Re: [WinMac] Mac processor upgrades

Daniel L. Schwartz(expresso[at]snip.net)
Mon, 24 Jan 2000 21:16:05 -0500

        Good evening!

        I saw too many 6100's with blown motherboards caused by XLR8 overclocking
up into the 83 mHz range... I don't subscribe to the theory of turning up
the speed til it crashes, then backing it off one click!

        The G4 is indeed a nice CPU; but it gains much of its speed due to its
width. If the rest of the bus (memory & north bridge) can't handle the
data, then it's just a waste.

        More importantly - in my opinion - is the I/O subsystem: You can have the
fastest CPU, but if it's being tied down by a slow IDE disk then it's just
spinning its wheels.

 -----

        This is one thing I STILL can't figure out: For years Macs came with more
expensive SCSI disk subsystems... Even though System 6 & 7 was NOT
multithreaded - And couldn't take advantage of it.

        But today, now that OS-X is about to ship, the situation has been
reversed: No SCSI!

        Go figure...

At 01:44 PM 1/24/00 -0700, BJ wrote:
>Tom Roth wrote:
>>
>> "Daniel L. Schwartz" wrote:
>> > The G4 upgrade to your machines is a red herring - Stick with the G3
>> > instead. Personally, I like Sonnet's offerings.
>> > http://www.sonnettech.com
>>
>> I saw some of theirs in a Mac-something catalog and they looked like a
>> good price. I've not visited their website yet though I will now. I
>> figured upgrading to a G4 would probably not be feasible or worth it. I
>> thought maybe a 400MHz G3 would be sufficient.
>>
>> I noticed that with all of the processor upgrade card companies, they
>> list the cache speed at half of the processor speed.
>
>This is normal. (iirc, the cache on Apple's systems run at 2:1 too) 1:1
>speeds are expensive to pull off, since that needs a lot of _very_ fast
>ram.
>
>I would like to know why the G4 is a red herring, Dan. Is it not all
>that compatible or is a G4 so much faster tan the rest of the system it
>isn't worth it?
>
>--
>Bruce Johnson
>University of Arizona
>College of Pharmacy
>Information Technology Group

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Mon Jan 24 2000 - 18:56:49 PST