G4 Digital Audio 533 Questions...

I'm sure it will be plenty fast. My 500mhz iBook G3 is nice and quick on tiger with only 320mb of RAM. A nice price too!

heh, you picked up the same system i have. you will not see a slow UI period wit this.

mine is a 533mhz, 512mb, 40GB HDD, Geforce 2 MX 32mb vram AGP 4x. 10/100/1000baset ethernet. built in option for wifi ( not installed). mine has a DVD ROM drive as well.

i am planning to buy ram either from OWC, or DMS. make sure you get CL2.2.2 PC133 and not the slower CL3.2.2 PC133or CL3.3.3 PC133 ram. yes it will be $4-$5 more per stick but i think its worth the extra.

the 6200 might do good for you, i have seen allot of complaints about the performance of them, but they was installed in cubes (they have 2x AGP vs the 4x AGP in DA G4)

here is my plan for mine.

Fastmac dual 7455 1.4ghz upgeade

eVGA 6800 GT

120GB HDD

1.5GB ram

airport card (i dont know what all version can go into it)

and a CD/DVD combo burner ( i will stick with Pioneer DVR seres)

but yea you will not see a slow GUI at all, VLC play's real great on it. halo even runs on it

this thing will run circles around my AIO and Yikes 400 in everything with ease

I have a 466MHz G4 Digital Audio and I can tell you that it is more than powerful enough to run Tiger well. Mine has 768MB of RAM but if you can find 512MB PC133 sticks you can upgrade as far as 1.5GB. 512MB or over is sufficient for using Tiger effectively. There are three RAM slots, mine has 256MB in each, and 256MB PC133 sticks are quite easy to find cheaply these days (I got mine from scrap PIII PCs).

Incidentally my G4 still has the stock Rage 128 Pro (16MB VRAM) card and it is fine for pretty much all basic tasks under Tiger. It does occasionally struggle a little with rendering high-quality video but this doesn't cause me much trouble.

The Digital Audio G4's still have alot of life left in them and will possibly be able to run Leopard when it finally comes out. Tiger is by far the fastest version of OS X you can run on them and the DA will behave basically like a modern machine.

I have a 533 with 896megs and a flashed Radeon 9700 and it runs Tiger just fine.

Mine's still in pieces, but I picked up a pretty cheap dual 533 CPU module from olde mac milt - it was about $70 including shipping to Australia.

Thanks all for the reports. I'm typing this out on the machine right now, and it's pretty nice under 10.2. It has 384 megs of RAM, and I'll install Tiger once I drop another 512MB stick in it.

tiger ran on my Yikes G4 with 256mb ( it was a little bit slow) allot of disk swapping. i later put 384mb in it and was much faster. but 512mb is the bare minimum i would go to have a good tiger experience ( really that isn't enough to satisfy tigers thirst for ram)

Just as an update - I installed the RAM (for 896MB total), put in a Sony DVD burner, and installed 10.4. It's awesome. I'm amazed by how well the thing performs, given its age. I'm not even bothering flashing my GeForce 6200 - the GeForce 2 MX is just fine.

I'm so impressed that it's now my main box - replacing my Ubuntu Athlon 2400+ machine. Eventually I'll drop a faster or dual G4 daughtercard in this, but for the time being 533MHz is just fine. Amazing that I 'downgraded' from 2GHz and am just as happy.

Thanks all for your input! I'm sure I'll have more questions as time goes on....

the GeForce 2 MX isn't bad but but lacks a few features the 6200 has. the 6200 supports both QE (quarts extreme) and CI (core image) wile the GF2MX only supports QE.

i also think the 6200 might even give a bit of a performance boost when compared to the GF2MX. but the 6200 is a low end card of the Geforce 6 series cards

Thanks for the heads up madmax. What is it that core image does for me?

Hmm...for some reason that link doesn't work for me. But I did some searching and learned about it. I wonder if it'll make a noticable difference for me?

yea, it will help out. and will make a noticeable difference

what QE and CI do is offload those things to the GFX card and free up the cpu to do other things

It looks like Apple updated the site when they made the Leopard announcement and deleted the Core Image page.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/coreanimation.html

thats Apple for ya

web archive might have it

EDIT yep they do

web archive Apple coreimage

I tried checking the wayback machine, it was taking forever to load so I just posted the Core Animation link instead since it is related to Core Image.

yea web archive is like that most of the times

Thanks all!

