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davidhanna · Dec 7, 2005, 04:32 PM

Hi all,
I have a 500mhz Uni-7 spec Sawtooth box that I've put a lot of money into. The computer has been running strong, and I now need to put the final upgrade on this old computer to keep it going as my main computer until the Intel transition. The HD/RAM/Graphics/Optical drives have all been upgraded to the teeth, and all that is really left of my old CPU.

For awhile I have (unsucessfully) been attempting to overclock the motherboard bus to 133mhz for the slight performance boost. If anyone has done this sucessfully, please post! This aside, the CPU upgrades I've been looking at are the PowerLogix Dual 1.8Ghz 7447 G4s without L3 cache, the Powerlogix Dual 1.4Ghz 7457 G4 with 2MB of L3 cache per CPU and the Gigadesigns Dual 1.8Ghz 7447A G4s with no L3 cache.

Which of the following has anyone had experience with? Which is fastest card for the Sawtooth? I am very concerned about the lack of a L3 cache as my bus is so slow. Thanks for any help you can provide,

david

chefpastry · Dec 7, 2005, 05:26 PM

As far as I know, no one has ever successfully upgraded the system bus speed to 133MHz on a Sawtooth. Those who tried got corruption on the drives. 120MHz had been done by some, but it affects the speed of the AGP/PCI slots. Generally, it's just not worth the headache for the small boost in performance, in my opinion.

As for upgrades, I don't have personal experience with any of those upgrades, but if I were in the market for one, I'd go for a dual 1.8GHz 7447. Not sure if Powerlogix is better or Giga is better, though.

zacharydz · Dec 9, 2005, 10:55 AM

The 7447 G4s use a lot less power; I'm not sure what type of components you already have hooked up, but you might have stability problems if the power supply can't supply enough power. I think the 500 Mhz Sawtooths had ~ a 240W PSU. Not sure if you use the sleep feature, but I believe that the 7447s don't support sleep. The performance of a dual 1.4 7457 and a dual 1.8 7447 should be fairly close, but I think the 7447 will probably perform a little better on cpu intensive tasks. I haven't seen a direct comparison of the two, but for benchmarks between a 1.5 Ghz 7457 and a 2.0 Ghz 7447, the 7447 was marginally better on most tasks and on the cpu intensive tasks it was faster by a decent amount.

gangster · Dec 9, 2005, 11:29 AM

what video card do you have? i had my pc ati 9700pro modified to work in my g4 800 and what a difference! had a geforce 3 before the upgrade.

davidhanna · Dec 9, 2005, 02:13 PM

I have a PC flashed ATI 9800 XT installed and working perfectly. Power supply issues are irrelevent, I can always put in a 500 watt unit from a decomissioned PC.

astepanuks · Dec 9, 2005, 03:56 PM

Originally Posted by davidhanna

The CPU upgrades I've been looking at are the PowerLogix Dual 1.8Ghz 7447 G4s without L3 cache, the Powerlogix Dual 1.4Ghz 7457 G4 with 2MB of L3 cache per CPU and the Gigadesigns Dual 1.8Ghz 7447A G4s with no L3 cache.

Which of the following has anyone had experience with? Which is fastest card for the Sawtooth? I am very concerned about the lack of a L3 cache as my bus is so slow. Thanks for any help you can provide,

david

Hi,
First of all, any CPU upgrade will deliver big boost. However couple things to keep in mind.
Yes, power is an issue and could have stability affects, so things start to go belly up, have a spare handy. There is an article on how to put ATX type power supply into Sawtooth on xlr8yourmac.com.
Second, another thing to keep in mind is heat. 7447 are cooler that "older" 745x but they are "slower" due to the lack of L3.
If you don't do much processor intensive tasks, don't bother with duals. They use more power, generate more heat and cost more.
I had following upgrades: PLogix 800 Mhz, PLogix 1.4, Giga 1.8 Ghz Dual and Sonnet 1.2 Ghz. I feel that best is Sonnet 1.2. I didn't see much mind blowing speed gain with Dual 1.8 and PLogix had some stability issues.
My Sawtooth is also maxed with SATA PCI, USB 2, 1.4 GB RAM, 107 DVD, Radeon Pro 9000.
When I used Giga Dual 1.8, I believe that G4 started to run out of power capacity and it was getting hot too.
So, my advice, if you must, go for Sonnett single procesor upgrade
Andy