[Wedergast]

Accelerate Your Mac has a blurb about a Crescando/PCI G4 800 MhZ Processor Upgrade Card for PCI Power Macs, that will prolly be released for Macworld NY. Karl, any insight you can share, is it true or jus BS?
If this is true, this is exactly what I've wanted and been waiting for. It would be so awesome to upgrade my 450 B/W G3 to an 800 MhZ G4! images/icons/shocked.gif

[Nobody]

Sonnet has an ad in the August (Macworld Expo) issue of Macworld that describes a few products that you won't see listed anywhere else. In the past, show issues came out at the show, but the subscriber drop was a little early this year. Oops.

I can't comment on this ad in detail at this time, but to set your expectations correctly I will say that it does not contain any information on a "ZIF"-type product. In our lingo, "PCI" is the 7500 class of Power Mac. Until next Wednesday, I'll have to leave other details to rumor, innuendo, and the ad itself.

[Wedergast]

I stand corrected. Crap, I want an 800 MhZ G4 upgrade!!!! If it can be done with an older 7500 type motherboard, then you guys must have a good G4 upgrade your still working on for Zif machines, right? I hope so, im ready to sell my B/W if I cant find better then a 550 G4 upgrade for it in the next 6 months.

[Nobody]

Well, congrats Sonnet in catching up to PowerLogix and then one upping them with the PCI upgrade cards. I'm almost giddy. I'm going to buy an old PowerMac just to soup it up.

[Nobody]

(Karl, I know you can't comment until after the Expo, but...)

Since G4s have a maximum multiplier of x9, and the "7500 class" PCI PowerMacs usually can only push a 50 MHz bus (+/- 5 MHZ), I can only assume that Sonnet is putting it's infamous Fortissimo "bus doubling" technology to use in these upgrades.

Does this mean we might see more "bus doubled" upgrades for older Macs in the future?

(Something for the 6500/6400/6360/5500/5400 class machines... wink, wink Something faster than a 400 MHz G3 might be nice for my 6360 considering Ryan Rempels XPostFacto is close to providing OS X capabilities to these machines... nudge, nudge)

JoAT

[7500G4]

Yeah!!! Does that mean that we can look forward to a 900MHZ G4 upgrade for the 75 in the near future? I sure hope the 800MHZ upgrades are realistically priced. Maybe we'll see 1GHZ (can you picture an old 7500 blazing @ 1GHZ?!) because if I'm correct the "new" Apollo G4 7450 does have a 10X multiplier (bus speed doubled 50X2 + 10X = 1GHZ). images/icons/wink.gif

[Nobody]

Frankly, I question how you can run an 800mhz G4 into a 7500 style case and not have it overheat. My 7300 overheats and it still has it's original processor in it.

[Wedergast]

Did you OC the processor? Maybe you just got a defective MB? It shouldn't overheat. How cool is the room you use the computer in? I had a client that called me up last summer, complaining that his computer kept overheating and crashing. I went to his house and he had it set up in a little room with no AC, the room was so hot, I felt like passing out just going into the room. Once I got him to move the computer to a AC cooled room, the crashing and overheating stopped. There is a reason why your 7300 overheats. You just have to figure out why.

[Nobody]

7500G4,

I doubt we'll see anything past this 800 MHz level for this class of machine. While many people upgrading these machines have successfully ran the system bus at both 50 and 55 MHz (with much stability), many others have problems with getting the bus past 45 MHz without getting crashes and errors every couple of minutes. Since a 50 or 55 MHz bus is not guaranteed for everyone, I don't think Sonnet will try to market anything greater than this 800 MHz (45 x 2 x 9 = 810 MHz).

However, if there is enough overhead in the chip, someone could perhaps overclock the upgrade by boosting the system bus. Of course, I wouldn't recommend it (and I'm sure Sonnet wouldn't either images/icons/wink.gif ) as it could damage both the upgrade and the motherboard...

JoAT

[7500G4]

Actually with the G4 "Apollo" 7450 @ 45MHZ bus speed 900MHZ should be possible. The 7450 has a 10X multiplier, I believe. (45X2X10) images/icons/wink.gif

[Nobody]

No, I didn't overclock it. It's still running at 200mhz. I thought earlier it was cause by the 10,000rpm HD I had installed as a secondary drive. But even now that I remove it I stil have occasional problems. Before that I had installed 256MB of RAM (boosting the total to 288). Could faulty RAM cause a problem like this?

[Nobody]

Saw the ad.

800MHz upgrade for PCI Macs.

800MHz and 1GHz upgrade(s) for PowerMac G4 AGP Macs.

Very nice, Sonnet. Looking forward to your booth.

Damien.

[2zaps]

Damien as in xlr8...

I to ran out and snagged a MacWorld August ed from the stand at the local shop. It lists 7300-9600s as PCI upgrade options... Nothin' for the Beige G... boo! My G has PCI slots! It should be made to work.

On an aside... what does xlr8 have cooking? PL and Sonnet are pushing out hot new stuff... anyone? images/icons/tongue.gif

[Nobody]

2zaps,

The "PCI" processor upgrades don't actually make use of the PCI bus for the upgrade. The PCI is to signify that the upgrades are for the "PCI Power Macs" (Power Macs with PCI slots) as opposed to, say, the "NuBus PowerMacs" (the PowerMacs with NuBus slots; a.k.a. the 6100, 7100, and 8100).

The PowerMac 7300, 7500, 7600, 8500, 8600, 9500, and 9600 are considered as the "PCI" family as they have several PCI slots on the motherboard and a removable, replacable processor daughtercard. (The upgrade is actually a processor daughtercard. Beige G3s use Zero-Insertion-Force, or ZIF, processors.)

Althought the PowerMac 5400, 5500, 6360, 6400, and 6500 systems had PCI slots, they didn't have removable processor daughtercards and their processors are part of the motherboard. Any processor upgrades for this family of PowerMacs must utilize the slot where the (removable) L2 cache goes. Therefore, when speaking in terms of processor upgrades, these Macs are called the "L2 PowerMacs" (or something like that.)

Of course you may have alrady known this and were speaking "tongue-in-cheek", but sarcasm is very hard to distinguish in written language sometimes... images/icons/wink.gif

JoAT