I now have the 6200 successfully running in this thing. Flashing and taping up the pins didn't take long at all, and worked like a charm. Profiler is now reporting that both QE and CI is supported.

Next up is a processor upgrade and a SATA card for a fast, large hard drive. But those don't have to happen right away - the system is plenty usable as it is.

Very cool!

Wait ...

for $20

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8-o

Wait ...

for $20

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8-o

Click to expand...

Yeah - I wasn't even looking for a G4, and when I saw this one, I jumped on it. It had 384 megs installed, and for another 15 bucks I got an additional 512 meg stick. So for less than 50 bucks invested, I had a pretty usable 10.4 machine.

But I'm about to drop the hammer on a high dollar item - a better processor card. The high clock rate duals are still pretty expensive. It looks like I'll be spending close to $400 for a dual 1.6. Or I can spend $250 on a single 1.5. I can't make up my mind whether the dual processors will really help me enough to justify the $$$. I don't number crunch much - it's mostly day to day tasks on this thing.

So I now have a single 1.5GHz 7455B processor in the machine, and what a difference! I went with the single processor mainly because the duals are more than I wanted to invest in an aging machine, and the extra cache on the 7455 made me think that it'd actually perform a little better than a dual 1.6GHz 7447A for tasks not suited to multiprocessing.

Anyway - it's a pretty sweet upgrade - I'll post some benchmarks soon.

im running tiger on my pismo with only 384mb ram, and it runs pretty good!

So I now have a single 1.5GHz 7455B processor in the machine, and what a difference! I went with the single processor mainly because the duals are more than I wanted to invest in an aging machine, and the extra cache on the 7455 made me think that it'd actually perform a little better than a dual 1.6GHz 7447A for tasks not suited to multiprocessing.
Anyway - it's a pretty sweet upgrade - I'll post some benchmarks soon.

Click to expand...

are you going to use xbench 1.3 ??

i did mine, here is the result in almost stock config

http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc2=246160

its allot faster then what i thought the system was going to be ( before i got it). once i get the upgrades i can only think on how much more faster its going to be. i am going to opt for the dual 7455's at 1.4ghz

Yes - xbench 1.3!

Here are the results:

http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=249289&doc2=1&setCookie=true

Yes - xbench 1.3!
Here are the results:

http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=249289&doc2=1&setCookie=true

Click to expand...

bigD,

It looks like you got about a 2x performance boost over madmax_2069's numbers.

David

very nice speed boost, over stock.

i will be getting a dual 7455 1.4ghz cpu upgrade and a 6800 GT video card and 1.5gb ram . but will post on each upgrade i add.

but it seems that the 6200 plus the upgrade gave a very nice result for you. definatly allot better results then you would have got with the GF2MX that was in it. you should download a few games demo's, like halo ( it has a timedemo and outputs the text file) i get a average of 20 FPS with everything on low with the res at 1024x768. i would love to see what your average FPS is with your setup.

i would almost think that you could try Doom 3 demo. or another newer game. i know that should run Leopard real nice ( that is once you mod the installer to remove the machine ID check and the virtual speed limit, which you would not need to do since you are above the 867mhz G4 requirement.

Thanks guys. The big improvement that I liked was in the user interface, which saw a 4x increase. It just makes the overall system 'feel' much more responsive.

A dual 1.4 will be very nice!!!

Hi,

How much are you guys spending to upgrade your G4s? Did you compare the cost of upgrading to buying a new (or at least newer) machine? With the new Intel iMacs that have a real graphics card, the price to buy a nice machine has come way down.

David

Between the cost of my G4, the extra RAM, and the processor upgrade, I have about $300 invested all told.

What I want is a Mac Pro. But at the moment I have a wedding in January that I'm saving for, so the Mac Pro will have to wait a few months. I did this to be able to run OS X in the meantime for not a huge investment.

