Stan's List

The move to Intel processors brought along many hardware similarities with their now PC brethren. One advantage not always available in PPC Macs is overclocking. Previously overclocking often involved unsoldering and soldering transistors or timing crystals on the motherboard. This, unsurprisingly, created the CPU upgrade market.

Overclocking has been a staple in the PC world nearly since the beginning. Motherboards are often judged on their ability to be overclocked. ZDNet (Germany) has the first such tool for the Mac Pro. All done in software, it is an easy way to boost memory frequency, front side bus and CPU speeds:

ZDNet uses three Mac Pros as test machines. One comes from the first Intel/Mac Pro generation (Mac Pro 1.1) with 65-nanometer processors and 1333-MHz front side bus. The others come from the third generation with 45-nanometer processors and 1600-MHz front side bus, as sold by Apple since January 2008 (Mac Pro 3.1). The first computer is equipped with two 2.66 GHz X5355 processors, and runs stable at 3.10 GHz, see figure 2. The other two have two 2.80 GHz E5462 processors. These can be overclocked up to 3.24 GHz and remain stable.

All PPC Macs are not left out in the cold. If your Mac has an ATI video card, such as a Radeon 9800 Pro or a Radeon X800 XT or before, there is ATIccelerator II. The big advantage over the previous Graphiccelerator is that ATIccelerator does not flash the video cards ROM. Only the latest Radeon X1600 and X1900 cards are not supported.

ATIccelerator II can change ATI graphics cards frequencies live, on-the-fly, under Mac OS X. It’s much more sophisticated and convenient to use than Graphiccelerator for the following reasons:

* no potentially dangerous flashing required
* no cumbersome three-steps process (dump, modify, then reflash ROM)
* no need to reboot for every frequency change
* no OS 9 required (that’s right, G5s and other recent OS 9-free Macs are now supported!)

Mac OS X Hints has the low down on getting Front Row working on your Mac Pro (or any Mac able to run OS X, but not Front Row). The problem is twofold: one, Front Row not being configured to run, you need to find the executable for it; two, it’s not technically supposed to run unless it detects the Apple Remote. This part is a little more challenging; fooling it into thinking you do have the remote involves a bit of hacking that may depend on what brand mouse you use. More …

The Power Mac G5 Repair Extension Program for Power Supply Issues applies to Power Mac G5 systems that have power-related issues as a result of a specific component failure within the computer’s power supply. If your Power Mac G5 fails to start up after the power button has been pressed and your computer’s serial number is within the noted ranges, your computer may be eligible for repair, free of charge. There are no known safety issues caused by this component failure.

Identifying Affected Power Mac G5 systems

The affected Power Mac G5 models were sold between approximately October 2005 and August 2006 and feature Dual 2GHz, Dual 2.3GHz or Quad 2.5GHz PowerPC G5 processors.

Serial Number Ranges
CK539xxxxxx - CK608xxxxxx
G8539xxxxxx - G8608xxxxxx
YM539xxxxxx - YM608xxxxxx
RM539xxxxxx - RM608xxxxxx

More …

AppleInsider: Intel Corp. this week said it’s bumping up the release of its quad-core desktop and server chips to the fourth quarter of this year from their previous target date of early 2007. More …

Ars Technica attempts to glimpse into the future and paint a picture of Apple’s forthcoming Intel-based “pro” Macs. “The prime candidate for the high-end Pro Mac workstation would be the Xeon 5160. It’s clocked at 3.0GHz (enabling Steve Jobs to finally reach the magic 3.0GHz number—albeit two years late and on an entirely different architecture) and has a 1333MHz FSB. It’s also pricey: More …

ThinkSecret is offering insight on the upcoming “Mac Pro” product line, which is expected at this year’s World Wide Developers Conference. Here’s the nut of their prognostication:

Configurations of the new Mac are said to be similar to the most recent Power Mac G5, including a single dual-core processor in the low- and mid-range systems, and a dual dual-core (quad core) system at the top … the new computer’s case is said to be substantially different enough to make the distinction between the new Intel Core 2 Duo-powered system and its PowerPC predecessor easy to spot. More …

Mac Pro is the name for the Intel Power Mac. AppleInsider is predicting (educated guess) that Apple will make that announcement at the WWDC. More …

While speculation continues to run rampant over how the next Apple pro desktop will shape up, HardMac notes that the Power Mac G5 Quad still packs a massive punch of power. “to demonstrate how powerful the PMG5 Quad still is, we performed an experiment: open 3 TVHD streaming requiring on-the-fly decoding (French Tennis Open, Roland Garros). All VLC sessions require close to 90% CPU usage, but the GUI remained perfectly fluid as well as other open applications.” More …

Rep. Rick Nelson, announced Wednesday that Bell, Pineville Independent and Middlesboro Independent school districts will each receive as many as 100 state-of-the-art Apple computers over the next year through the Kentucky Dataseam Initiative.

The computers will be used for more advanced computer design and math and science applications, and will be fueled by new software and high-speed Internet connections,” said Nelson. “When the students aren’t using the computers, they won’t actually be idle. Their processing power will be harnessed through a network linking more than 4,000 computers to the University of Louisville Brown Cancer Center, where the excess capacity will be used to run new cancer drug experiments. More …

This update, from Apple, is only for the 1.8 GHz, single-processor Power Mac G5 (Late 2004) computer and supports installation on Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later. Also improves the reliability of your Power Mac G5, especially after it has been inactive for two hours.