PowerBook 167 MHz FSB?

[Demon Hunter]

Hey guys,

One of the less talked about changes in the last PowerBook revision was the FSB speed increase... I believe it was 133 MHz in Rev. B.

I want a PowerBook for college, and I've been saving for quite a while. I finally should have enough for a nicely equipped 15". Even with a student discount though, that's easily $2500. Needless to say, I've worked hard and waited long for this computer.

Like the rest of you I have considered waiting for the mystical PBG5. And the FSB is one of the reasons... comparable PC notebooks have a 400 MHz FSB. Beyond that, I don't know much. Is 167 MHz enough for a G4, or does it create a performance bottleneck? What kind of improvement is 33 MHz in FSB speeds anyway?

If someone could enlighten me about FSB that would be great. I know a lot about computers but FSB isn't really my specialty. I've always heard that the G4 architecture had problems in this area -- is this still true for the PowerBooks?

There's no doubt in my mind that the PBG4 will do everything I need it to do. But this comptuer is also going to last a very long time, so maybe I should save my money.

 

[invaLPsion]

Hey guys,

One of the less talked about changes in the last PowerBook revision was the FSB speed increase... I believe it was 133 MHz in Rev. B.

I want a PowerBook for college, and I've been saving for quite a while. I finally should have enough for a nicely equipped 15". Even with a student discount though, that's easily $2500. Needless to say, I've worked hard and waited long for this computer.

Like the rest of you I have considered waiting for the mystical PBG5. And the FSB is one of the reasons... comparable PC notebooks have a 400 MHz FSB. Beyond that, I don't know much. Is 167 MHz enough for a G4, or does it create a performance bottleneck? What kind of improvement is 33 MHz in FSB speeds anyway?

If someone could enlighten me about FSB that would be great. I know a lot about computers but FSB isn't really my specialty. I've always heard that the G4 architecture had problems in this area -- is this still true for the PowerBooks?

There's no doubt in my mind that the PBG4 will do everything I need it to do. But this comptuer is also going to last a very long time, so maybe I should save my money.

The FSB is the speed at which the processor can "talk" to the system. It is VERY important in speed and performance. But the chip also makes a big difference as well. The G4 has other great features that make up for the lack of a fast FSB, like altivec for instance. The G4 is a good chip and with 1 gig of ram it purrs. A 1.5GHz powerbook runs every single app excluding games like Halo and UT extremely well, not to say that those games don't run fine, they do.

A 33MHz increase in FSB does provide a noticeable increase in speed.

As to whether this computer will last for a VERY long time, that depends upon what you want to do with it...