I've spent about AUD$380 (USD$348) on mine so far. In addition to the machine itself (AUD$118, most of that was shipping from one side of the country to the other) I bought a faster CPU, Apple Pro keyboard and mouse, a replacement HDD carrier (the machine had had its original HDD removed and carrier discarded), 9800 Pro video card and a DVD-RW to replace the CD-RW in the machine. I still need RAM which is going to sting. 1.5GB of PC133 SDRAM compatible with the machine will set me back about AUD$233 if I buy from OWC in the states (prices are just ridiculous here).

Sounds like you have a nice machine, LSD!

Also, there's just something about buying a less than stellar machine and upgrading it. I know that at some point it simply doesn't make sense, but there's value in the enjoyment I get out of the upgrade process.

So far I've spent only $AU66 to buy the machine, AU$70 for the dual 533, about $10 for an ATX power extender so I can use an ATX PS, $10 on a Rage 128 AGP; RAM and drives recycled out of other machines. Down the track I'll look for a faster/dual head video card, a fast ATA or SATA RAID card, and an audio DSP card (Creamware).

I bought a clean 733 MHz G4 DA (256MB RAM, 9GB HDD, DVD-R superdrive, NVIDIA GeForce2 MX) three years ago for $300USD. I spent $75USD for a OWC 512MB PC133 memory stick, $75USD for a 120GB HDD (this model can only handle drive up to 120GB w/o replacing the drive controller), and $150USD for OS 10.4.6 and iLife '06. Totaled out at $600USD. I have had three good years with it. It runs OS 10.4.10 with no trouble.

A few slow points:

1. Handbrake takes 24 hrs plus to copy a DVD.

2. If I have more than ten or so browser windows open in Firefox it starts to slow down.

BTW: in normal use and even when playing Neverwinter Nights I have had good performance from the NVIDIA GeForce2 MX.

I have been questioning myself whether or not it is worth to put any more money into this machine.

What I would like to do:

1. Add firewire 800 (it now only has 400)

2. Add USB 2.0 (it now only has 1.1)

3. Add a SATA controller

4. Add about 500 GB of drive space

5. A faster superdrive (mine burns DVD-Rs at 1x)

6. A better graphics card (a 9800 pro would be my preference)

7. Put in a dual 1.6 GHz processor module

8. Max out the memory

This will cost big bucks. I am really not sure it is worth it compared to a macbook or a low end Intel iMac.

See ya,

David

If you upgrade the processor on a G4, can you still boot into OS 9?

If you upgrade the processor on a G4, can you still boot into OS 9?

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oh yea. a Mac that can boot O s9 will always boot OS 9 nomatter the hardware upgrades. the only thing is the video cards ( newer ones are not going to have support in OS 9)

By "support" do you mean they won't show a thing? Cause that would suck.

By "support" do you mean they won't show a thing? Cause that would suck.

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the newer video cards dont have OS 9 drivers so the card wont have accelerator functions , will be stuck at 640x480, so it will be mostly useless to use in OS9.

it would be sweet to some how hack a driver to make them supported under OS 9, but i think that would be like pissing in the wind

Just been checking out ATI's website:

Radeon 9200:

System Software Support

* Mac OS® 9.2.2*

* Mac OS® X 10.2.8

* Mac OS® X 10.3.3 or later

* This product will not operate in Mac OS 9 with the Power Mac G4 “Digital Audio" and “Gigabit Ethernet" models (Refer to Knowledgebase Topic # 737-468 for more).

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Knowledge Base
737-468: Problems with Mac OS 9 and RADEON 9200 MAC EDITION on G3 and some G4 systems

The information in this article applies to the following configurations:

* RADEON 9200 MAC EDITION

* "Gigabit Ethernet" Power Mac G4 model

* "Digital Audio" Power Mac G4 model

* "Sawtooth" Power Mac G4 model

* Blue and White G3

* Beige G3

* Mac OS 9.2.2

The RADEON 9200 MAC EDITION may cause the system to hang when booting Mac OS 9. Moving the board to a different PCI slot, or rearranging the existing PCI cards in your system, will remedy the problem.

Click to expand...

So presumably that wouldn't apply to an AGP version of the 9200 (is there one?)

