From: Pete <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 09:27:58 +1000
Just saw this excellent review of the fastest available ZIF CPU upgrade
options on the xlr8yourmac site
<http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G3CARDS/G3_1.1GHz_vs_G4_1GHz_review/ index.html>.
OWC only lists Beige G3, B&W G3, Yikes G4 as compatible, but wondering if
all or any of these ZIFs are compatible with the ZIF carrier cards we can
use in our SuperMacs (I have two running G3 300 MHz ZIFs in my S900s and my
logic tells me they should but just want to check)? Anyone used any of
these ZIF upgrades on a carrier card in an S900 or are the Sonnet Crescendo
cards (full CPU card upgrade not ZIF) our only option?
Cheers, Pete.
Pete, I have been looking into this issue myself for sometime now. i was all set to buy one of the PL 900MHz Zif's as the price is now apox $209.00 . To answer your question yes, any of the Powerlogix Zif's should work. The Sonnet much more iffy as they are made special for the listed models and include the usual Sonnet tricks to get them to work. In this case they run @ 66MHz bus in machines which run at 100 MHz bus with other Zif's go figure ;-) I will let this note from the fine folks at Macgurus speak for it's self.
Will,
We quit carrying PL because of the incredible high return rate and the non-existent support. Those 900 G3s were coming back at over a 50% rate.
In addition to that, you'll find that in many uses a 500 G4 will outperform that 900 G3, run cooler and have zero compatibility issues. All things that can't be said about a PL ZIF. I swapped out an old XLR8 500 ZIF in my B&W for a PL 900, I went back to the 500.
Purely subjective, I can tell you that a 900 will outperform the 500 G4 in OS9 Finder operations since altivec doesn't help. But in OSX there was no comparison, the G4 was faster and much more stable.
You won't find us selling a product that isn't supported. PL left us holding the bag on a half dozen cards, we are still looking into legal action.
Rick
I bought the Daystar/XLR8 500-600 MHz Zif for $199.00 and it's been running great in my Carrier card@ 540 MHz CPU 270 MHz 1 MB cache @ 60MHz bus for two weeks now. I never dreamed my old machine would run at 60 MHz bus! I did have some issues at first. Often every upgrade in speed finds weak RAM. Which was the case with this upgrade. One of my 128 MB chips will not run with the G4 cpu in the machine odd but true. The trick to getting the 60 MHz speed is twofold . First off the Daystar/XLR8 500-600 Zif is rated to run at you guessed it 500-600 MHz depending on machine etc. Each one has also been tested running at 650 MHz @ 100 MHz bus in a G4 (PCI) machine. They also use a 7410LE low heat Chip which is newer then what most others are selling.So the Zif is not being over clocked in our old machines unlike many other Zif upgrades. However the other motherboard chips are being over clocked so hard to say how this will go long term. I did have error issues at first the trick was to remove the motherboard L2 cache from the mix. On the motherboard to the right of the CPU slot are two very small drops of soldier labeled J 38. A very few motherboards have two pins with a jumper here most don't. Jumper pin on turns off the L2 Cache. No jumper pin you need to soldier just enough to join the two small pins together. I cheated...I bought for $12.95 at Fry's a Silver Circuit Writer Pen. It took less then 5 min using this pin to join the two together. Then another 5-10min to dry. I didn't even have to take anything apart other then the machine cover and pull the wires to the side out of the way. Amazing how much better the machine runs with this small fix. It fixed RAM and hard drive corruption issues running the G4 at speeds over 500 MHz. I recommend not going too far with the over clocking of the motherboard and so have not tried over 60 Mhz bus.This setup is really great in Jaguar and Panther. I don't see any difference in OS 9 over the G3 running @ 50MHz. My machine now boots in 80 sec in Panther! Both Macgurus.com and Daystar/XLR8 sell the Zif for $199.00 plus !5.00 shipping form Daystar.
Note the review you listed uses the OWC G4 500-600 Zif and not the Daystar/XLR8 Zif. the Daystar is the new low heat 7410 LE Nitro chip the OWC must use the older chip as they say it runs hot and Daystar does note that no one else has the new chip. Let me know if you need any more info on my setup. I did also put in a small fan to blow on the Carrier cards heat sink just to be on the safe side. The G4 7410 LE chip like the Powerlogix Fast G3 Zif's does not report any temperature readings. So I wanted to be sure it wasn't going to overheat even though the heat sink seems cooler then it was with the G3 550 Zif setup. Most likely because it's a low temp chip and also it's not being over clocked. Later Will S
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