[Skypat]

Hi I have a powermac G4 dual 867 and I'de like to upgrade it in order to gain some speed ... without buying a G5.

What are my options ? Can I upgrade the processors for example ?

Thanks in advance

[Waragainstsleep]

Is that the MDD?
OWC have no CPU upgrades listed. Maybe the dual 1.25s would fit from a faster MDD.
Or perhaps you can overclock it.

If none of that appeals, more RAM will often gain some speed in general usage, as would a SATA PCI card and Western Digital Raptor SATA 10krpm HD. Or some kind of flash SCSI drive if you want to spend a fortune.
Or perhaps a Radeon 9800.

Depends what you want the speed for.

[Skypat]

Hi Waragainstsleep

Yes that's a MDD dual 867.

I just would like to accelerate my mac without spending money on a new G5

I think a CPU upgrade could be nice, but as you say, I don't think there is one available for the dual 867 (I even don't know if there will ever be one because the bus speed - 133 Mhz - seems to pause a problem here).

About the memory, I have 512 MB. Upgrading to 1 GB will make a little difference I think. I won't really feel it. But it may help.

Upgrading my poor geforce 4 32 MB. Would it make a difference with Expos� for example ? Expos� works great now, except when too many windows are open. It becomes shoppy then.

What are my choices (graphics card) ?

Thank you :-)

[Waragainstsleep]

OWC lists your options as Radeon 9000AGP, Radeon 9200PCI (Not worth it unless you want to run another monitor), or Radeon 9800pro AGP.

http://eshop.macsales.com/MyOWC/Upgr...=Show+Upgrades

[D'Espice]

Given that there are no CPU upgrades for any MDD PowerMacs (check www.otherworldcomputing.com) your options are quite limited. Updating the video card will make a difference mainly in games, not that much in everyday work. Expos� might be a faster but that's about it, you will only feel a slight improvement if any. I would suggest an ATI Radeon 9000 Mac Edition for US $160.

Adding another 512MB of RAM will also increase performance especially when doing lots of things at once and having a lot of apps/windows open at the same time. Given that RAM has become cheap, I'd suggest you get a 512MB Corsair or Crucial memory upgrade (PC2100 aka DDR266 will do given that you only have a 133 MHz FSB). Don't go cheap here, every buck saved will come back and bite you in the arse sooner or later.

And last but not least, think harddrive. A software RAID 0 will improve performance from slightly to dramatically. You won't feel a difference when working with an app but they will open much faster, swapping will be much faster and apps that perform a lot of read/write operations like Photoshop will also be faster.

That's about it, there's nothing more you can do until somebody will introduce CPU upgrades for your machine.

[Luca Rescigno]

Radeon 9000 for $160 is pretty expensive. Too expensive if you're upgrading from a GeForce 4MX (even though the 4MX sucks). I found myself a 64 MB Radeon 8500 for $50. Yeah, it was the PC version, but it just happens to be the one that is physically identical to the Mac version, so it's easy to flash to Mac.

A Radeon 8500 will be a bit better than the GeForce 4MX, especially the 32 MB one, but if you want a major performance boost, go for a Radeon 9700. You're lucky to have an MDD (I guess) because the MDD is the only Mac that can use the Mac version of the Radeon 9700. It's between the GeForce 4 Titanium and Radeon 9800 in speed, and it has 128 MB of VRAM.

Another possibility is a Radeon 9600 from a G5 off eBay. A lot of people try to push these cards for $200+, but they only have 64 MB of VRAM and they're not worth over $150. Although they're not natively compatible with a PowerMac G4, they will work after a simple modification. You can't use the ADC port though.

[Skypat]

Thank you all for your answers ! I will think about this. Either invest in some new parts, wait for a processor upgrade or ... save for a G5

[GoGoReggieXPowars]

D'Espice, your sig is too big.

[DBvader]

I own a Dual 867 and use a Radeon 9600. It's a much better card than either the 9000 or the 8500. My games went from unenjoyable on the 9000 to playable on the 9600. You need to tape a couple of pins to make it work out of the G5 (this takes about 1 min). The 9600 should be available for even cheaper than the 9000 (I sold my 9000 for more than I bought my 9600 on ebay). You can use Radeon Enabler to mess with the overrides in every game.

There is a con, though..Without Clever soldering, the 9600 ADC port will not power the display.

