Since MacWorld New York this July, customers have been eagerly awaiting the fastest G4 processor upgrade ever created for the PCI Macintosh system - the Sonnet Crescendo/PCI G4/800MHz. Rarely have we seen a processor upgrade that offered nearly DOUBLE the clock speed of the nearest competitor - but in this case, it's a definite reality. The Sonnet Crescendo/PCI G4/800 uses cutting edge technology and the most current PowerPC G4 processor, the 7455, to achieve an upgrade that no other company has to offer.
When the Sonnet Crescendo/PCI G4/800 was announced, I talked with employees at Sonnet and they were just thrilled with the response they were receiving at their booth during MacWorld. Peruse any bulletin board and go back to before July - I guarantee you will see people that were constantly asking "Why are processor upgrades stuck at 500MHz?" Well, this card shattered that barrier. We can only hope we continue to see further use of the 7450 and 7455 processors to other systems, they are incredible chips!
During my testing of this upgrade, I was highly impressed with the feel of Mac OS X 10.2 on it - the system was absolutely responsive and markedly improved over the G4/450, which was very nice to start with! I highly recommend either of these G4 upgrades for anyone and their PCI based Macintosh or Macintosh clone.
One other very important factor with this upgrade card is that in addition to it being the very fastest PCI G4 accelerator on the market, it also adds compatibility with systems from Power Computing that were before this, unable to use a G4 processor.
The full list of systems that can take advantage of the Sonnet Crescendo/PCI G4/800:
- Power Macintosh 7300, 7500, 7600, 85xx, 8600, 95xx, 9600
- Apple Workgroup Server 7350, 8550, 9650
- Daystar Genesis
- Power Computing PowerCenter, PowerCenter Pro, PowerCurve, PowerTower, PowerTower Pro, PowerWave
- UMAX J700 and S900
Check out Sonnet's press release on their site for some more information about the Sonnet Crescendo/PCI G4/800.
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The heart of the Sonnet Crescendo/PCI G4/800 - an 800MHz PowerPC 7455 G4 processor
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Using a 16x multiplier, the 800MHz processor and it's integrated 256k on-chip cache are coupled to a 200MHz 1MB L3 cache.
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The Sonnet Crescendo/PCI G4/800 is not an inexpensive upgrade at $395, but it is a very good upgrade if you have a lot already invested in your system. As a counterpoint, you can definitely get a lot of bang for the buck with the second fastest processor upgrades for PCI machines on the market - any of the below listed G4/450 upgrades.
The 3 listed below are extremely comparable in performance, but the XLR8 and PowerLogix both have one advantage, especially if you have a Clone - they can be adjusted to the exact bus speed of your system. If you have a Clone that has a 60MHz bus (like the some Power Computing systems), you can adjust the bus speed up from the default 50MHz settings. I personally see a very nice performance gain with an XLR8 Carrier Card / OWC Mercury ZIF bundle in an in house UMAX S900 system - it runs a solid 60MHz every time with that combination. Your system may vary, of course.
Also, we reviewed a large number of different processor upgrades for PCI based systems a few months ago, check out this review to see what kind of performance you can get out of your old system just from upgrading from the original 604 processor!
System Specifications for all tests:
System Software:
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