PPC970 upgrade cards: Feasible?
If Apple introduces the PPC970 before the end of the year, there will be a huge performance gap between 970 and G4 machines. Those thirsting for the increased performance without the price tag of a new Power Mac might opt for a PPC970 upgrade card, if they are available.
With this in mind, I've got two questions for the more technically savvy and industry-connected people in this forum:
1)Would it be technically possible to install a PPC970 chip on an older Apple motherboard? Or is the PPC970 too different to work at all with older boards?
2)Would IBM sell the PPC970 to Apple upgrade card manufacturers like Sonnet, Powerlogix, etc.? I've never seen a G3 upgrade card that uses an IBM CPU (and of course the G4 cards don't). [Sort of begs the question why IBM doesn't sell its G3s at 700-1Ghz for upgrade card manufacturers...a 1 Ghz G3 would be much faster than the fastest G4 that I can get for my ZIF-based Apple board.
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Yes, I know an upgrade card would not carry nearly the advantage of a whole new computer with modern RAM, bus speed, etc. But I'm just wondering if anyone thinks the cards will be available?
With this in mind, I've got two questions for the more technically savvy and industry-connected people in this forum:
1)Would it be technically possible to install a PPC970 chip on an older Apple motherboard? Or is the PPC970 too different to work at all with older boards?
2)Would IBM sell the PPC970 to Apple upgrade card manufacturers like Sonnet, Powerlogix, etc.? I've never seen a G3 upgrade card that uses an IBM CPU (and of course the G4 cards don't). [Sort of begs the question why IBM doesn't sell its G3s at 700-1Ghz for upgrade card manufacturers...a 1 Ghz G3 would be much faster than the fastest G4 that I can get for my ZIF-based Apple board.
]Yes, I know an upgrade card would not carry nearly the advantage of a whole new computer with modern RAM, bus speed, etc. But I'm just wondering if anyone thinks the cards will be available?
Comments
Reengineering the daughtercard to support Maxbus would probably be prohibitively expensive. Not to mention you'd have a worse bottleneck than we already have with the G4
Originally posted by hmurchison
I'd doubt it.
Reengineering the daughtercard to support Maxbus would probably be prohibitively expensive. Not to mention you'd have a worse bottleneck than we already have with the G4
yeah...900MHz bandwidth going to 167 would be like...well putting a G4 upgrade card into my StarMax 4000/200 (40MHz bus)
Originally posted by Mac OS X Addict
Why not, upgrade card companies always find ways to do this kind of stuff and I'm sure that they will ahve PPC 970 upgrade cards out in 6 months after Apple releases the first 970 PM, if they do.
Sure they probably could do it. But let's say the upgrade halves the actual performance of the chip some may not consider that to be acceptable others might.
Sonnett, Newer, Power Logix etc didn't have as much of divide with the G4 upgrades that they face here. We have two 32bit bidirectional busses to contend with. The Processor was "designed" with this in mind. Engineering around it might not make sense financially if the upgrade cost half of a New PPC 970 Mac and only delivers a fraction of the performane.
There are time in which you simply must decide to purchase a new machine rather than upgrade a dinosaur.
Originally posted by Gizzmonic
I've never seen a G3 upgrade card that uses an IBM CPU
My Sonnet HARMONiG3 card has an IBM PowerPC 750Cx on it.
It would be interesting to see a 970 upgrade card for the current G4 Macs, but may be not worth it.
First, it would not work as a sawtooth card because the 970 uses a different bus. The only way it would work is as a "computer on a PCI card" with the CPU, and sometimes memory, on a PCI card.
There are two problems with that. 1st, heat issues. 2nd, a 970 would be wasted on a current machine. Because of the various bottlenecks, performance would simply be wasted.
Barto
"The extra cost, and need to install memory in two paired banks of a twin-PC3200 architecture are not attractive to Apple, but having an utterly leading-edge professional architecture is. The balance between these, paired with the fortunes of world war and an unstable economy, will decide for Apple which architecture it can release right off the bat. We've been hearing single-bank is the choice for the initial release, but it is still too soon to say with certainty".
Ahh thats half the 6.4G bandwidth! - 3.2GB/s.
Originally posted by Barto
There are two problems.
First, it would not work as a sawtooth card because the 970 uses a different bus. The only way it would work is as a "computer on a PCI card" with the CPU, and sometimes memory, on a PCI card.
There are two problems with that. 1st, heat issues. 2nd, a 970 would be wasted on a current machine. Because of the various bottlenecks, performance would simply be wasted.
Barto
I think you are trying to get to technical. The bus on the last two rev. have DDR on the mobo it wouldn't be that big a deal to run 333 DDR acros the bridge to the zif card. Yes you lose the BIG BUS performance but you gain the true DDR and the better chip veresus the chip we have now that can't take addvantage of the bus. that is on our mobo's. Why else would you dump the DDR money into OLD tech? When you will need to do a complete revamp on your mobo Not nessasarily for the new CPU but for all the new tech and 900mhz bus to take full advantage of the new CPU. It is possible and it would be a good upgrade to current G4 sys. of the last two revs. It would not be good for non DDR mobo's.
Forget it, not going to happen. End of story. Close the thread.
Originally posted by Barto
There are two problems.
First, it would not work as a sawtooth card because the 970 uses a different bus. The only way it would work is as a "computer on a PCI card" with the CPU, and sometimes memory, on a PCI card.
There are two problems with that. 1st, heat issues. 2nd, a 970 would be wasted on a current machine. Because of the various bottlenecks, performance would simply be wasted.
Barto
If you put memory on the card, you would get all the performance of a new mobo after everything was loaded into RAM. Also, with the proper drivers, you could use the G4 as a Quartz chip and the G4's RAM as an L4 cache (maybe). Of course, none of this addresses the heat issues that you mentioned.
I saw the PPC 601 upgrade for the IIci, did the 25 MJz 68030 really run on a MPX or 60x bus?
However I do think that even if it would be possible to run the 970 in a old PM it would be as pointless as the 601 in the IIci if not more. The 601, 604, G3 and G4 upgrades could by using an external cache compensate for a slow bus. The 970 seem to be less "cached" and rely more on a really fast bus. Price drops and minor spped hikes in the G4 ought to be good enough to be useful upgrades for the current and past PPCs.
So it is really an academic point if the 970 is possible but not usefull or both inpossible and not usefull, I was just curious about the 68030 to PPC upgrades
I agree with Programmer, any of those little upgrade-card makers will end up like the Titanic if they're going to try and develop something as waisting and expensive as a MPX->970-bus companion chip.
The likely chance tis would happen? Slim to no chance. Sorry.
Originally posted by DrBoar
I saw the PPC 601 upgrade for the IIci, did the 25 MJz 68030 really run on a MPX or 60x bus?
As I said, the ability to make a companion chip for the 970 is probably beyond the capabilities of the upgrade makers. The old, slow 60x bus was a lot easier to build circuitry for.
Originally posted by ast3r3x
yeah...900MHz bandwidth going to 167 would be like...well putting a G4 upgrade card into my StarMax 4000/200 (40MHz bus)
More like jamming a Viper engine into your basic Yugo...
I was just wondering if it was technically possible, and if IBM would be willing to sell. I think everyone's done a good job answering my questions so far. Thanks.