9600 PRO: OS X 10.3.6 and later

9800 PRO Mac Edition: OS X 10.2.5 or later

9800 PRO Mac Special Edition: OS X 10.2.8 or 10.3.3 and later

X800 XT Mac Edition: Mac® OS X 10.3.6 and later

X1900 G5 Mac Edition: OS X 10.4.7 or higher

I you want to still be able to boot into OS 9, would the best option be to keep the stock NVIDIA GeForce2 MX?

Yes there is a 9200 AGP card , if its a flashed PC card or not i would not know. but i would think both the PCI or AGP versions would work the same

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_Image#Supported_Graphics_Processors

ATI Mobility Radeon 9600, 9700, or X1600ATI Radeon 9550, 9600, 9650, 9600 XT, 9600 Pro, 9700 Pro, 9800 XT, and 9800 Pro

ATI Radeon X600 XT, X600 Pro, X800 XT, X850 XT, X1600, X1900 XT

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra, 6600, 6600 LE, 6800 Ultra DDL, and 6800 GT DDL

NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT, 7600 GT, and 7800 GT

NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500

Intel GMA 950.

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So unless I'm mistaken, and barring further more detailed research, looks like you get to pick either Core Image or OS 9 support, but not both. On a single card, that is.

on my DA i will choose CI over OS 9 compatibility, the Os 9 compatibility will be for my AIO and Yikes G4. My DA is going to be OS X only

Does anyone know if I can use an MDD CPU in a DA?

you might be able to, it just might need the 12v mod ( a 12v feed to the 4th mounting point on the MDD's CPU in a DA) before it would work and maybe a mod to get the CPU to run at its rated speed ( since the MDD's system bus is 167mhz and the DA's system bus is 133mhz)

The short answer is "no." Never mind for a moment that the MDD CPU is oriented on the socket differently... The MDD has a different set of support chips and bridge chips for the CPU that will make it logically incompatible with a QuickSilver, Digital Audio, Gigabit Ethernet, or Sawtooth G4.

Peace,

Drew

I finally got off my ass and got mine running today. Modifying the video card went smoother than I was expecting. Most of the troubles I had were down to the donor machine acting cranky (it has a VIA board in it so, uh, yeah...). Was a relief when it worked right off the the bat. I'm still installing and updating OS X so I haven't done much in the way of testing but ASP tells me all the niceties are support plus I get the dashboard ripple and the cube effect on the intitial welcome screens so I'm assuming it all works. I had to cannibalise RAM from the B&W so I'm stuck with 640MB which will be a bit tight but the faster HDD should help offset that until I can buy more RAM.

Mine's up and running with the dual 533s . More detail in the original conquest thread.

Wait. That was a SINGLE G4 processor upgrade running against a DUAL G5??? Those are some damn respectable scores considering the difference in processing power between the two machines. I don't see how a single 1.5ghz G4 can turn in so much higher Altivec scores than a dual 2.0 G5. Something has to be wrong with the benchmark program there. I think that result should be reversed. There's no way a single 1.5ghz G4 can be 3x faster than a dual 2.0 G5 in anything.

I ran the test again, and the results remained the same (except for my disk scores - the new HDD I put in after the old one crashed scored a 41.9).

Perhaps the test heavily favors a cache, which the G5 only has 512KB of per processor against my 2MB.

So unless I'm mistaken, and barring further more detailed research, looks like you get to pick either Core Image or OS 9 support, but not both. On a single card, that is.

Click to expand...

Sorry for the late response, but I just realized that my HDD crash allowed me to give an answer. I have a flashed GeForce 6200, which *does* support CI, and was able to boot to my OS 9.1 CD just fine at 1280x1024. I didn't actually install OS 9, so I'm not sure if you'd get any acceleration, but you *can* get the full range of resolutions out of the card, apparently.

This fact is part of the reason why it didn't dawn on me that the card would cause issues booting into 10.4.

I had heard there were some problems with flashed cards because the ROM on a PC card is half the size of the one on a Mac card, so you have to use a truncated ROM image when you flash a PC card which cause bootup issues under the classic Mac OS. I can't recall atm whether there were OS X related issues.

I ran the test again, and the results remained the same (except for my disk scores - the new HDD I put in after the old one crashed scored a 41.9).
Perhaps the test heavily favors a cache, which the G5 only has 512KB of per processor against my 2MB.

