A Nonny Moose Posted March 30, 2007 Share Posted March 30, 2007 As always, before doing any kind of major system upgrade like this, remember that a shiny new Mac mini is only $599 US. Newer Technologis has released upgrades to the venerable G4 towers. They are promising a speed boost of up to 12 times the current speed of supported models. Plus, they are promising no firmware hacks to install them! It sounds like a good deal if you're not willing to part with your trusty old G4 tower. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/46963-newer-g4-upgrades/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
errandwolfe Posted March 30, 2007 Share Posted March 30, 2007 Recently revamped an old Sawtooth G4 with a new 1.4 Ghz CPU from PowerLogix. Worked decently enough, but to really get these machines running nicely you need to do not only the CPU, but max out your RAM, add a new video card, and add a new ATA or SATA controller card. When you are all said and done you might as well buy a mini unless your heart is dead set on a tower. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/46963-newer-g4-upgrades/#findComment-336297 Share on other sites More sharing options...
sandmanfvrga Posted March 30, 2007 Share Posted March 30, 2007 Well if you think about it, you can get a G4 tower from ebay with good specs for not much, add a dual core upgrade from this page, and have a killer mac tower that you can still upgrade over time that will do great video editing and more! Can't do that with a mini. I might look into this. Example: http://cgi.ebay.com/PowerMac-G4-Dual-867MH...1QQcmdZViewItem Just over $500. Put the new chip in there, up the ram for cheap and you could have a dual core, lots of ram, fast machine that could do what you needed for under $1000. I don't see a bad thing there do you? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/46963-newer-g4-upgrades/#findComment-336356 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Embio Posted March 30, 2007 Share Posted March 30, 2007 I wonder if one of those would go in my B&W.... .....nope, just checked. Ah well.... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/46963-newer-g4-upgrades/#findComment-336391 Share on other sites More sharing options...
eire3678 Posted March 30, 2007 Share Posted March 30, 2007 You wouldn't be able to upgrade that dual 867 MDD with those processors. They are only compatible with the Sawtooth, Gigabit, Digital Audio and Quicksilver models. This limits you to PC133 RAM at a maximum of 1.5GB and a system bus of 133MHz. For that same $1000 you'd spend on purchasing a G4 and upgrading you could buy a G5 tower which will be capable of using faster RAM and newer video cards. Unless you already have a G4 tower with the maximum RAM, a fast video card and an ATA/133 or SATA card with a higher speed hard drive it makes little sense to bother with upgrading processors on G4s. Also, the upgrades are dual processor, not dual core. Not a big difference just clarifying. These upgrades would have been killer 3 years ago when I was waiting with cash-in-hand for them. Now they're just too expensive. Perhaps that's why I'm so negative and bitter No go on the B&W. Your best bet would be http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet%20Te...ogy/EG410001MU/ for a 1GHz G4. I can't find it now but those upgrades downclocked your system bus to 66MHz when they were first released. And seeing how they run on both beige G3 and B&W G3 systems they probably still do. On these systems that hurts performance quite a bit. If you can find one of the old G3 1.1GHz upgrades for the B&W it would serve you well. And don't forget it's a high cost for a computer that's running on 8 years old now. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/46963-newer-g4-upgrades/#findComment-336393 Share on other sites More sharing options...
borisbadenov Posted March 30, 2007 Share Posted March 30, 2007 Other than wanting to keep the old case, why upgrade an older G4? I mean, for $500, I can get a Core 2 Duo, tons of ram and a great graphics card. And the system will be more configuralble than a G4. Besides, I do not think it too far in the future that Apple lets the PPC system die out. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/46963-newer-g4-upgrades/#findComment-336413 Share on other sites More sharing options...
eire3678 Posted March 30, 2007 Share Posted March 30, 2007 Some video and audio editing programs run better on PPC hardware. I remember reading that a few even run better on a G4 than they do on a G5. So that would be a reason to buy a PPC. Outside of specific PPC applications though it makes little sense to go PPC now. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/46963-newer-g4-upgrades/#findComment-336424 Share on other sites More sharing options...
consolation Posted March 30, 2007 Share Posted March 30, 2007 You wouldn't be able to upgrade that dual 867 MDD with those processors. They are only compatible with the Sawtooth, Gigabit, Digital Audio and Quicksilver models. This limits you to PC133 RAM at a maximum of 1.5GB and a system bus of 133MHz. For that same $1000 you'd spend on purchasing a G4 and upgrading you could buy a G5 tower which will be capable of using faster RAM and newer video cards. Unless you already have a G4 tower with the maximum RAM, a fast video card and an ATA/133 or SATA card with a higher speed hard drive it makes little sense to bother with upgrading processors on G4s. Also, the upgrades are dual processor, not dual core. Not a big difference just clarifying. These upgrades would have been killer 3 years ago when I was waiting with cash-in-hand for them. Now they're just too expensive. Perhaps that's why I'm so negative and bitter Exactly, I loved my QS -well I was quite attached to it anyway, but these things are 2~3 years too late. The memory bus and only ATA66 drives just can't cut it nowadays, and for light browsing/office work you don't need the upgrade anyway. I think that site is downright misleading if not dishonest, those G4s might be = to C2D in terms of processor speed, but as far as real world performance goes; it's like a Ferrari engine, Moris Minor gear box and Mini tyres -Makes a lot of noise but won't go very fast. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/46963-newer-g4-upgrades/#findComment-336644 Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzz Posted March 31, 2007 Share Posted March 31, 2007 Just a quick point: the fsb is on the processor so the newer processor will have a slightly better fsb, but an intel mac will outperform these machines easy. I bought a sawtooth purely to service os9 users, also i wanted a cheap machine i could use scsi on and that had pci. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/46963-newer-g4-upgrades/#findComment-336937 Share on other sites More sharing options...
eire3678 Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 The FSB may be on the processor but that will only help the data rate between the cache and the processor. The RAM, AGP and PCI are still limited to the 100MHz or 133MHz of the Mac. The most I've ever seen a Digital Audio overclocked was to a 150MHz bus and it wasn't stable. I still love my Digital Audio. Bought the Dual 533 brand new nearly 7 years ago now and used it as my main Mac all the way up until February this year. I had everything upgraded (Geforce4Ti, Radeon PCI, Ultra320 SCSI w/74GB 10kRPM drive, 1.25GB RAM) except the processor. If these upgrades were released 3 years ago I wouldn't have ever built a hackintosh. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/46963-newer-g4-upgrades/#findComment-338370 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urbz Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 okay... you've gotta be a little desperate to want to hold on to a G4 that badly. Upgrading a computer that's gonna be dead within the next 4 years when you've already had it for 3 or 4 seems kinda ridiculous to me... but then again i'm an ebayer! -Urby Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/46963-newer-g4-upgrades/#findComment-338675 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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