From: George Namcam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: G3/900 mhz and an XLR8 zif carrier Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 17:04:10 -0800 (PST) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Has anyone gotten a PowerLogix PowerForce G3/900MHz ZIF with 512K L2 On-Chip Cache working with an XLR8 zif carrier card in an S900? This would be a dream come true. Thanks in advance.
Here' s what I know about this subject. I know of two people who have done this. The first person used the G3 800 MHz version. This was last spring sometime maybe May. The trick was to set the micro size switches on the Zif as for the beige G3 ( B&W machine is the only other setting given and Old World Macs won't boot using this setting) You then use the jumpers on the XLR8 carrier card to set the bus speed. The multiplier jumpers on the Carrier card are set to off. (Likely over rided by the Zif anyway) software from powerlogix lets you set the Multiplier on the fly! I think it's called CPU Director. Which does let you chose to over clock the Zif or not and has the other usual cache control settings. he was able to run the G3 800 at speeds just over 900 MHz but settled on a bit less then that. The Zif is a bit thicker then the ones that came with the Carrier cards and he made his own custom heat sink to fit. he seemed happy with it.
Second person bought the G3 900MHz sometime this fall. He found hooking a wire on the end of the clip let him use the heat sink that comes with the Carrier card. The card comes with slip of paper in the box saying that use of the card with the Beige G3 is limited to a multiplier of 13. This is bad news for us and the only notice from Powerlogix they have put a speed limit on the card while keeping it a secret until you buy the card! (outrageous I think!) (There maybe a good reason for doing this. The chip used may not have any thermal protection built in unlike other G3's and over clocking too high may burn the chips up) Which means the card is limited to something like 864 apox in the beige G3 and less in old World machines depending on the bus speed you can get out of your machine. This guy has found that his S900 Umax runs fine with this card and a bus speed of 58MHz . 58 x 13 = 754 MHz not bad for the price but not 900MHz ! Most Umax S900/J700 should be able to do that speed. A few may do better 60 MHz is usually the limit but best not to push that hard. many Apple machines work best at 50 MHz which would only give you 650MHz ! So on the pre-limited cards the switches on the ZIf were a general starting point on the cards and software let you make the final bus speed choices. On the current cards the switch sets the highest multiplier speed (13) and software will let you lower that but not raise it. Powerlogix tech support while not as bad as Sonnet ;-) could be better. I was told try it if you want ,it should work but we have no info to help you in anyway this is an unsupported use. However the 30 day money back will cover you if it doesn't work and the 2 year warranty will cover the unsupported use. Better then most companies would do!
The G3 is now back on the price list speed limit is likely but unknown to me as to what it is.
So while these sell for good prices that and the fact that Video encoding is more then twice as fast with a G4 has kept me from buying one. Also I think iDVD and for sure Studio Pro 2.0 requires a G4 . However most other apps and general use would see a major improvement with this Zif. later Will S
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