Powermac 9600 CPU upgrade

[Syntho]

I'm looking to install a CPU upgrade into a 9600. I've read that the bus speed is 50mhz on the system and that you get diminishing returns once you go past a certain point, like having to lower the bus speed to get the extra mhz out of the chip. The G3-400mhz cards seem to be the most popular... is that because nothing past 400mhz would speed it up?

I can grab a 400mhz upgrade card easily so I'm not sure if I should wait and get like a 700-800mhz or so.

[Syntho]

There seems to be both G3 and G4 upgrade cards, sometimes with the same speed. I wonder what the difference between those is.

[supernova777]

altivec engine
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltiVec)
only difference
i think

if thats true, the g4 is really just an enhanced g3 chip...

AltiVec was developed between 1996 and 1998 by a collaborative project between Apple, IBM, and Motorola. Apple was the primary customer for AltiVec until Apple switched to Intel-made, x86-based CPUs in 2006. They used it to accelerate multimedia applications such as QuickTime, iTunes and key parts of Apple's Mac OS X including in the Quartz graphics compositor. Other companies such as Adobe used AltiVec to optimize their image-processing programs such as Adobe Photoshop. Motorola was the first to supply AltiVec enabled processors starting with their G4 line. AltiVec was also used in some embedded systems for high-performance digital signal processing.

hmm according to that chart all the g4 chips were motorola/freescale produced
and all the g5 chips were ibm produced
i didnt really know that so clearly! hrm

motorola FTW!

[Syntho]

I'm mostly concerned about that diminishing returns thing. I read somewhere that the bus speed slows everything down so I'm unsure of whether getting a 400mhz upgrade would be just as good as a 700 or beyond. I'm looking on the Sonnet site but not seeing much.

[supernova777]

http://www.everymac.com/upgrade_cards/by_system/powermac_pci.html

well take note of if its saying powerpc 950 this will be a ibm chip
if its saying 7400 etc this will be a motorola chip

the crescendo 700 or 800 looks superior to me
http://www.everymac.com/upgrade_cards/sonnettech/crescendo_g4_pci/crescendo_pci_g4_700.html
http://www.everymac.com/upgrade_cards/sonnettech/crescendo_g4_pci/crescendo_pci_g4_800.html

says these chips are 7455 cpus
if u look back to my chart i made
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=578.0

this is the same cpu as the quicksilver & mdd!

[Syntho]

I was just about to post that page. For some reason they don't show you the other upgrades like the 700, 800 and 1GHZ cards.

[supernova777]

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=602.msg1663#msg1663

http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=319&expand=_a13_a2_b231_a3_b74_b73_b175_b72_a1&action=b307

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815292004

[supernova777]

its possible that 1ghz came out late in the game like way later after anyone really cared anymore;)

[MacTron]

altivec engine
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltiVec)
only difference
i think

The Altivec Engine can be considered a DSP into the main CPU.
It was the Glory and the Ruin of PPC family at the same time. And now a days, it is living in the place where you can less expected to find it... In to the latest Intel CPUs...
One of my Computer History favorites... I can write about it, if interested...

[supernova777]

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/151349144768

heres one one bay by a seller "italod" he seems to sell alot of cpu upgrades for old macs

[Mat]

Syntho, I use the 9600 with G4/800 as main machine. Previously I had a G3/400 inside for some years, and it is not to compare. The G4/800 makes everything much much faster! If you like to really work with the machine, go for one of the faster Sonnet upgrades like the 700, 800 or 1Ghz. You will need it. Also Altivec makes a lot of sense for the programms that are optimized for it.

For sure you will need a fast HD or SSD as well, to use the extra speed. It makes no sense to use an old original 2GB HD with a 1 GHz machine But the System Bus is no real showstopper. Graphiccard and RAM is what concernes more.

The Sonnet 1GHz G4 upgrade is very rare (I am looking myselve for one for years now). It is because it was not a "Standard product" but the 800MHz CPUs were sold out at that time, so Sonnet just had a few Upgrade-Cards with 1GHz G4 as "replacement" for the 800 Crescendos. If I remember correctly the last 140 units they produced, …

[supernova777]

The Sonnet 1GHz G4 upgrade is very rare (I am looking myselve for one for years now). It is because it was not a "Standard product" but the 800MHz CPUs were sold out at that time, so Sonnet just had a few Upgrade-Cards with 1GHz G4 as "replacement" for the 800 Crescendos. If I remember correctly the last 140 units they produced, …

this goes along with what i suggested about it being an afterthought, coming out at the end of the 700s + 800s and not being as marketted.. as the other twp..
140 units is pretty freaking rare

[Syntho]

Can you give a list of the cards in your system? I need the following:

USB
SATA
2x Video

I don't really need anything else except my MOTU card. Also, the max RAM I see for a 9600 is 768mb. Is that true? I was hoping to get it to 1GB.