It's significantly less money than the 9800 and will boost performance from your current MX.

On the non-gaming side of things, boosting your RAM to 1GB, as others have said, will really speed things up.

[legacyb4]

Are you saying that the dual 867s are already starting to feel "slow" as far as total horsepower goes?

Originally posted by Skypat:
Hi I have a powermac G4 dual 867 and I'de like to upgrade it in order to gain some speed ... without buying a G5.

What are my options ? Can I upgrade the processors for example ?

Thanks in advance

[SafariX]

Bigger exhaust or racing stripes.

[Skypat]

legacyb4 : yes It think it is a little slow ... The system seems sometimes not reactive. I click on the iChat icon and it takes a few seconds to open.

[olePigeon]

http://www.gigadesigns.com/products5d1012q.html

Gigadesigns offers a dual 1.2GHz upgrade.

[Lateralus]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
http://www.gigadesigns.com/products5d1012q.html

Gigadesigns offers a dual 1.2GHz upgrade.

...but it's not for the MDD.

[lenox]

I have a mdd dual 867 as well, and was/am in the same boat as you. I upgraded the graphics card to a radeon 8500, replaced the aluminum heat sink with the copper heat sink found in the faster/later models, and added another fan. As for the bus speed, you can change it to 167mhz, but it's not for the faint of heart and requires steady hands, check out xlr8yourmac.com for info on that.

From what I understand, upping the bus speed from 133 to 167mhz would necessitate purchasing new higher-rated ram and it would mean the processors were running at 933mhz each - unless you played with the multipliers, too.

There are definitely ways to speed up the mdd, but you also have to make sure to worry about heat dissipation first.

Good luck!

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:
...but it's not for the MDD.

What's the difference between an MDD and a QuckSilver?

[Luca Rescigno]

This is a Quicksilver:



This is a Mirrored Drive Door:



On the outside, they look somewhat similar. On the inside, they're totally different beasts. The MDD has a much improved case layout, as well as a very different motherboard that accepts DDR RAM (Quicksilvers can only use SDR RAM). Also, there are no available processor upgrades for MDD PowerMacs.

[Skypat]

Originally posted by lenox:
I have a mdd dual 867 as well, and was/am in the same boat as you. I upgraded the graphics card to a radeon 8500, replaced the aluminum heat sink with the copper heat sink found in the faster/later models, and added another fan. As for the bus speed, you can change it to 167mhz, but it's not for the faint of heart and requires steady hands, check out xlr8yourmac.com for info on that.

From what I understand, upping the bus speed from 133 to 167mhz would necessitate purchasing new higher-rated ram and it would mean the processors were running at 933mhz each - unless you played with the multipliers, too.

There are definitely ways to speed up the mdd, but you also have to make sure to worry about heat dissipation first.

Good luck!

Hi Lenox. Nice to read your experience. Did you feel a real difference after you upgraded your graphic card ? So today you have a dual 933 Mhz MDD ?

Thanks!

[Lateralus]

Originally posted by lenox:
From what I understand, upping the bus speed from 133 to 167mhz would necessitate purchasing new higher-rated ram and it would mean the processors were running at 933mhz each - unless you played with the multipliers, too.

If you move the resistor, you'll get Dual 1.085GHz, according to my math. Which would be fine for a 7455 G4.

And yes, you'd need to replace the PC2100 RAM with PC2700 to accomodate the new bus speed.

[lenox]

Originally posted by Skypat:
Hi Lenox. Nice to read your experience. Did you feel a real difference after you upgraded your graphic card ? So today you have a dual 933 Mhz MDD ?

Thanks!

The graphics card made an enormous improvement, both in Quartz/Quartz extreme performance, and 3d games of course - though it's definitely not a gaming machine. Twice the vram was worth the $50 I spent on the card. I also believe that I am able to drive higher resolutions and refresh rates with my monitor. The PCI slot fan also keeps it from crashing, as the card is overclocked (those cards are quite easy to speed up - but not so easy to keep cool in a MDD!).

I haven't played with the bus or cpu speed of the machine just yet, because I'd have to buy faster ram - but the copper heat sink has helped keep the machine cooler and quieter than it'd usually be.

hope this helps!

[york28]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
What's the difference between an MDD and a QuckSilver?

The QuickSilver case looks much nicer.