G4 processor upgrades coming...
This has been the rumor repeated a few times over the last month on a few sites. The rumor is "shipping by summer".
Might be seeing dual cards at speeds up to 1ghz. Or not. Might be seeing 700mhz G3 Zifs, or maybe not.
But will the G4's be Apollo's? Because the SOI is the key to keeping the heat down at that clock speed? And which G3 chips will be used?
And if they are Apollo G4's, how well does that look for which machines will be supported? Anybody have any feelings on this?
Might be seeing dual cards at speeds up to 1ghz. Or not. Might be seeing 700mhz G3 Zifs, or maybe not.
But will the G4's be Apollo's? Because the SOI is the key to keeping the heat down at that clock speed? And which G3 chips will be used?
And if they are Apollo G4's, how well does that look for which machines will be supported? Anybody have any feelings on this?
Comments
i want to upgrade mine this summer, but i don't have the cash to buy a new one. Hopefully, dual G4 will be less than 800-1000€.
<strong>I think upgraders will focus on people with G4 Sawtooth models.</strong><hr></blockquote>
A Sonnet customer rep told me they've had a lot of requests for upgrades compatible with the Uni-north 3 ASIC Sawtooth mobo. The Duet doesn't support it and that's the only upgrade available for G4 owners. Now that Apple has hit the Ghz mark I'm looking forward to upping my 350 to a nice 700 or so. Here's hoping ...
<strong>I think upgraders will focus on people with G4 Sawtooth models. The B&W G3 only offers 400MBps memory throughput while the Sawtooth motherboard offers double that.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I think they'll focus on whatever upgrades they can manufacture and sell at marketable prices. I seriously doubt the marketing folks are thinking along these lines.
No I think they'll focus on whatever sells not what they can manufacture easily. People with B&W's will mosly think about upgrading the whole computer rather than just the processor. Sawtooth owners are the ones who are most likely to upgrade since they purchased their machine more recently and think that there is more life in them. A B&W owner will most likely have stock CPU, HDD and CDROM or DVD. A CPU upgrade will cost $600 minimum for an 800MHz G4. Add about $150 for a 40-60GB HDD and if they feel like getting a CDRW or CDRW/DVD combo drive that'll be an extra $100-$170. Would you pay $800-900 upgrading your old machine to decent specs (not factoring in your old video card) or pay $1600 for a new low end mac with better motherboard. And to boot you get to keep your old mac to sell or do with as you please! But sure there are some people who won't be able to afford a new mac and that's why I said they should focus on Sawtooth upgrades...but not ignore the B&W owners.
I don't think so. There are a lot of people with extra hard drives, CDRW, and maybe overclocked CPUs.
[quote]A CPU upgrade will cost $600 minimum for an 800MHz G4. <hr></blockquote>
Huh? How about $250? You don't honestly think a G4 at 733MHz costs more than $200, do you?
[quote]Add about $150 for a 40-60GB HDD <hr></blockquote>
Not really. A 7200RPM 40GB Maxtor will run you $90 at NewEgg.
[quote]and if they feel like getting a CDRW or CDRW/DVD combo drive that'll be an extra $100-$170. <hr></blockquote>
I added a 24X CDRW drive and kept my DVD drive as well. Faster than any combo drive, the ability to copy CDs, and a price of $79.
[quote]Would you pay $800-900 upgrading your old machine to decent specs (not factoring in your old video card) or pay $1600 for a new low end mac with better motherboard. <hr></blockquote>
What do the new motherboards offer? Not much besides AGP and 133MHz bus. A CDRW, HDD, CPU upgrade could cost as little as $400.
[quote]And to boot you get to keep your old mac to sell or do with as you please! But sure there are some people who won't be able to afford a new mac and that's why I said they should focus on Sawtooth upgrades...but not ignore the B&W owners.<hr></blockquote>
Okay.
<strong>I think they'll focus on whatever upgrades they can manufacture and sell at marketable prices. I seriously doubt the marketing folks are thinking along these lines.
No I think they'll focus on whatever sells not what they can manufacture easily. People with B&W's will mosly think about upgrading the whole computer rather than just the processor. Sawtooth owners are the ones who are most likely to upgrade since they purchased their machine more recently and think that there is more life in them. A B&W owner will most likely have stock CPU, HDD and CDROM or DVD. A CPU upgrade will cost $600 minimum for an 800MHz G4. Add about $150 for a 40-60GB HDD and if they feel like getting a CDRW or CDRW/DVD combo drive that'll be an extra $100-$170. Would you pay $800-900 upgrading your old machine to decent specs (not factoring in your old video card) or pay $1600 for a new low end mac with better motherboard. And to boot you get to keep your old mac to sell or do with as you please! But sure there are some people who won't be able to afford a new mac and that's why I said they should focus on Sawtooth upgrades...but not ignore the B&W owners.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I don't disagree with your logic, but, people always pay insane prices for upgrades, for whatever the reasons. People become irrationally attached to their machines, and will pay $500-$600 to get a new processor, even if selling the machine and buying a new(er) one for the same total cost makes more sense. Upgrades are always priced at or just below the cost of selling the old machines and buying a new one for this reason. All I was saying was that I don't think memory bandwidth is the deciding factor in all of this.
<strong>
Huh? How about $250? You don't honestly think a G4 at 733MHz costs more than $200, do you?</strong><hr></blockquote>
I think Outsider is probably right. You're not just paying for the part, you're paying for all the engineering it takes to design and build the new daughtercards. (Plus the cost figures that get thrown around for Motorola chips are usually based on enormous purchase lots--anywhere from 10 to 100 thousand units, and a Mac upgrade builder just can't use that many chips, so they have to buy fewer parts at a higher cost per unit.) And let's face it, Sonnet is going to charge what people will pay, not their own cost. If you have a 350 Mhz G4 and want better performance, a $500 upgrade to 733 Mhz, even if overpriced, is a lot easier to swing than a new iMac or G4 tower.
