Giga Designs Dual Processor 1.33 GHz Upgrade

When I first purchased my Quicksilver G4 867 MHz single processor PowerMac back in 2001, I was hoping that the future would bring some faster upgrades for it. When Powerlogix and Giga Designs first announced their dual processor lines, my curiosity was peaked. From that point on, I monitored people's reactions and experiences with the two company's products via the xlr8yourmac website, as well as other user forums. My decision to finally go with Giga Designs was two-fold.

First, the vast majority of people who had tried their products had written positive experiences with them. Some of the most important endorsements came from other digital audio guys, like myself, who used the Giga Designs upgrades with their Pro Tools rigs for recording and editing audio. Many of them had great things to say about this product.

Secondly, the Giga Designs upgrades were also the most affordable and seemed like the best bang for my buck. I originally ordered the Giga Designs dual processor 1.33 GHz (model number M5D-1213Q) upgrade from a Mac vendor who showed a 3 day wait on the upgrade. After nearly two weeks of waiting, I canceled my order with them, and called MacGurus. MacGurus went out of their way to find me the upgrade, going so far as to call Giga Designs while I was on the phone with them. They even asked Giga Designs to overnight me the product right from their warehouse! As promised, the box arrived the next day by 11:00 AM.

Once I opened up the packaging, I found the processor card in a static free pouch, installation manual, and some software.





I noticed some white cylindrical object on the end of the processor card that said, "ATTENTION" REMOVE BEFORE INSTALLATION. Unfortunately, I didn't see any information about that in the installation manual. In fact, the design of this processor upgrade is somewhat different from the one pictured in the manual.

I'm one of those guys that expects things to be detailed, accurate, and up-to-date. I expect it even more so when I am spending almost $600.00 for it. So now I'm worried. I'm going to be messing around inside of my precious Quicksilver, and I'm going to be performing without fully up-to-date instructions. Not good. I went to Giga's site and downloaded the online installation manual hoping it would be more up-to-date. Nada. It was even more dissimilar. I decided to do what was printed on the cylinder and removed it. I had a bad feeling of trepidation about installing the processor. Before I began, I connected myself to ground with a grounding strap. Although I've gotten away without using them before, with this upgrade, I wasn't going to take any chances.
 
Step one was to remove the old processor. In order to do that you had to remove the fan that was right next to it. This was accomplished by removing the two screws on the back of the door holding the fan in place, and sliding the fan out.

Once that was done, you just took a flat screwdriver, slipped it sideways behind the heatsink clips and twisted the screwdriver clockwise prying the clips loose. Once the heatsink was removed, you could now see 4 phillips-head screws holding the 867 mhz card in place. I took a small phillips screwdriver and removed those screws. I then carefully lifted up on the processor card from every edge wiggling it until it came loose. Once that was accomplished, I installed the new card in place. Here is the new processor card installed with the case fan still removed:





Next, you had to connect a power wire to the new processor card, route it around the case door, and connect it to a drive power connector like so. Notice the case fan is re-installed:





Now is where I ran into my first big problem. After I reset the CUDA switch, I went to shut the door on the tower. I noticed that the fan assembly was NOT securely attached to the heatsink! I'm really nervous now. I reread the instructions...nothing. I dug around in the Giga Designs box and found a small ziplock bag with 4 VERY small screws in it. I bent down and noticed that the fan assembly had holes in it. Bigger problem: now that the processor is installed, I couldn't get to the holes on the back side of it, so that means that I now have to remove the case fan again, and the processor card. Once I did that, I used a very small phillips screwdriver (instructions say that you only need a medium phillips) to put the screws into the holes of the fan assembly and secure it to the heatsink. Even BIGGER problem. Because of the way the processor card is now designed (different than the illustration in the manuals) I can't get to the fourth hole:





There is no way to get that fourth screw in place unless I unsolder those components just below the yellow line pointing to where the hole is. I decided that the fans were secure enough without the fourth screw in place. I put everything back together and pressed the power button with the door open. Giga Designs recommends doing this so that you can make sure that you are getting power to the cooling fans. Once I saw that the fans were spinning, I pulled the power cord, and tried to shut the case door.

Oops! Another problem. When attempting to shut the computer door, there wasn't enough clearance between the rear of the Superdrive and the edge of the new heatsink. I pushed the door toward the rear of the case, but the heatsink kept catching on some thick tape that was on the rear of the Superdrive. Removing that tape and pushing the door toward the rear of the computer allowed me to get it shut, but now I was concerned about the heatsink resting directly against the Superdrive. I taped a small strip of non-static plastic over the rear of the Superdrive. Here is a photo showing the lack of clearance between the two components:





To this day I am still not 100% comfortable with the way those components are pushing together. Is there too much pressure on the heatsink from it resting against the Superdrive? Will there be too much heat from the heatsink for the Superdrive to handle?

