Powerlogix offers dual GHz processor upgrades

Austin, Texas-based PowerLogix announced the PowerForce Dual G4 line. The new line of dual processor upgrade cards for the Power Mac G4 offers speeds up to 1GHz.

PowerLogix director of engineering Marc Reviel said that the company’s goal with the new processor card was to keep costs low but to deliver fast performance. The new PowerForce Dual G4 design is very similar to the company’s single-processor PowerForce upgrade. In keeping with the low-cost theme, the board also eschews DDR cache, which Reviel said “offers zero performance advantage but significantly more cost.”

PowerForce Dual G4 upgrades sport 2MB of L3 cache for each CPU, and support symmetric multiprocessing on Mac OS X. It’s a plug and play upgrade — the existing processor card is replaced with the new one.

The PowerForce Dual G4, Series 100 upgrade cards are compatible with:

PowerMac G4 ‘AGP Graphics’ — 350, 400, 450, 500 MHz

PowerMac G4 ‘Gigabit Ethernet’ — Single 400, Dual 450 or 500 MHz

PowerMac G4 Cube — 450, 500 MHz

The PowerForce G4 Series 133 upgrade cards are compatible with 133MHz bus Power Mac G4 models including:

PowerMac G4 ‘Digital Audio’ — 466, 533, 667, 733, Dual 533 MHz

PowerMac G4 ‘QuickSilver’ — 733, 867, Dual 800 MHz

PowerMac G4 ‘QuickSilver 2002’ — 800, 933, Dual 1GHz

PowerLogix noted that there are specific compatibility and power capacity issues related to some early AGP-equipped Power Mac G4 and Power Mac G4 Cube models. Consult the PowerLogix Web site for more details.

The PowerForce Dual G4 Series 100 at 800MHz will cost US$799; the 1GHz model runs $1,119. The PowerForce Dual G4 Series 133 at 867MHz and 1GHZ cost the same, respectively. PowerLogix anticipates their availability within 2 to 3 weeks.