CPU Upgrade for G4 "Sawtooth"

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Jan 2, 2007
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Your Mac's Specs
G4 1.5Ghz, 2GB RAM, DVDRW, 360GB HDD
I recently upgraded my G4 350 to a PowerLogix 1.5Ghz CPU. It made a MASSIVE difference. But I was wondering, with the standard G4 logic board, should I have just gone to a 1ghz or similar? Basically, does the bus speed limit the CPU upgrade? Would it be worth going to a 2ghz or would it not be any faster?

Cheers :)
 
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Your Mac's Specs
MacBook: 2GHz, 2GB RAM, 120GB HD; PowerTower Pro (300MHz G3 clone): 608MB RAM, 10GB HD
Even with system bus bottleneck a 2GHz processor will be faster than a 1.5GHz processor. However, I don't think it would be worth throwing money at. If you absolutely must have more speed than a 1.5 GHz G4, I'd save my $$ for a G5 or a new intel mac.
 
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that helps me too thanks guys i am new to macs, but i know in the pc world if you dont have the fsb to go with the cpu you are just making a bottleneck mess and you will dissapointed with your machine when it does only an little better.
 
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3.4 Ghz i7 MacBook Pro (2015), iPad Pro (2014), iPhone Xs Max. Apple TV 4K
I recently upgraded my G4 350 to a PowerLogix 1.5Ghz CPU. It made a MASSIVE difference. But I was wondering, with the standard G4 logic board, should I have just gone to a 1ghz or similar? Basically, does the bus speed limit the CPU upgrade? Would it be worth going to a 2ghz or would it not be any faster?

Cheers :)


Yes. The bus speed does in fact limit the overall speed of the computer. You can go with a faster CPU but it's just never going to get that much better than you have now. I used to have one of those machines and the bus speed was what made me decide to get a new machine after i went the route you have. Right now your machine is a bout as good as it's ever going to get and you probably would not have seen a large performance gap if you had chosen a 1ghz CPU instead.
 
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Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
Years ago also had a Gigabit Ethernet upgraded with a Powerlogix CPU upgrade to run leopard. Was okay but very limited. Save your pennies for a Mac Pro/
 

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