11-07-2007, 10:53 AM

I read another thread about cpu upgrades but it didn;t exactly answer my question which is why im posting. My question is can i take a dual 533mhz g4 from a gigabyte power mac g4 and put it into a sawtooth agp 400mhz g4 tower with out making any modifications to the logic board or case? and if so how much faster do you think it would make it?

11-07-2007, 11:11 AM

I've never attempted this sort of thing on a Mac. I would assume since the Dual processors requires two connections on the logic board (one for each processor) and the 400mhz is only a single processor machine (only guessing since you didnt write dual 400mhz) a Dual processor wont fit.
If it were to work, there would be a spped increase obviously. It wouldn't be much of a difference seeing both are obsolete machines to begin with.
I would also assume that this is a double posting from the wording of your first post so it will probably be merged with the original only giving you more grief. As for not getting much help, there might be a reason. Either your are asking a question that has an obvious answer you won't like or no one has tried what you want to do because the cost outweighs the benefits.

11-07-2007, 11:39 AM

TBH I don't think the benefits are worth your efforts...

11-07-2007, 12:05 PM

There is no Apple original dual cpu card that will fit in a sawtooth machine without making serious modifications to the machine.

bryphotoguy: The dual g5s had one connector per processor module; the dual G4s shared one connector for both CPUs.

11-07-2007, 12:40 PM

ok so question, i think this is going to be same answer as the other one but just to clerify, i'v been doing some research on sonnet and powerlogix and giga designs etc, there cpu board descriptions keep saying "for use in agp graphics g4, gigabite g4, digital audio g4 and quicksilver g4" so would it be possible if i just through the hole "dual cpu" idea out the window and went with like a 1 ghz cpu that came out of a quicksilver, would that work in a sawtooth? because im sitting here installing adobe cs2 and its taking an our to install on this sawtooth im used to blazing fast performance with my p4 ht windows machine, i got this mac off of a friend of mine for 100 bucks, and i want to upgrade it alittle untill i save up the money to get the new intel mac, but i dont want to spend a fortune to upgrade a old machine like this either.

EDIT: Correction-1 1/2 hours to install it just finished.

11-08-2007, 12:47 AM

Nah, when you get right down to it there is no Apple original CPU card that will fit in a Sawtooth period, EXCEPT for the cube cards, the gigabit cards, and some of the slow, single-CPU DA cards (up to 533, maybe 667. The 733 won't fit).

Thing is, of those models, the only one that had a CPU that was enough faster than the Sawtooth to make the upgrade worthwhile is the DA. And while the DA CPU will physically fit in a Sawtooth, it will not work properly in the machine.

The digital audio machines have a 133MHz FSB. The Sawtooth machines have a 100MHz bus. And unlike PCs, practically speaking, the bus is not overclockable. Which means that a 533MHz DA CPU will run at, uh, 400MHz in a Sawtooth. Unless you change the clock multiplier by soldering on the processor module.

And if you thought desoldering an IDE port sounded tedious, you will not want to tackle the kind of soldering you need to do to move the resistors that you need to move around. They're surface mount and very, very small. How small?

See this:


That's on my dual 533 DA card (though the resistors are the same regardless of whether it's a DA, Sawtooth, Gig-E, or QS card). Locations R60, R62, R64, and R66 are populated with resistors to control the bus multiplier. That ruler at the bottom of the pic? It's metric. Those resistors are 2mm long. It took me an entire night to solder 30 gauge wire wrap leads to those 8 pads and 8 more on the top side of the CPU. It's not something you want to tackle if you don't have a lot of experience soldering already.

Which brings us back to the original point: The only practical way for most people to upgrade a Sawtooth processor is to buy a 3rd party upgrade card from Sonnet or Gigadesigns or someone else. =/ The Sawtooth is not the easiest G4 to upgrade the CPU on; the Yikes models were worse, but the DA is much, much better.