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PowerMac G4 question single 867mhz vs dual 500mhz

A

austinsevo

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 9, 2008
175
0
Sherman Oaks: California
I have a Quicksilver G4 867mhz single CPU at home and i found a scrapped Graphite 500mhz dual at work. The CPU's are still intact. Is it worth it to pull the Processors off the dual 500 and put them on my single 867? also will my motherboard support it or do i have to pull the board with it?

the question is it worth it?
 
The processors between those two computers are NOT compatible. You can't swap them.
 
austinsevo said:
okay so what about swapping whole motherboards with the procs on them?
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Nope, the cases are slightly different with the differing layouts of the boards and the different number of PCI slots. If you want, you could grab the dual 500, get a semi-decent graphics card for it, and nudge the RAM to 1 gig or more and it will run Leopard decently. I've used a dual 500 tower as my main production machine for years until just recently upgrading to a new mini, and it never gave me any problems.

Cheers mate!
 
MultiFinder17 said:
Nope, the cases are slightly different with the differing layouts of the boards and the different number of PCI slots. If you want, you could grab the dual 500, get a semi-decent graphics card for it, and nudge the RAM to 1 gig or more and it will run Leopard decently. I've used a dual 500 tower as my main production machine for years until just recently upgrading to a new mini, and it never gave me any problems.

Cheers mate!
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you think it will be more powerful than my system below? check sig.
 
I had that exact dual 500MHz model (my favorite Mac, BTW) with 1.5GB RAM and a 128MB Geforce 3 and it ran Tiger GREAT (can't speak for Leopard - those were pre-Leo days). When it died, I replaced it with an 800MHz G4 iMac (single, of course), which was my favorite designed Mac, BTW. The iMac was WAY slower than the dual 500's - so I promptly sold it within 3 weeks of buying it and purchased the very first Intel Mini (Core Solo).

In short, my advice - if you can get the dual 500 machine and the motherboard /power supply is good, move all of your goodies to that case and have fun. :)
 
js81 said:
I had that exact dual 500MHz model (my favorite Mac, BTW) with 1.5GB RAM and a 128MB Geforce 3 and it ran Tiger GREAT (can't speak for Leopard - those were pre-Leo days). When it died, I replaced it with an 800MHz G4 iMac (single, of course), which was my favorite designed Mac, BTW. The iMac was WAY slower than the dual 500's - so I promptly sold it within 3 weeks of buying it and purchased the very first Intel Mini (Core Solo).

In short, my advice - if you can get the dual 500 machine and the motherboard /power supply is good, move all of your goodies to that case and have fun. :)
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Don't the iMacs use lower cache cpu's than within the Powermacs which can make quite difference in speed.

This is a very similar question to what I was pondering. I have a 466Mhz G4 DA lying about and I was considering a cheap way to make it more useful is swap the CPU for either a DA dual 533mhz or QS single 867mhz. But am not sure which would be better. Yes I do know I will have to perform the pin 4 mod to use a QS CPU in a DA G4.

Numerically at dual 533mhz you get 1066mhz which is obviously better than 867mhz. However in reality I know that this is not true and that the performance increase of dual cpu's does not equal double the speed.

What makes the decision difficult is that in single CPU tasks the 867 will greatly outperform the Dual 533mhz but the key question is how will they compare in multi-threaded tasks and simply multitasking? If they are close in speed in multitasking I would opt for the 867 as it will perform better playing Mac OS 9 games:D.
 
austinsevo said:
you think it will be more powerful than my system below? check sig.
Click to expand...
His/Her/Its Signature said:
G4 Quicksilver 867mhz: 1.5GB RAM, 9800 Pro 128mb, 200gb+300gb HDs, CD/DVD-RW +DL
Click to expand...

Based solely on CPU performance, yes, I would say it would be a better system. I can say that OS X is optimized for multi-processor systems and handles them far better than it does single-processor ones. I have noticed in some cases where my dual 500 tower felt a bit snappier doing some things, especially multiple things at once, than my single 1.5GHz PowerBook. This is of course assuming that you bump up the RAM, swap that video card into it, etc. And also remember that the dualie you're looking at is an older system with a slower FSB, slower AGP slot, etc. I'd just experiment a bit and see what you think.
 
My vote: Sell the PSU from the dual 500 and then the case & everything together for parts. Sell the Quicksilver (minus your upgrade parts). Use the combined $$ to buy a MDD dual >1ghz :)
 
austinsevo said:
im just oldschool like that :cool:
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Nothin' wrong with old school. Of all the Macs I've owned (seven, if I count correctly) the only one I really miss is my dual G4 500MHz. I would trade my new-ish iMac (C2D) for that Power Mac any day... :)
 
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