[Mat]

Can you give a list of the cards in your system?

• Voodoo 5500 PCI Graphics
• Acard AEC-6280M IDE (plus one additional bidirectional IDE-SATA converter)
• LMP "All-In-On" FireWire, USB, 100Mbit Network (Cherry 1394 card)
• Adaptec 29160N Ultra160SCSI Card (With 2 x 15k 143GB Dics)
• RME DIGI9636/52

And "switching" as I do not need them all the time:
• Miro Motion DC 30 Plus
or
• Apple PC Compatibility Card 166
or
• M-Audio Audiophile 24/96

Plus the G4/800 CPU as 1,5 GB of RAM. The 9600 has 12 RAM slots, and each can take 128 MB. I use a huge RAM disc of 384MB as "scratch volume" for all programs that use one.

EDIT: a quite usable machine still these days. Even it you consider that it becomes 17 years in 5 days. And a hell of machine 15 years back! Don´t ask me what I put into it over all the years. And, my mainboard is originally a Kansas one (with the Mach V CPU). There were reports that the Kansas is unstable compared to the Tsunami boards of the 9600, when a Sonnet CPU is used. But I never had any issues.

Edit2: ah and I forgot, I got a "Wired4DVD" MPG2 hardware decoder card as well that I used a long time for watching DVDs or doing MPG2 together with the Voodoo. It is much much better than Apples software decoder regarding plain MPG2. Than I switched for some months to a Radeon 9200LE, which has a MPG decoder onboard, but I like the Voodoo more as it is the only card with RAVE, Glide and OpenGL. It is as fast as the Radeon, I couldn´t see any difference, except the MPG decoder. As I watch DVDs at the Pismo the last time, the RME took the place of the Wired card. So to sum up, if somebody likes to donate a Magma PCI expansion system to me, please go ahead

[Mat]

I need the following:

2x Video

Do you need 2 displays, or 2 cards (would be 4 displays)? Because every better graphiccard like the ATI 7000, 9200, Voodoo 4500/5500, later Formacs, … can drive 2 screens at the same time.

[supernova777]

Do you need 2 displays, or 2 cards (would be 4 displays)? Because every better graphiccard like the ATI 7000, 9200, Voodoo 4500/5500, later Formacs, … can drive 2 screens at the same time.

pretty sure he wants to do 3 or more screens
hes posted about it previously!

[Syntho]

Why do you have a SCSI card? The 9600 has a SCSI port built in I think. And 143GB SCSI drives? I thought 9GB was the limit! I'm gonna pop a SATA card in there and also look for that all-in-one card.

As far as I know there's only 1 card that can drive two monitors on a 9600 and I'm unsure which one that is. Also take in mind that I'll be running OS8.6.

I guess the 9600 can support 1.5GB of ram then. I read that Logic doesn't like more than 1GB so I was going to stop there.

[Syntho]

The ATI 7000 is readily available but I'm seeing both a 32mb and a 64mb version.

[supernova777]

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=1440.msg6869#msg6869

this guy claimed he couldnt get the 7000 to work with 8.6
but i think according to the drivers that it is supposed to work

[Mat]

Why do you have a SCSI card? The 9600 has a SCSI port built in I think. And 143GB SCSI drives? I thought 9GB was the limit!

Yes, there is the 10MB Fast SCSI onboard at the 9600. But did you ever see UW160 SCSI discs working? 3,5MS access time, throughput of 50 to 70MB/s and much more, already 10 years ago, long time before SSD were coming.
And where do you have the information about 9GB limit from? That is definitely crap! You can use every SCSI disc size at every SCSI connector. Even the 300GB discs at the very first SCSI busses from 1985 (at a slower 5MB speed of course).

I'm gonna pop a SATA card in there and also look for that all-in-one card.

Yeah, the LMP is cool, but rare. Perhaps it is just the newly branded Cherri PC card one. Good luck!

As far as I know there's only 1 card that can drive two monitors on a 9600 and I'm unsure which one that is. Also take in mind that I'll be running OS8.6.

Thats also wrong, there are many PCI graphiccards outside that can drive dual monitors! And I did dual monitor use already with my 6100 in the late 90ies (1 onboard one Nubus card) with OS 7.5.5 so 8.6 should be fine as well. If you care about drivers, what about later VillageTronic cards? The 3dfx Voodoo 5500 support from Mac OS 8.5 up (I had a look at the packaging again right now), and I also never had problems with my ATI 7000 (perhaps you have to make sure it is no flashed PC card, but a real Mac version?)!

I guess the 9600 can support 1.5GB of ram then. I read that Logic doesn't like more than 1GB so I was going to stop there.

Yes, 1GB for one application, but Macs can do multitasking, and also got a OS in RAM, so 1,5GB makes sense