Upgrading the processors in Powermacs

[law guy]

As noted in the thread below, I'm leaning now towards a 1.42 GHz Powermac. A question (or two) on upgrading the processors in the future: Can one simply pull out a G4 processor, line up some pins and pop a new one in? (And for you tech folks) Is there a high liklihood that a 970 chip would be such a different animal that a G4 could not be upgraded to a "G5"? Thanks.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

Yes and Yes

 

[law guy]

Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
Yes and Yes

So one could pull the "old" chips out, but there may not be anything better to put in?

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

The chips reside on a small board(daughter board if you will) example i can pull out my single and stick in a newer 1 or 1.2 gig or even duallies. The 1.42 will have this to but then the question is will apple come out with a 970 machine meaning new bus or will the moto chips keep getting the lil bumps. This is the crystal ball we are lacking and only apple knows what they have planned! If you need or want a new machine go for it. If your like me and have nothing pressing you then wait and see what they do. Im sure the 1.42 will be a performer but have not seen benches on it yet.

 

[KingArthur]

We will not see 970 chips available for the current powermacs unless someone develops an ingeneous way to get a 64-bit processor to work with a 32-bit motherboard;-). I would expect to see some more speed-bumps for the G4 just b/c the iMac will need them to keep it competetive, and Sonnet and the sort will make processor upgrades that use these speed-bumped G4s.

 

[ddtlm]

KingArthur:

We will not see 970 chips available for the current powermacs unless someone develops an ingeneous way to get a 64-bit processor to work with a 32-bit motherboard

In general there is no reason why a motherboard (and specifically the system controller chip on it) cares about the bitness of the attached processor. For example, both Alpha and Athlon processors use the same FSB design/protocol and there were actually single-CPU Alpha systems available using AMD-750 and AMD-760 chipsets, the very same chipsets people could buy in Walmart PCs.

The actual reason why a PPC-970 will never be an upgrade for a current G4 motherboard is that the FSB's are totally different. The good news is that Moto's apparent unwillingness to scrap the G4 should yield a string of ever-faster G4's for some time, perhaps for years. The 7457 should be the first of these.

 

[KingArthur]

Thanks for the correction. Although I try reading up on everything, everyonce in a while I misinterpret something. Sorry for anything said wrong.

 

[ddtlm]

KingArthur:

There's nothing for you to apoligise for.