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Technology (Apple) Businesses Apple Technology

PowerLogix Releases G4 1GHz Upgrade Cards 29

Posted by pudge from the faster-faster-faster dept.
danamania writes "PowerLogix have announced their PowerForce G4 800Mhz and 1Ghz upgrades for existing G4 systems. Versions for the 100Mhz bus G4s (including the Cube) are available now, with 133Mhz bus versions coming later." PowerLogix also recently released a G4 upgrade to the "Pismo" PowerBook G3.
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PowerLogix Releases G4 1GHz Upgrade Cards More

PowerLogix Releases G4 1GHz Upgrade Cards

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  • Pismo G4, 1GHz Cube!! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by azosx ( 568180 )
    A Pismo G4 500 for $299 doesn't sound all that bad. Considering many of us spent over $4000 for the laptop new, this is quite a steal to extend the life of that little investment. I think many would also agree, they'd rather be lugging one of these around with them rather than the oh so fragile Titanium PowerBook. While the other upgrades are rather pricey, this is still tremendous news for Cube owners. I'm guessing they will probably be their biggest customers. Imagine a 1GHz machine in such a small enclosure! *drool* In anycase, re-release the GeForce2 and Radeon cards for the Cube and I'll be back in business!
  • About damn time. What exactly was the holdup? Not from PowerLogix but just from the upgrade manufacturers in general - was there some problem?
    • I'm not completely certain, but I think there was
      some sort of embargo by Motorola on the release
      of G4s above 500 mhz to the upgrade manufacturers.

      Again, this is based more on heresay than anything
      else, but hey, stranger things have happened in the
      world of Motorola's chip business...
  • How, exactly, do they justify those prices? Unless my memory fails me, isn't the G4 incredibly cheap to manufacture - like under $100?
    • The manufacturing cost isn't of much relevance, because the upgrade makers aren't making their own chips - they're buying them from Motorola. Because they buy them in relatively small quantities, they don't get them as cheaply as Apple does.
  • Newer [macworld.com] has also announced such an upgrade.
  • I've seen this one floating around a bit and nobody's bothered to answer it. The short answser, Apple made it a bit tougher to upgrade the Pismo Powerboooks (And probably the G4s as well if they require a mail-in) by putting the system rom chip on the same daughtercard as the proc. (Check out the ram installer guide of trans intl memory retailers, [transintl.com] [ttp] for some good pics of the mem daughtercard of a pismo g3 powerboook).

    That ROM is one of the ways the OS IDs the system and knows you're installing OS X on a Pismo Powerbook as opposed to a new iBook or a Blue and White G3 tower. So in order to upgrade you have to send them the whole unit (with a charged batt) so they--Powerlogix or NewPowr) can remove the ROM, slap it on the new G4 board, install it and fire the whole assemblage up for a quick spin through your pr0n collection before mailing it back. Thus you have 300 bucks for the total package. That's hardware, bench testing, a quick turn around guarantee and free return delivery. Not too bad for us Pismo owners dying for some Altivec goodness but just not able to swallow purchasing a Powerbook G4 and giving up our far more versatile (and proven durable) Pismo chassis.

    I haven't checked out the info on the new G4 upgrades, but if it's just a PCI drop in with new ROM already onboard then it should be a breeze to install for the home user. Disabling the existing proc would be interesting but I'm sure the software included has some kind of OpenFirmware hack to tell your Mac which G4 to use and which one to cook hotdogs on. I'll have to dig around for some pix on the Cube upgrade...those puppies aren't built to be spacious on the inside.

    cheers.
  • Now that the cube has

    1000 Mhz upgrades

    Dual 500 Mhz upgrades

    How long before we have

    Dual 1000 Mhz upgrades for the Cube?

    What do you think? Doable? Too hot?

    Renewed availablity of faster video cards would be a bonus too.
  • for a 500Mhz iBook? Yeah, I doubt it. I don't think it could possibly fit. Oh well, I just wish there was someway to add a G4 to my iBook.

    Wishfully thinking,
    F-bacher
  • I own a G4/350 sawtooth, the first-generation AGP G4's. The Sonnet dual-processor upgrade is not compatible with my machine, because the Uni-N ASIC on my motherboard does not have the required firmware to run dual processors. So to my knowledge, my machine capped at 500 MHz, and that's not great by today's standards.

    With this new upgrade, suddenly the market value of my G4/350 is improved significantly. It's upgradeable to a GHz, and faster as new processors come on the market, according to PowerLogix.

    I am very curious to see benchmarks on this stuff. For example I wonder how well a 1 GHz upgrade to my system with a 100 MHz system bus would stand up against a current G4/933 with a 133 MHz bus. (It would be unfair to pit it against a current shipping GHz machine as they have two processors).

    I will also still be stuck with ATA/66 (it's ATA/100 in the new models I think), 2x AGP (vs. 4x in the new models). In the my field (music) I don't believe the ATA and AGP are a big issue, and I don't know if a 33% bus speed increase will translate to a big performance improvement.

    I'll be keeping an eye on Bare Feats [barefeats.com], an awesome Mac benchmarking site that answers a lot of those little nagging questions about performance.

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