Processor upgrade recommendations?

[themonk]

Hello,

I think the new G5's will be shipping in about 6 months, but I need more power now for Logic, so am considering a processor upgrade for my 800 G4.

I see Sonnettech has a 1.7 upgrade for $450. (The price dropped $50 today.) Sounds like a great deal that would allow to me to squeeze an extra 6 months life out of my G4.

Any experience or recommendations for g4 processor upgrades?

Thanks very much.

 

[combatcolin]

Save your money.

Sell your G4 when the new g5 PM is released.

And use you Edu discount where possible.

Apple CPU upgrades are just too damed expensive, upgrade your RAM, HD and graphic card yes but the CPU costs too much and you would be in a much better position buying a brand new Mac with all the system upgrades that come with it.

 

[themonk]

That's logical advice, and I would follow it if the new G5's were around the corner, but 6 months with a computer too slow to use is a long long time...

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

Hello,

I think the new G5's will be shipping in about 6 months, but I need more power now for Logic, so am considering a processor upgrade for my 800 G4.

I see Sonnettech has a 1.7 upgrade for $450. (The price dropped $50 today.) Sounds like a great deal that would allow to me to squeeze an extra 6 months life out of my G4.

Any experience or recommendations for g4 processor upgrades?

Thanks very much.

A upgrade will give it new life, go for it. You wont need to bother with a new machine for years. Its why a lot of us own Powermacs because you can upgrade and still have performance of a new machine. My old quicksilver has a upgrade and can still out perform almost any new mac except the new powermacs.

 

[combatcolin]

I suppose each person has to weigh up the pros and cons of a CPU upgrade.

To me the cost is too great, yes having a 1.7Ghz G4 is groovy but with a G5 your getting..

Dual CPU's
Faster Sytem bus
Faster memory
Bigger memory cap
SATA
PCI E on the new G5's
Better Graphic's Card
FW 800
USB 2
DVD Writer
Built in BT as an option
and a Very Cool Case, in more ways than 1!

Not to mention the possability of a
2 BUTTON MOUSE??

And Tiger, iLife 05.

Its simply better value for money in my book.

Of course when you become attached to your Mac its difficult to let him/her go!

The reason i still have my old 1st Gen iMac

 

[840quadra]

I suppose each person has to weigh up the pros and cons of a CPU upgrade.

To me the cost is too great, yes having a 1.7Ghz G4 is groovy but with a G5 your getting..

Dual CPU's
Faster Sytem bus
Faster memory
Bigger memory cap
SATA
PCI E on the new G5's
Better Graphic's Card
FW 800
USB 2
DVD Writer
Built in BT as an option
and a Very Cool Case, in more ways than 1!

Not to mention the possability of a
2 BUTTON MOUSE??

And Tiger, iLife 05.

Its simply better value for money in my book.

Of course when you become attached to your Mac its difficult to let him/her go!

The reason i still have my old 1st Gen iMac

Those reasons are why I took the plunge today. Granted I didn't buy a Dual 2.5, but the Dual 2.0 should be plenty fast. I have been (over the course of 4 months) building a Quicksilver / Digital Audio Hybrid. If you play your cards correctly, you can build yourself a complete G4 for less then $600. I am mosly completed with my project, the only part remaining is a legal (copy just for this box) copy of Panther.

I am going to sell my G4 project in a month or 2, and it looks like I will make $20 profit on it. A friend near home wants to buy it, because it is clean, and after Tiger comes out, will have its own legal copy of panther to go with it!.

If you end up waiting to buy the G5, I still think your G4 (as is or upgraded) will be worth allot of money! I still see untouched BW G3's go for just under $200 on ebay. Quicksilvers still go for $500 (untouched 2001) to $1200 for upgraded 2002s (Mostly just memory upgrades and preloaded software). Granted the ladder is mostly the cause of being loaded with expensive software (that in most cases isn't legal because the owner keeps the actual disks and licenses), but it still shows that you can get a good price for a solid G4.


