[JayPalmer]

Hey All -

Here's my current set up. G4 Digital Audio (667Mhz), 1GB PC-133 Ram, 130GB HD, 133 Mhz Bus Speed (obviously, hence the Ram). All the most recent version of Tiger, etc. I've also put in a Radeon 9000 graphics card with 64MB and added a USB 2.0 Highspeed card in the back. I'm pretty happy with the whole thing.

However, I'm trying to figure out which processor upgrade is going to be the most useful, powerful, etc for the money and for my configuration. The difference in types of CPU upgrades seems to be that L3 cache is very important for the older G4s and I should go with a 7455 chip instead of a 7447(A) chip without L3 cache even if it is clocked at a higher speed.

I realize this has been asked before, but which is going to give me better performance? Any recommendations on what I should get (honestly, don't really want to spend more than $450)

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

[JayPalmer]

Right... ok... I realize it's not the most amazing question in the world, but any thoughts would be really really really helpful!

What would you go for CPU upgrade-wise?!

[chris v]

You're pretty much right about the L3 cache from everything I've read. A 1.4 with the L3 cache will be about as fast as a 1.8 without it, overall, if I recall correctly from the benchmarks I've seen.

Go dualie if you can afford to, but it looks like none of the dualies come with the 7455 chips any more.

[JayPalmer]

Cheers Chris - Yeah, I'm thinking a dual now as well, or a single 2.0 from Sonnet. I realize that anything is going to be faster than my 667 at this point, but can't afford a whole new system... Plus, I'm pretty connected to this beast.

Thanks again.

[zacharydz]

I put in an OWC 1.4 Ghz G4 7455 (w/ 2MB L3 cache) in my sawtooth last year and I was quite impressed with the results. This computer should easily last me another couple years.


In addition to the L3 cache that would be very beneficial to my 100 Mhz bus, I also didn't want to get a 7447 G4 because I heard that there were problems with them when trying to wake the computer back up from sleep. GigaDesigns were having sleep problems with their chips - I'm not sure if they fixed it and/or if other 7447 cpus had the same problem, but it's something to look into. As I have my computer in my bedroom, it was pretty important that I could put my computer to sleep.

[mountainash]

Adding a 7447a is more involved. You need to patch the mac's firmware. And they need 9.2 or 10.3 to run. And might be more sensitive to OS updates (at least the bundled CPU director with PowerLogix seems to be).

You still see, occasionally, dual 7454 and 7455 modules. I think that is the best option. Or wait to see if anyone build a 7448 module, which will have 1Mb of 1:1 L2 cache per CPU, and run faster clock for clock than the 7447a.

BTW, if you want to get rid of your old 667 module, I might be interested

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by ShazamItsDavish2

And might be more sensitive to OS updates (at least the bundled CPU director with PowerLogix seems to be).

There's no evidence to support that. And no software is necessary once a 7447A upgrade is installed. CPU Director is completely voluntary.

[akinola]

I have what was a previously SLOW 466 digital audio G4. I faced the exact decision you're looking at. For me price was a big factor. The gigadesign dual 1.8 is not only the fastest but also the chepest (macgurus.com). Using XBENCH (free benchmarking app) the new processor scores a 75 out of 100 (100 being the baseline dual 2.0 G5) and on some of the individual processing scores actually comes in higher. I have found the processor to be stable (gigadesign and many others are really using 1.4 ghz processors overclocked to 1.8). Unfortunately, my H.264 HD test has still not passed. I'm on a quest to get this G4 running full framerate 720P H.264. It's almost running with this current set-up at 100% processor usage. I'm getting a better video card that is core-image supported (geforce 4 Ti is not) and I'm hoping that might do it.

