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paingold · Jul 19, 2005, 10:55 AM

Hi, I'm trying to decide on what to upgrade my G4 AGP 500mhz with. Small dog is having a special that ends soon. They have the Giga Designs 1.8 for $299 and the Dual 1.33GHz for $449. I was about to throw down the money for the 1.8GHz since the price is really good. But then I was wondering if the Dual 1.33 would be better for what I do. My work consists of light Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver. I know that the 1.8GHZ card does not have L3 cache but I don't know how important that is. What would you recommend?
My machine has the Radeon 8500 and 1gig of ram. Eventually I'll get the 9800 Radeon. The G5's are out of my price range at the moment. Thanks

Link · Jul 19, 2005, 11:22 AM

The 1.33 for 450? Wow, that's what GD themselves is selling the 1.6s for, but they have no L3 either, and this is the thing...

The L3 cache really DOES help. Okay, that dual 1.33 will kick the single 1.8's ass up a river, give or take, there's about an 80% performance gain (if not more) when having a dualie machine in some cases, as it is my PB can barely outrun my powermac and it's 1.5ghz, my G4 is only 800mhz, but the dual setup (as I had figured) gets it to at least 1.3-1.4ish in performance.

But that's not true for everything, some things run smoother on the PB and a few run smoother on the PM, one example of this is iTunes' visualizer, which runs a whee bit smoother on my Powerbook even though it only has a 9700 mobile vs the G4's 9600XT.

Depending on your luck, you might want to go get a 9600xt instead of a 9800 -- the 9800 is a great card, but you only get VGA and DVI -- the 9600Pro (and XT), do DVI and well, DVI -- if you buy an ADC->DVI adaptor (the ADC is powerless due to the design of the card meaning to fit a g5's board)... all you need to make it work is 2 pieces of tape (and it works very well/safe with this).

The 9800Pro might be a bit faster overall, that I'm not sure about, plus it was built with those machines in mind, but it is worth considering a 9600XT if you can get them cheap enough -- sometimes they go really low on ebay. ... There's 9650s too though those are even slower.

Err, this will help: http://www.barefeats.com/rad9650.html

Anyway, back to the CPU upgrades, a dual 1.33 might definitely work over the 1.8, but if you like numbers, a dual 1.6 might be better than both lol.

paingold · Jul 19, 2005, 11:56 AM

Thanks for the info Link. The only reason I mentioned the 9800 is because I have seen them in the classifieds lately going for $150. So I figure I can get the 1.8GHz and the 9800 for the price of the 1.33GHz dual. But either way I'll update the video card down the road, sooner if I get the 1.8GHz. I'm kind of leaning towards the dual right now.

Barefeats is really informative. Thanks

Lateralus · Jul 19, 2005, 12:20 PM

Dual 1.33, no contest.

waxcrash · Jul 19, 2005, 01:54 PM

Get the dual. The L3 cache helps. I went from a G4 AGP 400MHz to a Giga Dual 1.4GHz and it's a huge difference.

paingold · Jul 19, 2005, 03:33 PM

I ordered the dual 1.33GHz card this afternoon. I've been waiting too long to make this upgrade. Looking forward to it.
On a side note: small dog also has the Dual 1.8GHz for $499, but I had to draw the line somewhere. I think the 1.3 will be more than suffice for now.

Here's the link if anyone is interested:
http://www.smalldog.com/wag15793/atgiga

astepanuks · Jul 19, 2005, 07:02 PM

I decided to opt for dual 1.8. I hope my G4 Sawtooth 400 Mhz will be able to run it without much heat or lack of power issues (I believe it has only 200 W power supply). Currently I have installed 1.2 Ghz fanless Sonnet upgrade and it works like a charm.
I am running 2 video cards, original ATI Pro and PCI card for second monitor, 3 internal HD. I am thinking to pull out 3rd drive (below DVD) and replace 2 ATI cards with one dual head nVidia in order to cool things down and to reduce the power load.
In teresting to note that according to the part numbers, initial dual 1.8 Ghz were overclocked 1.4 chips whereas these dual cards are "real" 1.8 Ghz.
And looks like this Giga promo at Smalldog is very popular and duals are out of stock and on backorder.

Lateralus · Jul 19, 2005, 11:32 PM

I jumped in on the Dual 1.8GHz/$499 deal late last week before they went on back order. She shipped Monday afternoon and should be here Thursday.

I had been intending on riding with my 533s until the 970MP G5 Power Macs debut, but at this price I really couldn't pass. Plus, when it comes time to sell the G4 this upgrade will have added more value to the system than it cost me to buy it.

So... yayz.

astepanuks · Jul 19, 2005, 11:47 PM

Originally Posted by Lateralus

I jumped in on the Dual 1.8GHz/$499 deal late last week before they went on back order. She shipped Monday afternoon and should be here Thursday.

I had been intending on riding with my 533s until the 970MP G5 Power Macs debut, but at this price I really couldn't pass. Plus, when it comes time to sell the G4 this upgrade will have added more value to the system than it cost me to buy it.

So... yayz.

Same here. I was planning to hold off, but could not resist the offer.
I just checked transactions on my VISA and looks Smalldog has debited $ which would imply that order has shipped.

paingold · Jul 20, 2005, 12:41 AM

Am I going to hate myself for not spending the $50 more for the dual 1.8GHZ?

