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Sonnet Announces New Upgrade for Old Macs

Posted by pudge on from the old-macs-never-die-they-just-become-expensive-to-upgrade dept.

Hrvat writes "In a somewhat surprising move, Sonnet Technology announced the release of a 1GHz G4 ZIF (Zero Insertion Force) upgrade for the old Beige G3s. Since the old G4 ZIF upgrades maxed out at 500mhz (and they were compatible with Beige G3, Blue and White G3 and the PCI graphics G4), this is a huge jump. The upgrade is pricey, though ($700) and I am not sure that I am willing to dish out that kind of cash just for a processor upgrade." Update: 04/15 19:15 GMT by J : In related news, here's a review of three non-ZIF CPU upgrades, at Inside Mac Games. For what it's worth, last month I bought Sonnet's 1.2 GHz CPU for my AGP Power Mac, easy install, it's working fine so far. Mmmmmm, framerate.

4 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Mac processor upgrades by Gryffin · · Score: 3, Informative

    Whoops... forgot the port: http://gryffin.dyndns.org:9080/upgrade/

    --
    Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.
  2. Re:A little too late by Mononoke · · Score: 2, Informative
    My beige G3 has been a dependable workhorse for years now, but the memory is maxed, the PCI slots are full, and I will never be able to adequately run OS X on it
    Why not?

    I'm running 10.2.5 on an overclocked 233MHz beige, and it runs just fine. Not incredibly snappy, but I still get work done on it.

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    NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
  3. Been waiting on this ... by thedbp · · Score: 3, Informative

    I use a beige mac as the hub of my digital entertainment center. EVERYTHING goes through the mac, from DVD to TV to MP3 and CD to DivX and more. Pumped through a Radeon 7000 into a 27" TV and a second 14" VGA for system and file maintenance. all controlled through a Keyspan remote.

    it works fine now, running at G4 466, but yummmmm that 1GHz sounds good. but, yes, way too pricey for what i'd be using it for. the lack of agp graphics makes these macs incompatible with a lot of advanced features and applications, notably Quartz Extreme and DVD Studio Pro to name a couple.

    I'd gladly pay $500 for this upgrade, and I'm sure the price will come down.

    Oh, and didn't any of you know you can clock the bus speed of your beige up to 83 MHz? it runs very stable and allows you to get a faster L2 cache in the process. check out www.xlr8yourmac.com!!!

    The 66->83 thing really helps a bunch.

  4. Re:I always forget about these by drsmithy · · Score: 3, Informative

    I can't imagine why. Overclocking a PC CPU by 25% 5 years ago would be considered "standard" and 50% gains like those in the venerable Celeron with standard cooling was nothing exceptional.