Giga Designs Offers First 2GHz G4 Upgrade
Giga Designs Offers First 2GHz G4 Upgrade
by , 6:00 AM EDT, April 5th, 2005
Giga Designs recently introduced a 2GHz version of its PowerPC G4 7447A processor upgrade for AGP equipped Power Mac G4 systems.
The upgrade card is technically rated by Freescale at 1.6GHz, but Giga Designs each one to ensure they run reliably at 2GHz. The upgrade also features 512K of L2 cache running at the same speed as the processor.
The upgrade, model number 7A-1620U, is available now for $499 and requires Mac OS X 9.2.2 or Mac OS X 10.3.5 and later. The card is compatible with the following Power Mac G4 models: AGP Graphics (Sawtooth), Gigabit Ethernet, Digital Audio, Quicksilver, and Quicksilver 2002.
Observer Comments
Tue Apr 05, 2005 10:34 am Subject: Let's hope for more
The 7447A does not support Level 3 cache. It seems to me that, at some point, there is a serious law of diminishing returns for this variant of the G4. Without the L3 cache won't this processor be spending some serious time in idle waiting for the slow 100 - 133MHz bus to get data to it? The 7447A, unlike the other variants, sacrifices all L3 in return for a higher clock speed. There is a reason that barefeats did a comparison of different G4 variants in a G4 cube vs the mac mini and came up with L3 cache being absolutely critical for overall performance (http://www.barefeats.com/cubeup.html). Are we falling victim to our own MegaHertz Myth? 
A 2.0 ghz processor means nothing without the large 2MB L3 cache on the 1.4 processors. Take a look on XBench, and you won't see any 1.7 ghz processors at the top. It's all the 1.4 ghz Dual processors that lead the way. If Giga Designs could somehow design a 2.0 ghz processor with a 2MB cache -- now THAT would be something to rave about.
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