<strong>This has been the rumor repeated a few times over the last month on a few sites. The rumor is "shipping by summer".
Might be seeing dual cards at speeds up to 1ghz. Or not. Might be seeing 700mhz G3 Zifs, or maybe not.
But will the G4's be Apollo's? Because the SOI is the key to keeping the heat down at that clock speed? And which G3 chips will be used?
And if they are Apollo G4's, how well does that look for which machines will be supported? Anybody have any feelings on this?</strong><hr></blockquote>
<strong>I just hope they will come up with a upgrade card for my Pismo. Aren´t those semi-apollos cool enough to put in a Pismo, if they are clocked around 600-800 Mhz?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Ditto.
A 800Mhz G4 for $400ish would tie me over until 100% new Powerbooks are released.
Sadly Powerlogix claim there is a custom ASIC on the daughtercard which makes upgrades impossible.
I was really hoping something faster than a 550 mhz G4 would come for my Blue G3. And at reasonable (less than 300) price.
What does everyone think about future Blue and White upgrades? I mean, if those companies are still working on upgrades for absolutely ancient (pre Blue and White) hardware, why not work on the Blue and White market? Lots of people have the Blue Smurf Towers. I am also thinking of just clocking my Blue 300 with jumpers. Does anyone know the limit? I'm hoping to go to 400 mhz?
Oh God! Are you guys sure there won't be any more upgrades for the B&W G3!?
I was really hoping something faster than a 550 mhz G4 would come for my Blue G3. And at reasonable (less than 300) price.
What does everyone think about future Blue and White upgrades?</strong>
Companies can produce PPC 750fx upgrades for the Blue G3 machines which can range from 600 MHz to whatever they get them to (1 GHz). But for 7450 based G4 machines, I'm afraid you're out of luck since the 7450 only supports a subset of the 60x bus and will therefore be impossible to be placed into Blue G3 (ie, 60x bus) machines.
Upgrades would be so much simpler if IBM and Moto used standardized PGA packaging for their PowerPC chips, but as far as I know, every PPC uses BGA or the like sort of packaging requiring some company to use a good soldering iron.
<strong>Oh God! Are you guys sure there won't be any more upgrades for the B&W G3!?
I was really hoping something faster than a 550 mhz G4 would come for my Blue G3. And at reasonable (less than 300) price.
What does everyone think about future Blue and White upgrades? I mean, if those companies are still working on upgrades for absolutely ancient (pre Blue and White) hardware, why not work on the Blue and White market? Lots of people have the Blue Smurf Towers. I am also thinking of just clocking my Blue 300 with jumpers. Does anyone know the limit? I'm hoping to go to 400 mhz?</strong><hr></blockquote>
I personally have a feeling that they will find a way to get faster upgrades for the B&W G3. Really, I think that's the biggest market at the moment for processor upgrades. These are the people currently thinking that there machine is still quite current, except for a slow processor. Since I bought my 300Mhz G3 when they were first announced, I've added 512MB of RAM, replaced HD with 30GB model (the stock drive died after 1 year), added a Radeon 7000 PCI card and overclocked the proc to 400MHz. Realistically, if I upgraded the processor to a 600+MHz G4 (and added a PCI ATA-100 card), I'd have a very competitive machine that would last me another year and a half at least. Sure the memory bus is only 100MHz, but that's not a massive difference from 133MHz. I think that when I get a new machine, Bluey will become an FTP, file and web server at my house. While this wouldn't require a G4 upgrade, it would help (though the IDE upgrade would likely be more useful.
The upgrade companies have managed to come up with workarounds for a number of issues in the past. They can be pretty creative!
And as for overclocking, the procs in the B&W G3s seem to be some of the most overclockable, with a high success rate of 100MHz-150MHz over original. Check out <a href="http://www.xlr8yourmac.com"; target="_blank">www.xlr8yourmac.com</a> for OC reports and instructions. Mine's been running perfectly at 400MHz for well over a year, will try 450MHz soon.
[ 05-23-2002: Message edited by: powerdoc ]</p>
also it is completely stripped of all plastics, it's down to the sheet metal - the pro towers are only midsize, you don't realize how small they are till you rip off the gingerbread plastics - however without all the plastics it's quite nice to have such a small tower, i gained much desk space <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
You can buy a 733 MHz G4 daughter card and it will work in a Sawtooth. However the bus multiplier ratio must be changed, and the CPU will clock to 750 or 800 with luck, maybe even 850, the downside being that soldering skills are required. But you could probably find someone to do it for you as well.
The advantage to buying a daughter card is that they are only about $400....the upgrade companies rip Mac users off, basically if you want a fast G4 upgrade, first they don't even exist, and second if they ever do, prepare to get laid over a barrel for it. 700-900 bucks! That's total BS and I refuse to let anyone rape me like that...better to sell your old Mac and buy a new tower.
<strong> People with B&W's will mosly think about upgrading the whole computer rather than just the processor. Sawtooth owners are the ones who are most likely to upgrade since they purchased their machine more recently and think that there is more life in them.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Huh? What about the people who own a B&W, have been slowly upgrading it over the years ( RAM, CD-RW) and have just been waiting for a decent G4 updgrade to hit the market? Like myself? I have invested a lot of money into my machine, and if, for less that $500, I can keep it usable for a few more years, I'm going to do it. The cost of a low end G4 tower, and the cost of adding a bunch more RAM to keep it up to par with my current machine (I don't want to step back to 256 MB after getting used to 512) Is going to be MUCH more than simply buying a processor upgrade. I just need more of a speed boost than 50 Mhz to make it worthwhile.