On Feb 25, 2005, at 10:07 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
As far as the processor, Id say go with the faster one, right?
Wrong!!! you see thats my whole problem! They have freaking trade offs! They couldn't make it any harder! Let me explain:
Giga Design has a dual 1.8GHz G4 upgrade for the AGP PowerMac. It's based off the Freescale (Formerly Motorola processor division) 7447A Processor. It includes 512KB of L2 cache per processor. No L3 cache.
Giga Design, Sonnet, OWC, and PowerLogix all have a dual 7455 based processor at or around 1.4 GHz that has 2MB L3 Cache per processor and only 256KB of L2 cache
Lastly PowerLogix has a dual 7457 @ 1.4GHz that has 512KB L2 and 2MB L3
You see the difference is in the cache! I know that for most day-to-day tasks the cache wont matter too much, but it the occasional game like Doom III that are really gonna want as much cache as I can give it.so... you see my problem. Do I go for speed? or do I go for cache? My two choices are:
PowerLogix 1.4GHz 7457 setup with 512KB of L2 per processor and 2MB L3 per processor
or
Giga Designs 1.8GHz 7447A setup with 512KB L2 and no L3 cache.
The PowerMac G5 system does not incorporate L3 Cache, but it also uses DDR RAM so it's access to RAM is like four times faster than the G4's PC-100 memory could ever produce.
So it seems as if the choice is simple, go with PowerLogix setup and water cool and over-clock to get the best of both worlds right? wrong again! The Giga designs 1.8GHz setup uses LESS POWER than a single 7455 (or 7457) what does that mean? well I can keep my ATI Radeon 9800 pro, keep my USB 2.0 PCI card, add my SCSI card, add two hard drives, and throw in the 1.8GHz dual processor setup WITHOUT getting a bigger power supply!
It's just as bad as when I was deciding what processor to get for my B&W G3 ( And I'm still not convinced the 1.1GHz G3 is "way" better than the 600MHz G4 i could have gotten for it.)
I bought the single 1.4 GHz upgrade from Sonnet to use as a temporary upgrade, I fully intend on selling it as soon as I get my dual processor setup. It's simply a matter of time.
so now with all that information, which CPU would you choose?
- Jonathan
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