Once I got the case closed, I connected the computer back to the monitor and pressed the power button. The computer chimed and began to boot up! I wanted to see if it booted up any faster than it used to with the 867 MHz processor in it. After 3 minutes of the blue progress bar stuck just before the login screen, I began to suspect that something was wrong. After 5 minutes, I shut the computer down. Reboot...same deal. Definitely not good. I shut down, and tried to boot the computer holding down the shift key. Nada. It still got stuck at the progress bar just before the login screen. I then tried to boot holding down the command key (apple key) + S. The computer booted to the command line perfectly. At the command prompt, I ran the command:

fsck -yf

pressed the enter key, and the computer finished saying that everything appeared to be ok. I typed

reboot

pressed the enter key, and this time the computer booted to the login window!!!

Once I logged in, I ran the Disk Utility to check that my drive permissions were intact. After that I decided to try to overclock the processor to 1.4 GHz. Needless to say, at least for me and this upgrade, that was a huge mistake. After I changed the dip switch settings, reset the CUDA, and closed the case back up, I plugged in the power cord and was extremely surprised when the computer immediately powered up by itself. I never even touched the power button. I pulled the plug, plugged it in again, same thing: instant power-on. This time, however, I was going to try to let it boot up, but there didn't seem to be any video signal getting to the monitor. I pulled the plug, and reset the CUDA again. This time when I plugged in the power cable, nothing happened.

For a BRIEF moment, I was excited and happy. I pressed the power button and it flashed silently- BUT THAT WAS IT! No power, no chime, no drives spinning up...nothing. Just the power button flashing once, and then going out. I disconnected the computer, opened it up, and reset the CUDA again. Nothing. Next I tried removing the PRAM battery for 20 minutes. Nothing. Every time I pressed the power button, it would light up, and then go out. At this point I'm trying not to freak out thinking that I may have destroyed my power supply.

So I did what I thought all veteran upgraders would do when faced with this situation. I completely removed the new upgrade, re-installed the old 867 mhz card, pressed the CUDA button and....nothing. I pulled the power cord out of the back of the computer, plugged it back in, and the computer CHIMED and began to boot up!

Now that I got it booting again, I set the new dual processor upgrade speed back down to 1.33 GHz and reinstalled it. I plugged all of the cables back in, pressed the power button, and it too, chimed, and booted flawlessly.

From that point on, this has been an absolutely incredible experience. I can't explain it. Once these initial problems were resolved, the computer has now been running for over 2 weeks FLAWLESSLY. There hasn't been one crash requiring a reboot yet. It has really made a remarkable difference in real world performance as well. While you don't really notice dramatic speed changes in the Finder, you suddenly realize that you get a feeling that there is now MUCH MORE POWER to spare.

The entire GUI, while not feeling necessarily faster, has a fluidity in it that wasn't present before this upgrade. The computer multitasks now in ways it never could previously. I ran some real world tests before and after the upgrade. A number of them I conducted just after logging out of my user account, and logging back in. Since I never shut down my computer, this made more sense for me rather than running certain tests after a fresh reboot. Where that took place, I tried to note it. Most of the tests that checked the time required to open an application were based upon the first time the application was opened. I ran each test twice on each processor daughtercard (867 MHz and 1.33 GHz Dual). Here are the system specs of the Quicksilver before the processor upgrade:

PowerMac Quicksilver 2001
867 MHz G4 single processor
1.5 gig RAM
nVidia GeForce 3
USB 2.0 card
DigiDesign Digi001 card
Adaptec 2930CU SCSI card
(2) Western Digital Special Edition Drives
80 gig Boot Drive, 120 gig Project Drive
Mac OS X 10.3.6

REAL WORLD TESTS

Boot to Login Window@867 MHz
1rst attempt- 52.85 seconds
2nd attempt- 50.00  seconds

Boot to Login Window@1.33 GHz Dual Processor
1rst attempt- 43.69 seconds
2nd attempt- 43.25 seconds

Login to Desktop just after logout@867 MHz
1rst attempt- 4.8
2nd attempt-  4.5

Login to Desktop just after logout@1.33 GHz Dual Processor
1rst attempt- 3.29 seconds
2nd attempt-  3.32 seconds

Open Firefox@867 MHz
1rst attempt- 7.10 seconds
2nd attempt-  7.24 seconds

Open Firefox@1.33 GHz Dual Processor
1rst attempt- 5.88 seconds
2nd attempt-  5.93 seconds

Open iTunes@867 MHz
1rst attempt- 4.53 seconds
2nd attempt-  4.31 seconds

Open iTunes@1.33 GHz Dual Processor
1rst attempt-  2.47 seconds
2nd attempt-  2.43 seconds

