuts" sign from the interstate) and one relatively new one in Lexington.
As for the CPU-this is now my third Sonnet. I have a 700mhz G4 in my 8600(thanks to Gamer9430) and an 800mhz G4 in one of my Cubes(thanks to Jbarley). The Cube one was plug and play(although I would have needed to add a base fan if I hadn't already done so). The 8600 required running a floppy disk, which isn't surprising considering how different it was from the stock CPU. The 1.8 was the most involved, but once I'd flashed the ROM(which I think is a consequence of the type of CPU used-the same reason the Giga required a ROM flash) it worked perfectly. It's nice too that it works without adding all the extra fans that you and I both have used with the Giga.
Even though it superficially looks similar to the Giga, the difference in overall quality is night and day. The Sonnet even goes so far as to add captive screws to the heatsink. Of course, like the Giga, I still don't know how you're supposed to get the rear screw attached 🙂
No that 7455 is one of the several incapabilities of Xbench. It is reported on the net a few times (I think it was even in the developers read me file).
If you let bunnspecial open the detailed info under "about this Mac" it will show up as 7447.
About OS 9 and this special Sonnet CPU. Only OS 9.2.2 works with this CPU, so be sure, you upgrade OS 9 before that (well, you will have to do it anyway, to run the ROM updater, but be warned if you later swap HDDs and have a OS 9.1 or whatever on it). Some people have the issue, that they have to change a file in the system extensions folder, so that OS 9.2.2 runs with this CPU.
EDIT: "OS 9.2+ is supported, however you must go to system folder/extensions/multiprocessing/Apple CPU plugins
Move Apple CPU plugins to the trash, now the machine should boot normally under OS 9."
(Btw. on holding the power button down: on my AGP G4 I had to hold down the programmers button for a while).
I have told the story one or the other time here in this forum, but I had two of these Sonnet Dual 7447 1,8GHz ones.
One (recovered from a "dead" machine) was always exactly freezing at 70% load on both cores (tested it via letting iMovie encode something to h.264). I sold it as dead for I think it was 160,-EUR. It turned out (what I was assuming already) that the thermal compound had become dry. I didn't have these special torx with hole in the middle and they appeared super tight fastened so I spared myself the effort and just sold it (also, since I already had a second one, that came with a lot of different stuff as a bundle, it was "emotionally" easier for me to let it go. Afterwards I thought I should have kept the problematic one and after repair do some test with different fans on it, while keeping the other untouched as comparison.)
@ bunnspecial: maybe you can do the benchmark in the DIY benchmark thread here in the PowerPC-subforum.
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understood that xbench might not report it properly BUT look at geek-bench that reports 7455s (and I know for a fact on my iBook a 7447A will show up in geek-bench as a 7447A) if Bun could open up a terminal and run nvram -p for me and show me the output it would be interesting to see if there using the NVRAM patch to make the CPUs show as 7455s instead of 7447As (as OS9.2.2 will fail to boot on a unknown CPU so you have to trick it so and thats what i did with my iBook G4 after then geek bench saw its CPU as a 7450 till I cleared the NVRAM)
bunnspecial
macrumors G3
I'm out of town through the middle of next week, so won't be able to do any further testing until then.
With regard to OS 9, I have the disk set that came with my first QS 2002, and it has a full blown 9.2.2 install disk. I've actually found that this disk will work on any AGP PowerMac up to the QS 2002, so it's generally the disk I use to install OS 9 on my G4s. I just did a fresh reinstall last week when I installed the 4Ti in this particular computer and the OS 9 install on it didn't have the 4Ti extensions.
Even though I have a retail 9.2.1 disk(finally-I bought it last week), being able to get 9.2.2 directly is a big time saver.
Also, Sonnet was very insistent on the ROM flash being done from OS 9(Gigadesigns did it from OS X) so I suspect this might also install whatever OS 9 extensions are needed.
With regard to the holding down the power button-this particular DA is the rackmount one that I bought a month or two back. It has the front panel board mounted inside the computer, but pressing the programmer's button didn't seem to do anything(the power and reset button are functional). Finally, out of frustration, I tried holding down the power button on the front(which is not an Apple OEM part) and the ROM flashed.