One thing none of the after market processor companies want to tell you is heat and power issues. Naturally that G4 power supply and cooling set-up was never designed to handle a processor four times as fast. The 7447a processor is supposed to draw less power but it's still running way faster than a single chip 466. That produces heat and can cause you to rethink that fully loaded PCI bus and six Hard drive set-up. Because apple is so well apple you can't just buy a 500 watt power supply for twenty bucks and drop it in. Gigadesign includes a 4 pin power connector to also connect to a free power plug (like the Radeon 9800 video card.) None of this is really a problem if you don't have a fully loaded machine. If you do. You might need to drop some internal equipment or come up with a more A-team like solution (buy a power supply, jumper the ATX connector, and use that as a second power supply, YIKES! My PC using friend promises me it works and isn't hard to do. Guides are available online.)

Finally, I did this same processor install in a Gigabyte ethernet model. That model runs on a 100MHZ bus, 100 MHZ RAM, and a 2X AGP video slot. With all the same equipment video card, dual 1.8 processor, ram the digital audio set-up scored significantly higher on XBENCH. A good note for someone looking to put together a fast G4. Pay almost nothing and buy a 466 Digital audio G4 on ebay and then crank it up!

Here are my XBENCH results for the 466 Digital Audio G4 post upgrade.

Results 55.74
System Info
Xbench Version 1.2
System Version 10.4.5 (8H14)
Physical RAM 1536 MB
Model PowerMac3,4
Processor PowerPC G4x2 @ 1.80 GHz
L1 Cache 16K (instruction), 16K (data)
L2 Cache 512K
Bus Frequency 134 MHz
Video Card GeForce4 Ti 4600
Drive Type Massive Scratch

CPU Test 76.51
GCD Loop 167.57 8.83 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 50.68 1.20 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 107.59 3.55 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 57.84 10.07 Mops/sec

Thread Test 130.51
Computation 153.09 3.10 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 113.74 4.89 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads

Memory Test 19.77
System 28.44
Allocate 169.29 621.71 Kalloc/sec
Fill 34.45 1675.19 MB/sec
Copy 14.17 292.69 MB/sec
Stream 15.15
Copy 14.92 308.10 MB/sec [altivec]
Scale 14.65 302.64 MB/sec [altivec]
Add 15.45 329.15 MB/sec [altivec]
Triad 15.63 334.39 MB/sec [altivec]

Quartz Graphics Test 70.37
Line 56.72 3.78 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 61.75 18.43 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 64.58 5.26 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 83.98 2.12 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 101.72 6.36 Kchars/sec

OpenGL Graphics Test 78.31
Spinning Squares 78.31 99.34 frames/sec

User Interface Test 52.40
Elements 52.40 240.49 refresh/sec

Disk Test 121.74
Sequential 117.27
Uncached Write 136.68 83.92 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 131.94 74.65 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 70.80 20.72 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 196.46 98.74 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 126.56
Uncached Write 111.30 11.78 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 196.40 62.88 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 101.51 0.72 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 130.24 24.17 MB/sec [256K blocks]

[isaaclimdc]

i have a 466 digital, but i took a slightly different route to upgrade mine. i bought a 933mhz quicksilver processor off ebay and installed it. double the speed straight up. before you say it won't fit, i can assure you it does, the only mod being is to run a 5volt power lead to the 4th unused mounting hole, (the audio digital only has 3 mounting holes) everything lines up just fine and i also added a 60mm fan to help cool the cpu ala the q/s. i have also added a radeon 7000 64mb video card,extra 80 gig h/d, 1 gig ram and a pioneer dual laver dvd burner and usb 2 card.
just as a matter of interest i downloaded xbench and ran the test as a comparison and here are the results. your opinions would be appreciated
Results 32.12
System Info
Xbench Version 1.2
System Version 10.4.6 (8I127)
Physical RAM 1024 MB
Model PowerMac3,4
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 934 MHz
Version 7455 (Apollo) v2.1
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 256K @ 467 MHz
L3 Cache 2048K @ 234 MHz
Bus Frequency 134 MHz
Video Card ATY,RV100
Drive Type Maxtor 33073H3 M
CPU Test 35.33
GCD Loop 76.78 4.05 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 22.63 537.64 Mflop/sec
vecLib FFT 54.12 1.79 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 26.65 4.64 Mops/sec
Thread Test 35.97
Computation 35.35 716.03 Kops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 36.61 1.57 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 19.15
System 31.74
Allocate 74.07 272.01 Kalloc/sec
Fill 29.47 1432.76 MB/sec
Copy 21.24 438.72 MB/sec
Stream 13.72
Copy 13.46 278.04 MB/sec [altivec]
Scale 13.38 276.36 MB/sec [altivec]
Add 13.97 297.57 MB/sec [altivec]
Triad 14.08 301.24 MB/sec [altivec]
Quartz Graphics Test 37.77
Line 34.27 2.28 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 34.47 10.29 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 33.39 2.72 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 49.42 1.25 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 41.66 2.61 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 72.11
Spinning Squares 72.11 91.47 frames/sec
User Interface Test 27.98
Elements 27.98 128.43 refresh/sec
Disk Test 29.83
Sequential 36.88
Uncached Write 38.12 23.41 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 41.50 23.48 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 77.20 22.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 22.14 11.13 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 25.04
Uncached Write 9.27 0.98 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 47.89 15.33 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 61.04 0.43 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 68.52 12.71 MB/sec [256K blocks]

