XLR8 Your Mac publishes Giga upgrade review


XLR8 Your Mac has published an in-depth review of Giga Designs' 1.25 - 1.33 GHz upgrade card, which partly answers the question "Should I buy or upgrade?"

Though Apple's top-of-the-line dual 1.42GHz PowerMac is still untested, it's a fairly safe bet that upgrades from PowerLogix, Sonnet or Giga don't offer that level of performance. However, for those on a budget and not looking for the best of the best of the best, this latest Giga card looks to be a good choice.

As this upgrade includes its own heatsink and cooling fan, installation is said to take "about 10 minutes." Another plus right out of the box, according to XLR8, is the fact that L3 cache enabling doesn't require any software.

In terms of performance, on the 133MHz bus Digital Audio machine XLR8 used in their testing, this upgrade ran reliably at 1.33MHz (10x multiplier). For those with an adventurous bent, Giga now allows (ie it won't break your warranty) CPU overclocking which means that a few lucky people may be able to push their 1.33GHz card to 1.8GHz or more.

In various tests, the Giga 1.33GHz performed very well indeed, equaling or besting upgraded and stock Apple machines that "should" have posted better results. This represents good value for those with 133MHz bus PowerMacs (ie 466MHz through 733MHz model G4s).

The downsides are few: Changing the CPU voltage of this upgrade will void your warranty (so actually reliably attaining some of the high clock supported isn't particularly realistic) and some G4s may experience a failure to wake from sleep (OS X only) when this card is installed. Also, owners of 2002 QuickSilver G4s won't be able to push this card beyond 1.2GHz due to firmware limitations inherent to these machines.

A new chip

According to XLR8, the G4 chip used in Giga's 1.33GHz upgrades is a Moto 7455a, which includes a wider range of clock multipliers than previous 7455 chips. Some of the clock/CPU speeds (0.5 increments) supported by the upgrade aren't recognized by Apple's System Profiler but run stably nonetheless.

The Giga Designs 1.33GHz upgrade is available from Other World Computing (OWC) for $599. Coupled with the ATI 9600 AGP card OWC is offering on special for $170 make yesterday's Digital Audio or Quicksilver G4 into a true performer for under $800, which is roughly what one can expect to pay for a used/refurbished G4 466MHz alone.

Food for thought...