Overclocking a G4

[Bulb]

Hi All

Im thinking about overclocking my G4 800 to 867 to be able to run FCP 5. I have seen the info online with how to do this and it seems for my upgrade i just need to join two pins and im away. I have heard you can get conductor pencil to scribble a line between the two points and that works, has anybody had an experience with this ? Its a shame Apple dont make these things with simple jumper pins so i could just switch it over. Im still willing to give it a go though .

Also do Apple boards being overclocked run like a PCs ? Are you overclocking the PCI, AGP and RAM also or just the cpu ?

Cheers
Adam

 

[psycho bob]

Hi All

Im thinking about overclocking my G4 800 to 867 to be able to run FCP 5. I have seen the info online with how to do this and it seems for my upgrade i just need to join two pins and im away. I have heard you can get conductor pencil to scribble a line between the two points and that works, has anybody had an experience with this ? Its a shame Apple dont make these things with simple jumper pins so i could just switch it over. Im still willing to give it a go though .

Also do Apple boards being overclocked run like a PCs ? Are you overclocking the PCI, AGP and RAM also or just the cpu ?

Cheers
Adam

I really have to ask why are you bothering to clock an extra 67MHz out of your CPU and risk trashing the whole thing? Any G4/5 over 500MHz will run FCP5 and you need 1GHz+ to do HD. I wouldn't advise editing HD on a machine of around 1GHz anyway as it will be very slow. I will assume you have a Powermac and not a laptop, if you have a laptop then think about trading in, the following should answer your other questions;

As with a PC connecting or altering connections on the chip itself will only alter clock speed of the CPU. Adjusting the jumpers on some G4's (certainly with upgrade boards this is true) daughter boards will alter FSB between 100 and 133MHz depending upon model. You cannot overclock RAM and it would be pointless to do so anyway as the mother/logic board would not make use of it. Graphics chips can be clocked and there are various applications out there to do so but as with all of these things gains are small and highly risky. To the best of my knowledge there is no way to clock PCI sockets on any platform.

Either run FCP as is or purchase an upgrade board to replace the CPU and if necessary a new GPU (Radeon 9600/9800 etc). This will give much greater gains and be far simper then what you have proposed most of which is not possible.

 

[Bulb]

I had heard FCP 5 is picky with specs when it installs and specifically needs 512 ram and 867 or higher CPU. Since my machine is only 800 with 512 i figure i cant use FCP5 on it. Are you 100% sure it will load on an 800 ? I dont expect amazing performance on it but id like to learn the interface and the multicam edit features.

 

[yenko]

I had heard FCP 5 is picky with specs when it installs and specifically needs 512 ram and 867 or higher CPU. Since my machine is only 800 with 512 i figure i cant use FCP5 on it. Are you 100% sure it will load on an 800 ? I dont expect amazing performance on it but id like to learn the interface and the multicam edit features.

It's much easier going to Apple's web site instead of relying on what you heard.
From the horses mouth:
Requirements

Macintosh computer with 500MHz or faster PowerPC G4 or G5 processor (550MHz for PowerBook G4) or any dual G4 or G5 processors, 512MB of RAM (1GB recommended), and AGP Quartz Extreme graphics card; HD editing requires a 1GHz or faster PowerPC G4 or G5 and 1GB of RAM (2GB recommended)
Mac OS X v10.3.9 or later
QuickTime 7 or later
1GB of available disk space for installation of applications
12GB of available disk space for installation of LiveType content
DVD drive for installation

 

[generik]

Just buy a blooming mac mini for christ's sake

That extra 200mhz is SO going to help!

 

[Bulb]

The day i read the specs i was also reading about motion 2.. It looks like ive read motions specs as needing 867mhz and mixed it up with FCP.. I guess all i need is a ram upgrade.. Thanks for the help.