Link · Jul 20, 2005, 12:45 AM

Nah

Macola · Jul 20, 2005, 12:59 PM

Just make sure you are prepared to do some serious cooling mods with those dual 1.8's. Trust me, the Sawtooth/Gigabit cases were *not* designed to handle that amount of heat. I only have a dual 1.4 in my GigE, but lost a power supply to heat issues.

Tyre MacAdmin · Jul 20, 2005, 01:17 PM

I'll back that heat thing up... I had 6 scsi drives in my G4 Digital Audio for about 2 years and never had any heat issues before I upgraded to the dual 1.8s...

chris v · Jul 20, 2005, 01:39 PM

Originally Posted by astepanuks

I decided to opt for dual 1.8. I hope my G4 Sawtooth 400 Mhz will be able to run it without much heat or lack of power issues (I believe it has only 200 W power supply). Currently I have installed 1.2 Ghz fanless Sonnet upgrade and it works like a charm.
I am running 2 video cards, original ATI Pro and PCI card for second monitor, 3 internal HD. I am thinking to pull out 3rd drive (below DVD) and replace 2 ATI cards with one dual head nVidia in order to cool things down and to reduce the power load.
In teresting to note that according to the part numbers, initial dual 1.8 Ghz were overclocked 1.4 chips whereas these dual cards are "real" 1.8 Ghz.
And looks like this Giga promo at Smalldog is very popular and duals are out of stock and on backorder.

Make sure you've got the rev 2 uninorth motherboard. My Sawtooth 450 was a rev 1, which cannot take a dual upgrade. OWC has a utility you can download that'll tell you which it is.

suvsr4terrorists · Jul 20, 2005, 01:47 PM

I have a dual 1.33 gigadesigns, and it's a badass processer. The faster chips don't have L3 cache, which sucks. I'd much prefer a slower chip with L3 cache.

Todd Madson · Jul 20, 2005, 04:38 PM

Let me tell you something: after I switched to a G5 dual 2.5 I decided I will not be
purchasing any single CPU anything in the future, everything will be dual CPU or
dual core. That thing beats the pants off of even dual core HT P4s in the 3.4 ghz
area.

Having an operating system that works with the dual capability and software as
well makes everything else seem like it was a bad idea of the past.

So, yes, the L3, the dual-ness together will make a big improvement visible.

outsourced · Jul 20, 2005, 05:59 PM

Originally Posted by Macola

Just make sure you are prepared to do some serious cooling mods with those dual 1.8's. Trust me, the Sawtooth/Gigabit cases were *not* designed to handle that amount of heat. I only have a dual 1.4 in my GigE, but lost a power supply to heat issues.

Are you certain the power supply was lost because of heat issues? I'm only asking because the 7447A processors run cooler than the 745x on the 1.4GHz CPUs. I even asked the Giga Designs tech gurus this very question: Which would run cooler and consume less power. Of course, they recommended the 7447 CPU.

I'm sincere with my question, because I was thinking of replacing my brand new Sonnet single 1.4 with the dual 1.8.

Anyone else experience negative side effects with these dual CPUs?

Macola · Jul 20, 2005, 06:40 PM

Originally Posted by outsourced

Are you certain the power supply was lost because of heat issues?

Not 100% sure, but based on the console logs, specific type of error message, and other reports out there, that was the most likely cause. The PS was originally purchased as new. It ran fine in winter and early spring. During the time when room temps were in the high 70s (F) here, it began shutting down randomly and finally died.

Even now, with A/C on constantly (room temp at 74), and the procs downclocked to 1.2 GHz, the air coming out of the (new) power supply is at 92F.

If you look at the GigE case design (and I assume the Sawtooth is similar), the air intake path was very convoluted. Keep in mind that those cases were designed for processors that were cooled only by a heat sink and no CPU fans.

I'm sure the 7447 chips do better than the 7455. Still, I'd make sure to improve airflow before installing them and finding out the hard way.

suvsr4terrorists · Jul 20, 2005, 08:30 PM

If it's any help I recently installed a temperature sensor on the heatsink inbetween my CPUs, and it's averages around 56-59 degrees. I have a dual 1.33.

astepanuks · Jul 27, 2005, 08:11 AM

Smalldog has shipped my 1.8 Ghz dual card. Can't wait... I also ordered an exaust fan that fits into a PCI expansion slot. I thought this should help cooling down thew box http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI....idConfirmEmail
PS, I alos e-mailed Giga with list of questions about the heat and power supply issues in Sawtooth and their advice is that it there shouldn't be too many issues.

suvsr4terrorists · Jul 27, 2005, 09:06 AM

Those PCI exhaust fans are usually totally pointless. I've read multiple places they're noisy and they didn't reduce the temperature inside at all.

>shrug<

Macola · Jul 27, 2005, 03:14 PM

Yeah, PCI slot fans won't do much, especially since the air pathway is usually blocked by the graphics card. Giga also told me that heat wouldn't be a problem. However, they did admit that they have only tested their upgrades with stock PowerMac configurations, and they have not done extended (endurance) testing.

FYI, here's the thread about the power supply issues. In addition to the mod I described there, I also removed the optical drive to an external case, and put a drive bay cooler with three fans in its place. I reversed the fans so air is being exhausted from the case.

danman · Jul 27, 2005, 05:43 PM

I had the dual 1.8's for a while and it made the case waayy hotter. I eventually removed the two 40mm fans and replaced it with 1 80mm fan and also downclocked the procs to 1.7ghz. The heat output went way down as a result.

And yes, the PCI slot coolers are pretty worthless but you can reverse them so they suck the hot air off of the HD's and blow it out the back.