I am keeping my B&W G3 for the same reason combatcolin is keeping his Imac. I love it to deth! and besides, upgraded to a G4 now, it is a quick little blueberry.

 

[themonk]

How much do you think I could get (roughly) for:

--G4 Quicksilver (2002) 800Mhz
--with Sonnet 1.7 Ghz upgrade
--1.5 megs ram
--80 gig hard drive

Also for using Logic 6, would I be better of with the dual 1.3 upgrade or the single 1.7 processor uprgade?

 

[840quadra]

How much do you think I could get (roughly) for:

--G4 Quicksilver (2002) 800Mhz
--with Sonnet 1.7 Ghz upgrade
--1.5 megs ram
--80 gig hard drive

Also for using Logic 6, would I be better of with the dual 1.3 upgrade or the single 1.7 processor uprgade?

I would speculate over $1000 easy in post processor upgrade price, before the upgrade I would gather you could get $700 or more, depending on condition of the case, and other items you sell with it.

I am not sure what processor will run that software better, just remember the more maxed out your hardware gets, the more heat and stress on the stock internals. You are asking your motherboard to do more then apple recommends. Having owned apples since the mid 90's I know asking apple hardware to do more then designed isn't that big of a risk, but my experience ends at the G3 B&W.

Some people are turned off by modified computers, cars, or other things, and others seek after them to save money (ie they are deal seeking). If someone outside of those two groups finds your Quicksilver apealing, you should be able to get your asking price, ro the highest fair value.

 

[clykins90]

If you decide to upgrade, don't get the 1.7GHZ. It has greatly reduced cache. With an older system like that, you want more cache. Go for the 1.4GHZ, It's speed is comparable/better than a 1.7ghz. Do some research and you'll see.

 

[revenuee]

I should be able to upgrade my Sawtooth right?

it's a G4 400 (agp graphics)

anyone know how much i can upgrade it?

 

[Mavimao]

I should be able to upgrade my Sawtooth right?

it's a G4 400 (agp graphics)

anyone know how much i can upgrade it?

I have a sawtooth too and as far as I know, you can put as fast as a processor that you want. Just remember that the sawtooth has a 100mhz bus and is a major bottleneck in performance.

You can put a maximum of 1.5 gigs of RAM in it.

It has a 2x AGP bus which is slow compared to modern standards, but www.macsales.com sells two video cards compatible for this.

It has an ATA-66 bus which is pretty slow if you're going to do major gaming or video work (but why would you do that with a sawtooth anyway?) This is easily fixed with a PCI card that you install which can give you ATA-100, 150 or SATA.

That's all I can think of. With sawtooth computers, they can be upgraded, but just remember that there are major bottleneck issues.

PS: HA! Love the april fools joke...Town Clerk.

 

[revenuee]

I have a sawtooth too and as far as I know, you can put as fast as a processor that you want. Just remember that the sawtooth has a 100mhz bus and is a major bottleneck in performance.

You can put a maximum of 1.5 gigs of RAM in it.

It has a 2x AGP bus which is slow compared to modern standards, but www.macsales.com sells two video cards compatible for this.

It has an ATA-66 bus which is pretty slow if you're going to do major gaming or video work (but why would you do that with a sawtooth anyway?) This is easily fixed with a PCI card that you install which can give you ATA-100, 150 or SATA.

That's all I can think of. With sawtooth computers, they can be upgraded, but just remember that there are major bottleneck issues.

PS: HA! Love the april fools joke...Town Clerk.

Well -- i cut my teeth with video editing on this thing ... i have SCSI hard drives so i don't need to worry about SATA

i've just want to be able to use RT with final cut pro

i'm kinda in the same boat as the other guy -- i'll be picking up a powerbook in a few months --- I NEED the portability --- but just want to get a little more out this thing -- it's frustrating waiting for effects to render each time i want to see what it looks like

 

[Mavimao]

Well -- i cut my teeth with video editing on this thing ... i have SCSI hard drives so i don't need to worry about SATA

i've just want to be able to use RT with final cut pro

i'm kinda in the same boat as the other guy -- i'll be picking up a powerbook in a few months --- I NEED the portability --- but just want to get a little more out this thing -- it's frustrating waiting for effects to render each time i want to see what it looks like

Wow you're brave. I've used Final Cut on my mac and it's SOOO slow rendering frames.

