G4 processor upgrades

[Sil B]

I am running PT 7 and Tiger on a G4. All is fine accept when bouncing to disk; this is the only function that is not working. I get a DAE error 9073; "... fragmented disk ... CPU overload..." My G4 processor is 733MHz; I know not recommended by Digidesign. Since i am not ready to give up my Mac G4 yet, my question is this; has anyone done a processor upgrade on a G4? Please share your experiences or thoughts on this.

[Tiago Silva]

We have upgraded a G4/500 AGP graphics to an OWC G4/1GHz. It's noticeable, but it's not enough for heavy mixing. We're going to let it become an editing station and bring on the Dual 1.25 we have waiting on another room.

If you upgrade, upgrade at least to 1.4GHz.

[len branville]

Hello,

Like Tiago I upgraded (a while back) my G4 400mhz AGP with a Sonnet 1.2 gig processor. It's faster a gave new life to my G4 (not recommended by Digi but even at one time running an Accel 2 in it naughty).
However, if I had to do it all over again, I would have put the money I spent towards a "G5 purchase fund". Mileage really varies with these especially when put to service as a DAW (I've seen 'em work though).

My 2%

len

[studiojimi]

Hello,

Like Tiago I upgraded (a while back) my G4 400mhz AGP with a Sonnet 1.2 gig processor. It's faster a gave new life to my G4 (not recommended by Digi but even at one time running an Accel 2 in it naughty).
However, if I had to do it all over again, I would have put the money I spent towards a "G5 purchase fund". Mileage really varies with these especially when put to service as a DAW (I've seen 'em work though).

My 2%

len

i've posted this several times in various thread on this same topic but it hopeful can only be helpfully informative

i just upgraded thru OWC (other world computing)
their 1.8. dual into what was my 933 quicksilver

bounce to disk is much better

there have been some quirks but Tiger seem to be smart somehow ant they are appearing to straighten themselves out

i'm just not sure i'm gonna recommend this yet to the DUCkies at large until my 30 day return trial is up and i have not chance to return this "experiment"

feel free to contact me and discuss

[Sil B]

Thanks to all that have posted their thoughts on this subject; its helped me a lot. Check back in a week or so and i will post my results on the upgrade i am going to do to my G4.

[proxy]

Don't know if you've gone ahead, but I'll add that I had the QS 733 and upgraded with a GigaDesign and it was well worth it. I upgraded to a mere 1gig processor, but due to the lack of the cache (bottleneck for that model) on the QS 733, the upgrade felt like more. Very stable as well.

FWIW,

- proxy

[studiojimi]

Don't know if you've gone ahead, but I'll add that I had the QS 733 and upgraded with a GigaDesign and it was well worth it. I upgraded to a mere 1gig processor, but due to the lack of the cache (bottleneck for that model) on the QS 733, the upgrade felt like more. Very stable as well.

FWIW,

- proxy

i'm seeing a pattern with certain editing moves i normally could make that used to set protools to crashing a few software versions back

i'm thinking maybe i may need to adjust my settings

i had a kernal yesterday

the 2nd or 3rd since my upgrade....

i'm being vigiliant and will report back

[ddayson]

Updated a G4 466 to a G4 1.4Ghz via OWC (2M L3 Cache), and it's perfect.

Thi primarily with a Mix++/PT 5.1.3 on OS9.2.2.

Doug

[studiojimi]

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Powe...lver/Upgrades/

the 1.8. is NOW $50-60 higher than a month ago

this shows and tells me that there is a demand for the supply of these babies

some people out there are wanting to buy

i was wondering if any of you could share the setting levels in PT software you are using with success with HD4

i think my recent couple of kernal panics may be due to software settings in pro tools and i have not adjusted mine since the recent 7.0 install and am using the defaults

i really would appreciate and email or reply with some info on this

[zennman]

I have the same 733Mhz Quicksilver model running HD2 Accel and now PT7. I've had a lot of experience with upgrade processors. My QS has had a 1.4Ghz OWC single processor in it for a couple of years now. To make it stable with PT, I had to slow the processor speed one notch below the rated speed of the processor. So I'm running at 1.33Ghz, and my system has always been stable.

Newer G4 processors run at faster clock speeds, but lack the L3 cache. I have not had any luck with any of these upgrades faster than 1.4Ghz with Protools so far. Also, companies are marketing these upgrades with over-clocked specs. If you read the fine print, you'll see some processors rated at 1.0Ghz, but sold guaranteed to work at 1.2Ghz. Only trust the rated spec, not the overclocked spec.

OWC is good because you can adjust the speed with jumpers. Sonnet is only automatic adjusting, but seems to work fine. Sonnet only markets their chips at the chips native clock speed and are very reliable.

I've had "nothing but heartaches" with Giga Designs.

Powerlogix are now marketing their chips at the overclocked speeds. So keep that in mind. You need to stay with a chip with the 2Mb L3 cache.

Protools 7 seems to have a performance loss with single processors and only optimized for multi-processors. My QS running with the single 1.33Ghz is not really fast enough for native samplers. The 1.5Gb memory limit doesn't help either.

Final release testing of Pro Tools 7.0 has shown that there are some performance issues with certain RTAS plug-ins when used with single processor computers. Instance counts on OS X-based LE systems may show a small decrease with certain plug-ins; Windows XP-based LE systems may incur a small performance hit as well with these plug-ins. All plug-ins tested show significant instance count gains on dual-processor computers. Digidesign is actively looking at these issues and hopes to have a fix for this as soon as possible.

My advice is to only upgrade to a dual processor. Powerlogix has a 1.2Ghz dual with L3 cache is the $500. All other processors will definitely speed that 733 dog of processor, but PT7 really needs a dual.

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