Add to iTunes library 88.5 meg stereo AIFF file@867 MHz
1rst attempt- 6.28 seconds
2nd attempt-  6.22 seconds

Add to iTunes library 88.5 meg stereo AIFF file@1.33 GHz Dual Processor
1rst attempt- 6.25 seconds
2nd attempt-  6.25 seconds

iTunes Convert 88.5 meg stereo AIFF file to mp3@867 MHz
1rst Attempt- 32.93 seconds
2nd Attempt- 33.25 seconds

iTunes Convert 88.5 meg stereo AIFF file to mp3@1.33 GHz Dual Processor
1rst Attempt- 16.44 seconds
2nd Attempt- 16.46 seconds

88.5 meg 5:22 AIFF file (Stereo 48000 Hz/24 bits) to mp3 192 kbps
Use Variable Bit Rate encoding
Highest Quality
Auto Sample rate
Auto Channels
Joint Stereo
Play songs while importing disabled

Open Photoshop 7.0@867 MHz
1rst attempt- 12.00
2nd attempt-  11.78

Open Photoshop 7.0@1.33 GHz Dual Processor
1rst attempt- 10.37 seconds
2nd attempt-  9.06 seconds

File copy 4.88 Gigabytes@867 MHz
1rst attempt- 3:42.44 seconds
2nd attempt- 3:41.07 seconds

File copy 4.88 Gigabytes@1.33 GHz Dual Processor
1rst attempt- 3:27.78 seconds
2nd attempt- 3:25.78 seconds

GarageBand@867 MHz
Maximum track playback count of multiple yet different drum tracks
6 tracks

GarageBand@1.33 GHz Dual Processor
Maximum track playback count of multiple yet different drum tracks
18+ tracks

Quake3 Arena Time Demo@867 MHz
1rst attempt- 89.8 fps
2nd attempt- 89.6 fps

Quake3 Arena Time Demo@1.33 GHz Dual Processor
1rst attempt- 118.8 fps
2nd attempt- 121.1 fps

GLDriver- Default
GL Extensions- On
Resolution- 640x480
Color Depth- 16 bit
Fullscreen- On
Lighting- Lightmap
Geometric Detail- High
Texture Detail- 66% (approx)
Texture Quality- Default
Texture Filter- Bilinear

Pro Tools LE 6.4@867 MHz
Maximum track count with Renaissance Reverb plugin enabled on each track
4
H/W Buffer Size 512 Samples
CPU Usage Limit 85%
DAE Playback Buffer
Size Level 4

Pro Tools LE 6.4@1.33 GHz Dual Processor
Maximum track count with Renaissance Reverb plugin enabled on each track
6
H/W Buffer Size 1024 Samples
CPU Usage Limit 99% (with a dual processor system, 99% of one entire processor can be dedicated to Pro Tools)
DAE Playback Buffer
Size Level 8

RC5 Benchmark@867 MHz
Benchmark for core #4 (KKS 7450)                                    
9,073,116 keys/sec

RC5 Benchmark@1.33 GHz (single processor only, second processor is not utilized in benchmark test)
Benchmark for core #4 (KKS 7450)                              
14,196,744 keys/sec

RC5 Benchmark@2.1 GHz Athlon (3000+)
8,100,910 keys/sec

RC5 Benchmark@2.2 GHz Athlon64 (3500+)
8,196,096 keys/sec

XBench @867 MHz
Total Score
1rst attempt- 101.1
2nd attempt- 100.47

CPU Test
1rst attempt- 104.93
2nd attempt- 103.22

XBench @1.33 GHz Dual Processor
Total Score
1rst attempt- 137.1
2nd attempt- 136.14

CPU Test
1rst attempt- 165.21
2nd attempt- 165.19
As you can see from these tests, there are certain areas where this upgrade makes HUGE differences, and others where there are lesser, yet nonetheless, noticeable  improvements. This computer has to last me for many years to come, and I am pretty confident that it will do just that barring any unforeseen problems with this upgrade. Some items to note:
1. Remove the case fan first.
2. Make sure that the cooling fan assembly is secured to the heatsink BEFORE installing the processor upgrade.
3. You might want to remove the thick tape that is on the Superdrive before attempting to shut the door, and possibly replace it with something thinner. (Do this at your own risk!)
4. Attempting to overclock your processor MAY cause you big problems. Don't panic. Reinstall the original processor card and start over.


A big thank you to MacGurus and Giga Designs for getting me this processor upgrade so quickly. Thank you to DK and Jym B. for running RC5 on their PCs for me. A HUGE thank you to my wife, Carrie, and also my children for putting up with my obsession.



If I had to rate this upgrade experience, it would be as follows:

MacGurus                       10
Giga Designs                     9 (inaccurate documentation, tight fit with Superdrive, fourth screw inaccessibility issue)
Installation experience     ACK!
Performance                    10
Overall satisfaction          10