Click to expand...

The way the G5 operates, though, it does not need level 3 cache. The PC3200 RAM is fast enough to cover for the lack of level 3, which was why Apple did not include any. It should still run faster than the G4.

most of the issues with the flashed PC to Mac cards was due to having different hardware ID's then the hardware on the original Mac rom ones (due to a different GPU, or different hardware being used) most of the times it as easy as editing the driver files to the proper ID of the card to get it working right in OS 9, and then some will never work due to the hardware on them are nothing close to something that is supported for OS 9.

the same thing can go for OS X but not as bad as OS 9 can be. you want to try to stick as close to the reference design as possible to get the most compatibility from it.

i know that Leopard was having boot issues on a G4 with a Geforce 6x00 and higher due to the temp sensors on the card, they removed the sensor data from the rom which fixed the boot freeze (could last from 2 minute - 6 minute hang) but would eventually boot. they removed the data from the rom and these cards no longer have the issue with Leopard on a G4.

but at what cost, will the GPU fan keep running, will it be set fast enough to keep the card cool. i think you have to manually set the fan speed in the rom ( and it stay's at a constant speed), If set two low and you could cook the card

The way the G5 operates, though, it does not need level 3 cache. The PC3200 RAM is fast enough to cover for the lack of level 3, which was why Apple did not include any. It should still run faster than the G4.

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Hmmm...well I have no idea then. If you look at the stock MDD benchmarks, they're all pretty similar to mine, so it's not something specific with the processor upgrade. Also interesting is that xbench erroneously lists the speed of the L3 cache.

I had heard there were some problems with flashed cards because the ROM on a PC card is half the size of the one on a Mac card, so you have to use a truncated ROM image when you flash a PC card which cause bootup issues under the classic Mac OS. I can't recall atm whether there were OS X related issues.

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Or replace the 64KB chip with a 128KB one.

Hmmm...well I have no idea then. If you look at the stock MDD benchmarks, they're all pretty similar to mine, so it's not something specific with the processor upgrade. Also interesting is that xbench erroneously lists the speed of the L3 cache.

Click to expand...

Which version of XBench are you using? The baseline scores were re-assessed recently, so comparing scores from different versions gives misleading results.

Peace,

Drew

I had heard there were some problems with flashed cards because the ROM on a PC card is half the size of the one on a Mac card, so you have to use a truncated ROM image when you flash a PC card which cause bootup issues under the classic Mac OS. I can't recall atm whether there were OS X related issues.

Click to expand...

I have a flashed PC Radeon 9800 Pro in my Digital Audio. I had to use the 64k reduced ROM but after taping over pins 3 and 11 on the AGP connector it booted straight up (OS X 10.4.10 was on the hard drive that was in it at the time but 10.4.6 installed on the new HDD without a hitch). At first I thought there was something wrong because the display was overbright and kind of washed out so I dug up a DVI->VGA converter and tried that. Same thing. Turned out OS X was using some funky calibration for the monitor. Changing the montior cleared it right up, even on VGA. I have Quartz Extreme, Core Image, all the niceties:

http://www.hexellent.com/files/26/GeeFour/9800Pro.jpg

Only real problem is that, with a 733Mhz Quicksilver CPU, it's hopelessly CPU limited. In a very simple test I started a game of WarCraft 3 and ran the /fps command. I got half the FPS on the 9800 Pro in the DA at 1024x768 that I get on my MacBook with a GMA950 at 1280x800 :/

Or replace the 64KB chip with a 128KB one.

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Easier said than done really :/

I have a flashed PC Radeon 9800 Pro in my Digital Audio

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Would you be willing to attempt OS 9 on that card and tell us what results you get?

I have 9.2.2 on a second hard drive (I don't have a 9.1 or 9.2 CD so I can't install it directly). I might try booting that up and seeing what reults I get.

OK, so I'm typing this from within OS 9.2.2 on the other hard drive. The machine booted up fine and I'm looking at a 1024x768 desktop... with 256 colours. Looking around in the System Profiler seems to indicate that it thinks two displays are connected, one of which is at 1024x768 with 256 colours and the other is at 640x480 with Millions of colours. Monitors control panel doesn't let me chocse anything other than 1024x768x8.