If you're getting a powerbook, why upgrade the Sawtooth? But if you want to upgrade, I'm sure you'll see a significant boost.

 

[leekohler]

I upgraded my 350 Mhz Sawtooth to 1 Ghz with a Sonnet card recently for $229. That was worth it. In your case I think I would just sell it and get a G5. $450 just seems like too much to be worth it. Especially if you only plan on using it another 6 months.

 

[yellow]

Dual processors be the wave of the future.. garrrrh!

 

[Lord Blackadder]

If you do decide to upgrade your G4, avoid the upgrades with the 7447 processor (i.e. everything above 1.5 GHz). The upgrades with a 7455 or 7457 CPU are just as fast because they have L3 cache, and are cheaper.

The only advantage from the 7447 is low power consumption, but in the tower this isn't an issue. Barefeats has benchmarks that show that a 1.3GHz G4 with L3 cache is slightly faster than 1.6,1.7 and 1.8GHz G4s without L3 cache. My recommendation: Get an OWC 1.4GHz 7455 with L3 cache.

 

[themonk]

thanks for advice. how would the 1.4 compare to the dual 1.3? there's a pretty big price difference. how about performance difference?

 

[Lord Blackadder]

thanks for advice. how would the 1.4 compare to the dual 1.3? there's a pretty big price difference. how about performance difference?

For games, you won't notice much (if any) difference at all except in Quake 3 which was written to take advantage of dual CPUs. Surfing the net and using stuff like Office will see no benefit from the dual processors. You will see a difference when doing heavy work in Photoshop, and there will be a modest performance increase from the duals when ripping/encoding in iTunes, iMovie or iDVD. Other Pro applications like Final Cut Pro will see a performance increse from the duals as well.

I've hemmed and hawed about getting a dual upgrade myself - My dual 533 does use both of it's processors when I'm using the iLife suite - but I'm not convinced that the increased price justifies the smallish performance gain. Unless you are regularly making DVDs, handling big files in Photoshop or Final Cut Pro, I'd go with a single processor 7455 or 7457.

Check Barefeats' Killer Kube comparison, and you'll see what I'm talking about. The single 1.5 7457 and dual 1.3 7457 beat the faster clocked 7447s. The Power Logix upgrades are essentially the same as OWC, they just use a 7457 unstead of a 7455.

 

[themonk]

The only thing I care about is plug-ins in Logic. Everything else is cool as it is, but I need more headroom for logic.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

The only thing I care about is plug-ins in Logic. Everything else is cool as it is, but I need more headroom for logic.

Hmm, I don't know much about Logic - since it is pro-level software written by Apple I would guess that it would benefit from dual CPUs, but I'm not sure by any means. Dual or not, any CPU upgrade you get will really make a huge difference.

 

[revenuee]

Wow you're brave. I've used Final Cut on my mac and it's SOOO slow rendering frames.

If you're getting a powerbook, why upgrade the Sawtooth? But if you want to upgrade, I'm sure you'll see a significant boost.

Well i've been using Final Cut Pro since version 1.2

i upgraded to version 4 and OS X for the color correction -- it takes a long time for stuff to get done yes BUT --- i usually do everything first ... then render ... and go out or watch a movie ---

i know that may see like a weird way to do things ... BUT my background is Linear and then i moved to non-linear -- the importance of planning out everything before i do my edits is a huge part ... so i USUALLY get exactly what i'm after -- with occasional mishaps ... plus i work in nested sequences so i will break a long project up a lot and what ever is done will be rendered and then it is just a question of nesting it in the final thing ... Really not a HUGE deal

plus the powerbook thing is really up in the air -- and i have A LOT of projects this summer ... so i want to kick it up a bit