Korin Hasegawa-John
- 2001.08.13
If you are looking into upgrading the processor in your
daughtercard- or ZIF-based Power Mac or clone, you have several of
options. The biggest one is processor type.
G3 or G4?
Whether you choose the G3 or G4 depends on what you are doing.
In general, G4s aren't as cost effective if you don't use AltiVec
(Velocity Engine in AppleSpeak) optimized programs. Most programs
that are optimized are programs such as Photoshop, Final Cut Pro,
and other multimedia apps. If you are just upgrading your computer
to get a speed boost for games, FileMaker, Word, and other
non-multimedia programs, a G3 is probably a better bet, because
they are much less expensive.
If you are planning to run OS X, I recommend a G4, because
X is AltiVec-optimized. Prices range from $130-300 or more for G3
cards, and $250 and up for G4 cards.
Cache
All current G3 and G4 cards include an L2 cache. However, size
and speed vary. A processor card's specs are usually written like
this: G3/400/133/512k. The first space is the type, next the clock
speed, then the speed at which the processor accesses the L2 cache,
and finally the size of the L2 cache itself. Most cards have an L2
cache running at either one-third or one-half of the processor's
speed. Some cards let you change the L2 cache's speed as well. A
larger cache makes your Mac faster. The faster the speed at which
the cache and processor exchange information makes you Mac faster
as well. Here's an example. There are two cards, both G3s running
at 400 MHz. One costs $169; the other $199. What's the difference?
The more expensive card has twice the L2 cache running at a faster
speed, making it faster than the other card.
Speed
Most importantly, you need to know what speed of processor card
you want. Right now, 400 MHz is the "sweet spot" for the G3 cards.
These cards will make any daughtercard Mac much faster without
breaking the wallet. A 500 MHz card costs much more and won't make
your computer a whole lot faster than a 400 MHz card.
With a G4, it's hard to say. Most G4 cards are fairly expensive,
with 400 MHz being the low end of the scale and costing $250 or
more. Of course, if you depend on your Mac to make you money with
multimedia, faster is always better.
It all depends on what you want to do with your Mac. Hopefully,
this has given you an idea of the different factors that are
important in processor upgrades. There are a lot of upgrade card
choices out there, and if you look around enough you can probably
find one to suit your needs - unless, of course, your needs run in
the range of dual 800 MHz G4s. :-)
