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Sonnet encore 1.8 ghz dual CPU -vs- Overclock 1.42 ghz

N

Nova77

Guest
Original poster
May 12, 2011
337
1
Hi, I have a G4 MDD dual 1.42 ghz, and I would like to increase performance. There are 2 things that bother me : HD 1080p isn't that fun.... Doom 3 has periodic lag.

What trick would make me able to play Doom 3 and lets say... watch downloaded videos from youtube in HD 1080p??

Overclock or Sonnet dual 1.8 ghz??
 
Nova77 said:
Hi, I have a G4 MDD dual 1.42 ghz, and I would like to increase performance. There are 2 things that bother me : HD 1080p isn't that fun.... Doom 3 has periodic lag.

What trick would make me able to play Doom 3 and lets say... watch downloaded videos from youtube in HD 1080p??

Overclock or Sonnet dual 1.8 ghz??
Click to expand...

The Sonnet dual 1.8GHz will still be faster then a overclocked Dual 1.42ghz Cpu. i still don't know if you will be able to watch 1080p video but mayby in coreplayer it will work:)
 
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VLC plays 720p just fine on my dual 1.25. If your not willing to spend the money on the upgrade, go for an overclock.
 
MAC MAN JW said:
The Sonnet dual 1.8GHz will still be faster then a overclocked Dual 1.42ghz Cpu. i still don't know if you will be able to watch 1080p video but mayby in coreplayer it will work:)
Click to expand...

Has anybody tested coreplayer on the sonnet 1.8?...

Any1 owns that CPU? I've heard a billion times about the lack of L3 cache, but in real world tests, how does it perform?
 
Well I can't vouch for the sonnet but my dual 7455B mdd has 2mb of l3 cache and I think hat helps, so does your dual 1.42.


Also I expect zen to come in later and tell us how we're all idiots and how he is the king of PowerPC...
 
The Sonnet MDD/MDX CPU cards use 7447s. At the right price, I think they'd be a tempting plug & play upgrade option to someone with a dual 867 or single 1GHz since they adjust to the bus timing, but I'm not so sure that they'd be a obvious improvement over a dual 1.42 7445B. If I remember correctly, the benchmarks I've seen show only about a 10 to 15% improvement over the OEM dual 1.25 modules. In actual use, I suspect that some things would be a little faster, but some a little slower. IMHO, you already have the best CPU available for the MDD.
 
ThunderSnake said:
The Sonnet MDD/MDX CPU cards use 7447s. At the right price, I think they'd be a tempting plug & play upgrade option to someone with a dual 867 or single 1GHz since they adjust to the bus timing, but I'm not so sure that they'd be a obvious improvement over a dual 1.42 7445B. If I remember correctly, the benchmarks I've seen show only about a 10 to 15% improvement over the OEM dual 1.25 modules. In actual use, I suspect that some things would be a little faster, but some a little slower. IMHO, you already have the best CPU available for the MDD.
Click to expand...

I feel my CPU is holding back my GPU *... So I was wondering if more "raw power" (clock speed) would help. My GPU is a 256 MB geforce 7800 GS.

*--> when playing Doom 3, I get the same periodic lag at low or high res. High res does not make the game lag more. It feels like if the GPU has the task done fast but the CPU cannot process the data coming from the GPU fast enough so it gets overloaded after a while. Same goes with HD 1080p... Playback suffers from periodic lag too, and while the overall benchmark is OK, frames drop after a while. (like...10 sec, DROP, 10 sec, DROP, etc)
 
I don't own it. I was just curious. I've seen a lot of folks claim that they can play 1080p with it on a G4. I suppose it depends on the codec, though. I'd like to have the option in case I ever get a bigger TV, but 720p is good enough for me for now.
 
ThunderSnake said:
I don't own it. I was just curious. I've seen a lot of folks claim that they can play 1080p with it on a G4. I suppose it depends on the codec, though. I'd like to have the option in case I ever get a bigger TV, but 720p is good enough for me for now.
Click to expand...

On my G4 mdd:
Atm the only 1080p content that is 100% fluid are apple movie trailers (no frame drop).
Youtube 1080p HD format comes next, it is almost fluid, lets say 75% of the time.
Almost all other stuff lag A LOT in 1080p.
 
adcx64 said:
I can play 1080p in VLC just fine on my g4...
Click to expand...

lol.... what 1080p content dude? If I can't I don't see how you can.
My mac is better than yours (no offense or anything, thats just plain fact)
Plus, I use CorePlayer, which uses WAY LESS CPU, so it runs way faster than VLC.
Still can't play 99% of 1080p HD content.

What is "fine" for you? For me it means 100% fluid. It means not losing any frame during playback.
 
Nova77 said:
lol.... what 1080p content dude? If I can't I don't see how you can.
My mac is better than yours (no offense or anything, thats just plain fact)
Plus, I use CorePlayer, which uses WAY LESS CPU, so it runs way faster than VLC.
Still can't play 99% of 1080p HD content.

What is "fine" for you? For me it means 100% fluid. It means not losing any frame during playback.
Click to expand...

I'm gonna have to check my video files and let you know.. I'm almost positive theyre 1080p.
 
Since resolution isn't the only contributing factor for playback, it would be really helpful if people providing feedback could use MediaInfo to provide a detailed report about the types of files they're talking about.
 
I had one, but I sold it.

It couldn't remain stable under Mac OS X 10.4/10.5, much less Mac OS 9. This was with the latest software/patches/tweaks/etc.

I believe one of the two processors on it died? It was too much hassle. If I ever want to upgrade my MDD 1.25x2 I'll get the 1.42x2 processor/heat sink from the MDD FW800 series and swap it for my dedicated Mac OS 9 machine.
 
