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powertrippin · May 10, 2005, 11:46 AM

I'm pretty happy with dual 1.33ghz G4s for now, but I was noticing gigadesigns upped their dual CPU upgrade from dual 1.7 to dual 1.8s. Dang. Pretty fast stuff. Then I was remembering the old non G3 macs, and how people made G3 upgrades for them eventually.. heck, even the original iMac had a g4 upgrade available.

What do you guys think? Is it even feasible? It'd be nice if this tower could last me all 4 years, but it's ram is already maxxed out and ... well, I'm running out of room to upgrade. Luckily it's way more than I'm using (except when video editing), but still.

Lateralus · May 10, 2005, 12:23 PM

No.

The G5 only supports up to a 6x bus multiplier. What would be the point?

joe · May 11, 2005, 02:43 AM

Probably not feasible, tho I wish it were. I prefer the layout, expansion, and appearance of the MDD Towers to the G5s. My preference would probably change however if Apple would truly upgrade the G5 Tower design instead of swapping cards once a year.

powertrippin · May 11, 2005, 07:53 AM

Well at the same time, do you think the 9600 owners expected a G3 upgrade?

Lateralus · May 11, 2005, 10:22 AM

...Yes.

The G3 was derived from the 603, as was the G4. And the 603 was derived from the 601. They were all from the same design family. From the start the G3 suppported a clock multiplier of 8x, later 10x and now 20x along with the G4.

DrBoar · May 12, 2005, 01:43 AM

No!

Something to learn from history:
Even if they would it would be as usefull as that 100 MHz 601 upgrade of the IIci

Compared to a "native 100 MHz" like the 7500 that had PCI slots, vastly superior graphics on the motherboard, faster BUS and a memory limit of 1024 MB instead of 128 MB and is able to use OSes past 7.6....

A 3 GHz G5 in a sawtooth, would strapped to a 100 MHz bus, graphics limited by 2x AGP no native SATA no native USB2 a DVD reader instead of a DVR writer....

I am hoping for a new generations of CPUs from IBM that will make upgrades of G4 boxes as obsolete as current upgrades of nubus boxes

powertrippin · May 12, 2005, 07:52 AM

Originally Posted by DrBoar

No!

A 3 GHz G5 in a sawtooth, would strapped to a 100 MHz bus, graphics limited by 2x AGP no native SATA no native USB2 a DVD reader instead of a DVR writer....

But if it was a quicksilver or an MDD it'd have a faster bus, better AGP, and any optical drive or usb card you want ( I personally find USB2.0 pretty useless).

Lateralus · May 12, 2005, 11:28 AM

On a 167MHz bus, the G5 would get eaten alive by a G4 of the same speed. The G5 thrives on bandwidth, plain and simple. Take that away and you've essentially neutered the processor.

And again, the G5 only supports up to a 6x clock multiplier. Meaning the fastest one could run, even in an MDD, is 1GHz.

angelmb · May 12, 2005, 02:49 PM

Originally Posted by joe

I prefer the layout, expansion, and appearance of the MDD Towers to the G5s. My preference would probably change however if Apple would truly upgrade the G5 Tower design instead of swapping cards once a year.

I agree !

darwin23 · May 13, 2005, 11:16 AM

Not a chance, too many things to overcome, pin compatibility, memory control, glue logic strapping to get the Logic Board to be able to "see" and use the CPU.

The best one could hope for would be a G5 PCI CPU to act as a 2nd or 3rd CPU that would only be used by programs that were coded to "see" it. However with the low bandwidth of the PCI, even if you made the PCI card 64-bit 266mb/s, it would not be all that useful. Three or four of them in a MDD running some custom software would be way geek, but it's not going to happen.

If the upgrade makers could get $1k+ out of G5 for G4 Mac's they may well be able to overcome these road blocks, but it would NEVER be able to compete with a $1200 iMac G5.

So, in short..............NO NO NO NO.........NO.