May
15th, 2001 I drive a V-8 car with dual
exhausts. I have two T.V.'s in my bedroom. I
have two daughters. I've been married twice. I
have two eyes, two ears and two legs. What else
can I say? I'm a "dualist." Even
if Apple and Motorola and IBM manage to cough up
1000MHz+ G4's and G5's sometime in my lifetime,
I really think DUAL G4 processors are THE
HOT
setup, especially if you are running OS X and/or
applications like Photoshop, Cinema 4D, and
Final
Cut Pro which "know" about multiple CPU's. (One of the charts missing above is Final Cut Pro 2.0. Never fear, go HERE
for those results.) Sonnet's
Duet G4/500 was every bit the equal of the
"real" Dual 500. It's an almost painless way to
supercharge your "Sawtooth" AGP or GigaBit G4
Desktop. If you have a G4 "Yikes" PCI, Sonnet
has a single G4/500 upgrade but no dual G4
upgrade. XLR8's
Velocity
(Beige) and Carrier
(7300-9600) are powerful, compelling upgrades if
you need more CPU crunch on your older Power
Mac. The only down side is the slower system bus
speed. For example, the 9600 didn't run
Photoshop or iTunes nearly as fast as comparable
"modern" G4 desktops. It also lagged way behind
on 3D game speed, even with a Radeon PCI
graphics card. But when pure CPU crunching is
required (like for rendering video or 3D
models), the XLR8 dual G4 upgrades are
"smokin." I hope XLR8 releases a model
for the Blue'n'White G3's. If you only use MS Office or
FileMaker and other non-AltiVec, non-MP aware
applications, then you don't need DUAL G4's.
You'll be just as happy with the fastest single
CPU like the 733MHz G4, as you can see from the
FileMaker chart. And until games like Quake 3
Arena and Unreal Tournment are running in MP
mode, you money is better spent on a Radeon or
GeForce3. RELATED
TESTS Final
Cut Pro 2.0 on various G4's FireWire
drive varies depending on model of
Macintosh WHERE
TO BUY When ordering products from Apple Store USA, please click THIS TEXT LINK or any Apple display ad as your "portal" to the online store. In so doing, you help to support Bare Feats. Sonnet
Technologies sells the Duet
Dual G4/500
for "AGP" and "Gigabit" Power Mac
G4's
at their online store. XLR8 sells their
MACh
Velocity MPe
G4/500 for "Beige" MiniTowers and Desktops and
Carrier
MPe
Dual G4/400 for 7300 - 9600's at their
online
store.
Both Sonnet and XLR8 DUAL G4
cpu upgrades are available at great prices
through... BARE FEATS HOME
The Dual Duel - Various Multi-Processor Power Mac G4's Compared
by rob
ART morgan,
Mac Scientist
Multiple
processors are cool, man. And with the help of
the upgrade angels, you can make almost any
respectable Power Mac into a "dualie." I decided
to compare Apple's factory dual G4 models with
some of the newest dual G4 upgrade offerings
including:
XLR8's MACh
Velocity MPe
Dual G4/500 for "Beige" MiniTowers and
Desktops
XLR8's Carrier
MPe
Dual G4/400 for 7300's through 9600's, and
certain clones
Sonnet's Duet
Dual G4/500
for "AGP" and "Gigabit" Power Mac G4's.
PERFORMANCE
ANALYSIS
... Small
Dog Electronics
... Other
World Computing
...
MacGurus
