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Tyler McAdams · Jul 21, 2004, 01:03 PM

Or are the CPUs burned to the motherboard?

Hydra · Jul 21, 2004, 01:08 PM

Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
Or are the CPUs burned to the motherboard?

The CPU's are indeed on daughter cards but considering the only way you can get a G5 (aka PPC970/FX) is from IBM and IBM doesn't sell them to anyone else - they might as well be soldered onto the motherboard. It should be possible to take CPU's from other G5's I suppose but they wouldn't be easy to come by.

-Jerry C.

Leonard · Jul 21, 2004, 01:43 PM

As Apple doesn't offer CPU Upgrades, your best bet would be to ask a processor upgrade company like Sonnet or PowerLogix since they have the technical knowledge. I doubt, though, that they've looked at upgrades for PowerMac G5's yet since they are relatively new.

cmoney · Jul 21, 2004, 02:38 PM

There was a news item about a month ago saying that Sonnet is working on PowerMac G5 CPU upgrades though they didn't know the time frame. Seeing that this was before even the 2.5GHz model was out, it's probably pretty optimistic and they're probably just in the investigation phase to see if it's even possible. But at least they're working on it.

It'd be nice to be able to upgrade my dual 2GHz in a year or two to a dual 3.5GHz or somesuch.

olePigeon · Jul 21, 2004, 07:14 PM

I wouldn't doubt that Sonnet, OWC, etc. are working on CPU upgrades for G5s. Maybe even XServe upgrades too.

Lateralus · Jul 21, 2004, 10:36 PM

Sonnet has said that their G5 upgrades are in development.

Peter753 · Jul 22, 2004, 01:17 AM

Would there be a problem with bus speeds with CPU upgrades? All the current G5s have bus speeds of half the speed of 1 processor in the machine. Perhaps there is something about the architecture that makes it nessasary for it to be this way. Oh and would anyone really upgrade the CPU in an xserve? Were there upgrades for the G4 xserves?

Scotttheking · Jul 22, 2004, 03:10 AM

Originally posted by Peter753:
Would there be a problem with bus speeds with CPU upgrades? All the current G5s have bus speeds of half the speed of 1 processor in the machine. Perhaps there is something about the architecture that makes it nessasary for it to be this way.

The architecture can run at 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, and 1/6 bus:cpu ratios. IIRC, of course.

OreoCookie · Jul 22, 2004, 05:25 AM

Theoretically, yes.
Practically, there are no upgrades available on the market.

Leonard · Jul 22, 2004, 09:37 AM

Originally posted by Peter753:
Oh and would anyone really upgrade the CPU in an xserve? Were there upgrades for the G4 xserves?

I don't think there were upgrades for Xserves. The Xserves were introduced with fairly fast G4's to start with - single or dual 1Ghz G4's. Is 1.33Ghz or 1.4Ghz worth the upgrade. Plus there isn't all that many G4 Xserves out there - say a few thousand. And of that, there are probably more single and dual 1.33Ghz G4 Xserves than the older single and dual 1Ghz Xserves. It's probably not worth it making an upgrade for that small a market.

fiesta cat · Jul 22, 2004, 12:44 PM

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:
Sonnet has said that their G5 upgrades are in development.

Powerlogix said something similar late last year.

Will be interesting to see, since IBM is probably splitting their production between Apple & IBM's own servers (may not be the same CPUs going into IBM servers, but the lines they use to make them are the same).

It wouldn't surprise me though, a lot of people bought 1.6s and 1.8s. Hell, they are still buying the refurbs like crazy.

Big Mac · 06:27 PM

I think a better question is how much of an upgrade path could there possibly be considering the 2.5 requires liquid cooling? The 2.5s and higher may have an upgrade path, but what about the others? Since IBM is officially saying process scaling, the advancement the industry relied upon to cool and speed up the chips, is dead, I don't forsee a rich upgrade market for the G5. Perhaps we could get as high as 2.3 or even 2.4, which would be a pretty limited upgrade except for 1.6 owners. Which is just as well, because my 2.0 is hellafast and should at least last me many years longer than my 8600, which I kept in service for seven years.

Eriamjh · Jul 23, 2004, 06:46 AM

All G5s are completely upgradable. The fact that upgrades do not exist yet is irrelevant. The fact that you can't buy a G5 upgrade for your 1.6 or 1.8 G5 is irrelevant.

Oh wait. Forget that. That doesn't make any sense.

They are NOT upgradeable. Ask again in a year.

BenRoethig · Jul 23, 2004, 09:17 AM

Originally posted by OreoCookie:
Theoretically, yes.
Practically, there are no upgrades available on the market.

And there has to be a way to recalibrate the system fans to work with the new processors.