[G4] Dual Processor upgrade

[SLarsonIH at aol.com]

<< I currently have a dual 867mhz,  I found a GigaDesigns dual 1.3ghz for 
$499.
Anybody have any experience with GigaDesigns or more particular, this card? >>

You may not get any feedback on that particular card as they only came out 
with that card a few weeks back. They had a dual upgrade card for the MDD a year 
ago last April or so. I had gotten a dual 867 MDD last year partly because I 
had planned on putting a dual 1.8GHz card in it, offered by them. Not long 
after getting the MDD they no longer offered the card. I talked to them a few 
times, and it didn't look like they or Sonnet or PowerLogix were going to ever 
offer an upgrade card for the MDD. So, I got a QS and installed their dual 
1.8HGz card in it.

After I installed their dual 1.8GHz into my single 733 QS, and used it a few 
days, I called them and asked them about the dual 1.3GHz for the MDD, as I'm 
trying to decide whether to upgrade the MDD or not. According to the tech guy I 
talked to at GigaDesigns, they have a limited number of these available. 
(50-75) They bought enough chips to finish putting the cards they had on hand 
together. He said it runs at about the same speeds as a dual 1.6GHz 7447 card like 
in my QS. The 1.3 uses 7455 chips which have an 2MB L3 cache, if I recall 
correctly. So, let me give you my impressions of their dual 1.8GHz card in my QS 
which originally came with a single 733 processor.

It's fast. Everything is real crisp and snappy in OSX. (10.3.9) I've run 
XBench on the QS, before and after as well as my dual 867 MDD, if you want 
numbers. Installation was easy. That said, I have two issues while in OS9. Part of 
the installation is removal of the "multiprocessor folder" from the "extensions 
folder". When I talked to the tech guy, he told me that the card only works in 
single processor mode while in OS9. That's ok, but the QS will not go to 
sleep either automatically or forced, while in OS9. It puts up a dialog box that 
says it cannot go to sleep because some parts of the system software are 
missing, or some such thing. Second is that running Norton's speed test freezes at 
44 tests left (CPU Sort) Sometimes I have to do a double reboot to get into OS9 
properly. I haven't spent a lot of time in X yet with the upgrade, so I can't 
give you more feedback on that. I haven't had a chance to talk to GigaDesigns 
yet either, but hope to see what they have to say about this.

HTH
STeve