Looking for CPU Accelerator Advice

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Hi, I have a Sawtooth AGP G4 PowerMac Tower running currently with a Sonnet 1.0GHz G4, and it works fine. I've been waiting patiently for Apple to come out with a G5 consumer tower, but it appears they won't be anytime soon. I don't really like the G5 Pro Tower's case (I have a dual 2.5GHz tower under my desk at work), so the stripped down (performance-wise) single G5 Tower they currently offer doesn't appeal to me. They're really nice in a business office, but way too big for my home office, and I like my G4 Tower sitting in the corner on the top of my desk. It's really convenient there with easy access to both the ports on the back and its insides with a simple flip-down of the side door.



Thus, I'm now planning to upgrade my Sawtooth once more. At work we have a couple of old Sawtooth G4 dual processor towers that are quite peppy (even at only 500MHz), so I'm now looking around to upgrade my home machine to dual processors. My current setup is pretty nice, with a Pioneer DVR-108 burner, the built-in Zip (haven't used it in years), a new 120GB 7200 RPM Seagate HD, and a Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edition video card (now $249 at ATI's site) driving my new 23" Apple Cinema Display. Oh, and I have 896MB RAM.



My concerns are two-fold. The old Sawtooth has the original power supply (I think it's 200 watts), so I don't want to tax it, but I really like the responsiveness of the dual G4s at work. My current Sonnet card has worked perfectly, but I'm torn with their higher prices, compared to PowerLogix, Giga, OWC, and the other competitors.



I'm thinking a dual 1.2 - 1.4GHz card would meet my needs for the next couple of years. I just got a Canon DV camcorder for Christmas, so I'm looking forward to doing some iMovie editing.



So, what kind of advice can you offer? PowerLogix seems to have terrible customer support and responsiveness, Sonnet has good customer support but higher prices, Giga seems to over-clock its accelerators which I suppose drives up the heat and power usage, OWC seems to have great customer support but lower quality cards, and none of the sites seem to actually say just how much power (watts) their accelerators need to run reliably.



Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer. I've been reading xlr8yourmac's customer comments, and lately it appears Sonnet's dual CPU cards have been misbehaving. Of course, the number of postings is small, so it's hard to say if their comments are representative.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    If I were you, I'd part out your machine and sell it all on eBay, and then buy a used PowerMac G4.



    In the end, you'll be much happier with it, and you probably won't pay anything more than you will with you upgrade strategy.
  • Reply 2 of 2
    If you're very concerned about the 200 watt power supply, you might consider the new 1.7GHz upgrades from Giga Designs/Sonnet which use the lower power 7448. I don't think it should be a problem, though, even with the Radeon 9800 drawing power since you didn't mention any additional hard drives. Keep in mind the 7448 lacks a L3 cache.



    If you're decided on a dual upgrade, you must first check to make sure your motherboard is dual compatible. You can download the utility to check here:

    http://www.buygiganow.com/dualcomp.html



    Here's some info on which brand to go with:

    -Powerlogix is notorious for their horrible customer service and you should stay faaaar away from them. Some people are still waiting over a year for a replacement to their defective CPU's. Recently they've partnered with OWC to offer better support, but only time will show if they've changed their ways.

    -OWC's "Mercury" upgrades are simply rebranded FastMac products. They are generally very good, though slightly overpriced compared to Giga Designs. Their CPU's, (like Giga Designs and Sonnet) are slightly overclocked, but DO mention it on their product page and you are not forced to run it at the overclocked speed if you choose not to.

    -Sonnet is a pretty good company, but I don't like how most of their upgrades require kernal extensions (like to enable L3 cache, to report the correct MHz to the Apple System Profiler, or to enable their 7447 cpu's). Less kernal extensions means a more stable OS. Also, their upgrades are completely un-tweakable. If you like the idea of overclocking, you can't do it here. I find their prices uncompetitive.

    -Giga Designs rocks in products and support. They are most lenient with warranties -- that is, you can overclock as high as you want without voiding the warranty (but not change the core voltage). Very tweakable CPU's, with jumpers for mutliplier and voltage settings. Also, they are much lower priced than the competitors. They DO recommend you overclock their CPU's and have a "guaranteed at" setting, like OWC. Like before, if you don't want to run it overclocked, you don't have to. This is the company I would go with.



    XLR8YourMac has an excellent CPU review database you should check out as well.

    http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/cpureview.lasso
Sign In or Register to comment.