With regard to OS 9, I have the disk set that came with my first QS 2002, and it has a full blown 9.2.2 install disk. I've actually found that this disk will work on any AGP PowerMac up to the QS 2002, so it's generally the disk I use to install OS 9 on my G4s. I just did a fresh reinstall last week when I installed the 4Ti in this particular computer and the OS 9 install on it didn't have the 4Ti extensions.
Even though I have a retail 9.2.1 disk(finally-I bought it last week), being able to get 9.2.2 directly is a big time saver.
Also, Sonnet was very insistent on the ROM flash being done from OS 9(Gigadesigns did it from OS X) so I suspect this might also install whatever OS 9 extensions are needed.
With regard to the holding down the power button-this particular DA is the rackmount one that I bought a month or two back. It has the front panel board mounted inside the computer, but pressing the programmer's button didn't seem to do anything(the power and reset button are functional). Finally, out of frustration, I tried holding down the power button on the front(which is not an Apple OEM part) and the ROM flashed.
@bunnspecial.
I agree, the reason, why some have to fiddle with the extensions for this Sonnet CPU and some do not, might well be related to, as you say, whether it is a "full blown" OS 9 or if one had upgraded it from a smaller version to it, step by step.
Unfortunately, I do not have the CPU installed and can't look under "about this Mac" myself right now (I use the passive 1,2GHz Sonnet Upgrade for silence reasons).
I agree, the reason, why some have to fiddle with the extensions for this Sonnet CPU and some do not, might well be related to, as you say, whether it is a "full blown" OS 9 or if one had upgraded it from a smaller version to it, step by step.
Maybe I just forgot, how it reported under "about this Mac", but I thought I'd remember it showed correctly as 7447 (also in a CPU meter app), but I remember firmly about showing up as 7455 in Xbench and that I searches google for this, back then.
Unfortunately, I do not have the CPU installed and can't look under "about this Mac" myself right now (I use the passive 1,2GHz Sonnet Upgrade for silence reasons).
bunnspecial
macrumors G3
One "acid test" I've found for seeing if a computer has a 7447A is to try and install Aperture.
Aperture will only run on a 7447A(and with a Core Image card/GPU). I have it running fine on my Quicksilver with the Gigadesigns and a PC&Mac 9600, although it will not run at all on my factory dual 1ghz Quicksilver(it has a 9600XT).
Aperture will only run on a 7447A(and with a Core Image card/GPU). I have it running fine on my Quicksilver with the Gigadesigns and a PC&Mac 9600, although it will not run at all on my factory dual 1ghz Quicksilver(it has a 9600XT).
Has there ever been a 7445 being offered?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_G4#PowerPC_7445_and_7455
http://lowendmac.com/ppc/power-mac-g4-upgrade-guide.html (not complete, there is also another loweendmac list I don't find atm)
http://beta.ivc.no/wiki/index.php/PowerMac_G4_Upgrades#Upgrade_boards
There are some benchmarks on the net (more than are listed in the beta.ivc.no/wiki ) look at xlr8yourmac.com (lots of different) and barefeats.
bunnspecial
macrumors G3
interesting it looks like sonnet does the CPU model patching in the boot rom it self and not in the nvram like some other company's did it (where if you wipe the nvram ram and you cant boot OS9/OS X depending on CPU upgrade.)
bunnspecial
macrumors G3
It looks like Aperture sees it as a 7447A, as it gave me the "Video Card Not Supported" message rather than the "System Not Supported" message(I know from trying multiple configurations that it checks the processor before the GPU).
If I felt like getting the 4Ti out and messing with a 9600 Pro tonight, I'd try again to install Aperture. Since I'm not really inclined to do either tonight(the Ti is a pain to get out of the rackmount case, and the 9600 Pro is hit or miss in DAs), I'll try again tomorrow.
If I felt like getting the 4Ti out and messing with a 9600 Pro tonight, I'd try again to install Aperture. Since I'm not really inclined to do either tonight(the Ti is a pain to get out of the rackmount case, and the 9600 Pro is hit or miss in DAs), I'll try again tomorrow.
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I found two more comparisons, that are interesting to this question:
http://barefeats.com/g4up2.html
and here the single 7457 is faster than the dual 7447 of the same clock speed: http://barefeats.com/cubeup.html
and post #7 https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/16668-dual-7448-for-mdd/
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