Cox Orange said:
I have a Sonnet 2x 1,8GHz (7447), I would test a sample file for you, but I am using it in an AGP-G4 (originally 500MHz) and so it will be no viable comparison, plus I do not want to buy coreplayer :)

But I remembered, that we have talked about it here, before...
post #52 https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1215490/

also see post #37 http://www.morphzone.org/modules/ne...ic_id=7638&viewmode=flat&sortorder=0&start=20
Click to expand...

It wouldn't be a viable test but I still like the idea. If it works well, hmm I can only expect better results with an MDD. Btw those old forum links only talk about Zen saying how 7448 G4 is the very best. We are not talking about that CPU atm.
 
Did you check the second one?

It compares the 7447 with stock MDD 1,42GHz and the stock CPU wins in 5 out of 8 tests. (The 7448 is also tested there...)

About the other thread: it also says that the 7447 is slower or equals the stock MDD and Lord Blackadder says that he compared his 7455 1,4GHz (in a G4 D/A) to 7447!
 
Cox Orange said:
Did you check the second one?

It compares the 7447 with stock MDD 1,42GHz and the stock CPU wins in 5 out of 8 tests. (The 7448 is also tested there...)

About the other thread: it also says that the 7447 is slower or equals the stock MDD and Lord Blackadder says that he compared his 7455 1,4GHz (in a G4 D/A) to 7447!
Click to expand...

I keep hearing about the 7447 being soo bad... but the proofs are always theorical infos, benchmarks, etc. I have a hard time to believe 1.8 ghz is worse than 1.42 in all aspects. My G4 laptop has a 7447 processor @ 1.67 and from real world experience I can tell it smokes my dual MDD in many applications. I don't care about technical stuff, this is just the way it is in real life. My MDD is better only because of the graphics card and the hard drive.

Now if some1 could come in and share his experience rather than numbers.... that would be much appreciated. Thank you.
 
I have a 15" 1.67GHz PowerBook (DLSD/HR model) and a Dual 1.25 Mirror Drive Door tower. Both have 2GB of RAM, and both have 7200RPM hard drives. The tower most certainly is a better performer over the PowerBook. The only advantage the PowerBook has is that it uses DDR2 memory (PC2-4200) instead of PC2700.

Garageband and Photoshop both open faster on the tower (and work better), as well as the OS booting up faster. And Mac Tubes works better as well.

The benchmark score on the tower is 1105 and the PowerBook is 970. I used the benchmark program Geekbench for those results. The tower blows away the laptop in the floating point tests and stream performance, but the laptop performs slightly better in the memory and integer performance.
 
In general even an upgraded CPU would hold you back. The issue with the G4s was they had a slow CPU bus for high performance situations (such as moving texture memory to a video card.) The G5s fixed that issue, so if you're looking to stay on PowerPC you might look at getting a G5. An Intel is a good option as well.

No matter how high the clock on a G4, it's hard to get around the slow bus speeds.
 
Let's build a quad G4 @ 10 ghz to compensate for the slow bus speed....lol

...No but seriously, if any1 has a dual 1.8 ghz G4 upgrade, I'd like some real world experience input.

WG81402 said:
Garageband and Photoshop both open faster on the tower (and work better), as well as the OS booting up faster. And Mac Tubes works better as well.

The benchmark score on the tower is 1105 and the PowerBook is 970. I used the benchmark program Geekbench for those results. The tower blows away the laptop in the floating point tests and stream performance, but the laptop performs slightly better in the memory and integer performance.
Click to expand...

Thats what I was saying: the hard drive access is almost always better on a tower --> open apps faster.
The video card is almost always better on a tower --> MacTubes works better.

And benchmarks won't help me on that one.

If you want one good CPU test, open Logic 8 and load CPU with plugins. I can tell my laptop handles stuff way better than my MDD.
 
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Bob Kiwi said:
I had one, but I sold it.

It couldn't remain stable under Mac OS X 10.4/10.5, much less Mac OS 9. This was with the latest software/patches/tweaks/etc.

I believe one of the two processors on it died? It was too much hassle.
Click to expand...
I have two Dual 1,8GHz Sonnets :) and one is fine (having a much lower serial number) and the other with the higher serialnumber (i.e. newer, though same model) freezes in iMovieHD 5 and 6 and in SnapZ Pro X, having only 70% of both cores used, while it plays Quicktime at 100% load on both cores. It will eventually close the Programm, but not cause a system freeze (where I couldn't even access opt+cmd+esc). I first thought one core was dead, but looking at activity monitor I saw that both are used. It gets very hot, indeed, though.
The other Dual 1,8GHz Sonnet works fine. Both have the same stock fans.

Did you try using the defect CPU with an additional case fan?

I talked to a seller and he told me, he had come across a lot of Sonnet Dual 1,8GHz CPUs running to hot and causing problems (if not allready dead).

Bob Kiwi said:
If I ever want to upgrade my MDD 1.25x2 I'll get the 1.42x2 processor/heat sink from the MDD FW800 series and swap it for my dedicated Mac OS 9 machine.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure, if it is possible to use a FW800 MDD CPU in a non FW800 MDD or you will at least lose OS9-compatibility.
 
Cox Orange said:
I'm not sure, if it is possible to use a FW800 MDD CPU in a non FW800 MDD or you will at least lose OS9-compatibility.
Click to expand...

1.42 ghz FW800 CPUs are just like 1.25 ghz MDD CPUs. My G4 is FW400 with a dual 1.42 ghz. I can still boot OS 9.
 
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