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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1835
XLR8 Your Mac publishes Giga upgrade review
By ron carlson, Insanely Great Mac
March 17th 2003
How does the upstart maker's 'low-cost' 1.33GHz card perform? Find out...
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...
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