[Zubir]

I upgraded my old DA 533 with the Sonnet 1.4 w/L3 cache (7455,) and there was a noticable difference in everyday tasks, like web browsing, etc. While I have no power issues with the CPU, I definitely had heat issues.

The heat issues became apparent while playing WoW. The game would crash with a kernel error after an hour or so. As stated earlier, these cases weren't designed to handle the heat put out by chips 3x to 4x faster than the chip that came OEM. The Sonnet came with the little purple heatsink w/ fan. I really don't think this heatsink is better than the huge OEM Apple heatsink for the ultra-hot 7455 chips. I took the purple heatsink off, put the Apple heatsink back on, then mounted a clear 120mm Antec Tri-cool fan in the top of the case to exhaust. I have the fan set on the lowest speed setting to keep the noise down in this already noisey beast. I haven't had a crash since, and it doesn't look bad at all. You could use a smaller fan, but I chose 120mm for the ability to move more air at lower speeds.

The heatsinks on the 7447's are probably fine, considering they run cooler than 7455's. However, I would look into better case cooling than what comes standard. The PSU fan is the only exhaust in a stock G4 Powermac before the Quicksilvers.

[dpaanlka]

I have a Sonnet 1.8ghz and it blows away the 1.5ghz processor I had in my PowerBook G4, on all benchmarks related to processing, even with the slower bus speed. This includes me timing Photoshop and Final Cut Pro.

Someone at Sonnet explained it to me over the phone, saying the "new" G4s make better, more efficient use of the L2 cache and it makes the lack of an L3 cache negligable.

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by dpaanlka

Someone at Sonnet explained it to me over the phone, saying the "new" G4s make better, more efficient use of the L2 cache and it makes the lack of an L3 cache negligable.

Yeah... Whoever told you that was full of ****. Of course they're gonna tell you that, they're trying to sell you on their product.

[dpaanlka]

show me benchmarks proving otherwise

[Zubir]

Originally Posted by dpaanlka

show me benchmarks proving otherwise

A 1.4ghz 7455 (2mb l3 cache) is the equivalent of a 1.8ghz 7447. This is common knowledge, friend.

Straight from Gigadesigns:

"From the tests we have performed to date with the 133MHz bus AGP equipped Power Macs, we have determined the performance of a 7447A processor running at 1.733GHz to be equivalent to that of a 7455 running at 1.467GHz. The 7447A does not support an L3 cache, and in most applications requiring a heavy CPU load this has a big impact on performance. "

[dpaanlka]

What? That doesn't prove anything at all. That's simply putting what Giga Designs says vs. what Sonnet says. How hard is it to believe that Motorola's G4 has advanced enough to not need an L3 cache in the latest versions?

So far all I've seen is two companies saying two different things. And sorry, if I were to pick between the two I'd pick Sonnet.