Faster G4s on Beige Machines... |
December, 30, 2002 2:01 PM |
esmith |
Are we ever going to see faster G4 zifs on the Beige machines? The current G4 speed is not enough for OS X... |
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RE: Faster G4s on Beige Machines... |
January, 03, 2003 3:52 PM |
esmith |
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The thing is whether I should opt for a new mac. I am simply tired of the sluggish Beige G3 performance under OS X. |
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RE: Faster G4s on Beige Machines... |
January, 02, 2003 1:36 AM |
joevt |
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Here is a quote of the info given for Beige G3s from the same article I quoted before: "Moving on... We will move to the PowerMAc G3 Beige line. This includes the Beige All-In-One G3, Beige Desktop G3, Beige Minitower and Minitower AV G3s. These models were also nicknamed 'Gossamer'. These computers have a stock 66.67MHz bus speed and the bus to processor speed ratio is has a limited range pre-determined by the logic board design. This bus ratio hardware issue is unlike the 7300-9600 model Pre-G3 Power which have their bus ratio factors completely setup and controlled on the processor daughtercard. When you upgrade a Pre-G3 PowerMac, you are replacing the entire Processor Daughter card that includes the hardware circuitry that controls the bus to speed ratio. With the PowerMac G3 Beige, when you upgrade the processor, you are only replacing the processor module itself - which does not include the hardware that determines the available bus to speed ratios. This is important to understand because this is the reason that there is a faster upgrade for the older Pre-G3 Power Mac models. As it sits, the max ratio that the Beige G3 hardware allows for is an 8 to 1, that being 8 times the computer bus speed (66.7MHz) is as fast as it will engage.... This is why the fastest available ZIF upgrade is limited to 533MHZ for the Beige G3. In the case of the G4/800MHZ Legacy Mac upgrade, a 16 to 1 ratio is controlled by the processor daughercard itself making 800MHz possible (16 x 50MHZ Legacy Mac Bus = 800MHz). Now... Needless to say, going from a stock G3/233,266,300MHz to a G4/ 533MHz still makes a HUGE difference and is very much a worthy upgrade. Will there be faster upgrades for the Beige G3? That is a tricky one as you'd have to do some pretty fancy dancing on a standard ZIF to trick double the perceived processor ratios without negatively impacting timing issues. There are other hurdles as well, but the bus/ratio issue is the most significant." I'm not sure what the problem is with the 8x max multiplier. The G4 ZIF from XLR8 that I got for my B&W G3 has it's own bus multiplier jumpers that override those on the mother board. Wouldn't the jumpers work the same on a Beige G3? |
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RE: Faster G4s on Beige Machines... |
January, 01, 2003 5:14 AM |
paul_findley |
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Oops, my math was off. I was using 8x for the G3. 66 x 8 = 528, but 66 x 9 = 594Mhz as a theoretical max for an old G4 zif in a beige G3. I also just read somewhere on xlr8yourmac that newer revs of the 7455 will support up to 32x. |
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RE: Faster G4s on Beige Machines... |
January, 01, 2003 12:05 AM |
paul_findley |
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esmith: I believe the old G4 multiplier is 9, so a beige G3 without overclocking the system bus would give you 66MHz x 9 = 528MHz. But they are advertised as 525MHz. The 7455 G4 can go to 16x, giving a theoretical max on a beige G3 of 66MHz x 16 = 1.06GHz, once those pinout adapters become available (if ever). |
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RE: Faster G4s on Beige Machines... |
December, 31, 2002 12:58 PM |
esmith |
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What would a B&W 800 mhz ZIF be on a Beige Machine? |
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RE: Faster G4s on Beige Machines... |
December, 30, 2002 9:36 PM |
joevt |
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It would be interesting to see if such a ZIF would be compatible with an XLR8 ZIF Carrier Card (which I use in my 8600 with a 500MHz G3). |
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RE: Faster G4s on Beige Machines... |
December, 30, 2002 8:26 PM |
joevt |
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http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/archives/sep02/091302.html#S14437 http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/archives/oct02/103102.html#S14664 OWC Larry (Larry O'Connor) mentioned in his weekly Tips 'n Deals e-mail (dated 9/20/2002 about the same time as the xlr8 news page mentioned above) that faster upgrades are likely in the future. I couldn't find a URL for back issues so here's an excerpt: "Now we move on to the PowerMac Blue & White G3 Models (known also as Yosemite) as well as the G4 'Yikes' PCI which has the same logic board. Here we find the same 8X ratio hardware fixed issue the Beige G3 has, but with a faster 100MHz bus to multiply off of allowing up to 800MHz no tricks operation. Currently, the fastest G4 ZIF available for the Blue and White 550MHz which is as fast as the Motorola 7410 G4 processor comes. The G4/7455 that the Sonnet G4/800MHz Legacy Mac upgrade is based on as well as other G4/744X and G4/745X processors will require an new ZIF upgrade design to operate with the B&W G3/Yikes G4 ZIF designs. These newer, faster G4 processors that are available in the 800MHz (and higher which we won't go into now) speeds are not 'pin for pin' compatible with the existing ZIF boards and thus the reason you don't see 800MHz ZIF upgrades... YET! Without almost any doubt, there will be 800MHZ upgrades for these machines within the very near future. In the meantime, the G4/550MHz offers a great bang for the buck + seem to safely overclock to 600MHz and even run 650MHz. We don't guarantee nor promote overclocking, but I for those looking for the max, 600MHz from the 550MHz ZIFs seems to be be a fairly consistent A- Ok thing. Anyway, for now, the fastest rated processor speed for Blue and White G3/G4 Yikes PCI is 550MHz, 800MHz is something likely near on the horizon." |