new iBook == old iBook ?

vanguard

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Friends,

I've been wondering if the new iBook (600Mhz) is any different than my current iBook (500Mhz and six months old). I'm guessing that it's the same hardware with a couple of resistors moved around.

Have you guys seen this?

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/ibook_2001_overclock/ibook_2001_overclock.html

I read that the only reason that apple didn't make the original iBook 600Mhz was that it would make the battery life fall below the big round "4 hours" number. I've also wondered if starting at 500Mhz was just a way to provide an upgrade path for themselves.

Anyway, what do you guys think? Is it the same hardware with a different configuration?

Vanguard

PS If you want to read more, you can go here: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/08/1218211&mode=thread
 
I for one just don't care enough. :) What should we say. That we've seen the page? That we think your iBook is still great?

I've seen the page. And I think the iBook 500 is still a great machine. And I mean it.
 
I seriously doubt apple would sell an overclocked machine simply because overclocking makes the amchine a little less stable.
 
Actually, the new iBooks now have a 100mhz bus also. I think that's the only difference, but it's a step up :)
 
Hello,

To expand on testuser-

It isn't uncommon for the chip manufactures to dump higher certified chips in the lower bins. They both cost the same to make but demands for $800 iMacs are still high! If too many higher certified chips are made may be demoted.

But then again we are talking about the Moore's Law breaking Motorola chips.
 
I've seen the O/C article, and I really think that the risk and hassle involved in squeezing (maybe) another 100MhZ out of my Book is just way too high. The disassembly/reassembly, I could live with. However, there are a few bits to this that I just found completely unappealing.

First, the warning on the top of every page about clocking issues with the 100 MhZ bus under OSX. Correcting it with OpenFirmware patches not provided by Apple just feels... wrong.

Then there's the "lets break out the soldering iron" bit. Normally, this wouldn't bother me, but this is all very very delicate work on surface-mount components. I'm not an EE, and I've never done much work with surface-mount stuff. Admittedly, this is a shortcoming in my own skill set, but there it is.

I'm a little sad that the battery life under OSX is as short as it is, this kind of mod (if completed successfully) would shorten it even more. And generate even more heat. And (potentially) shorten component life. And (possibly) destablize the system.

Finally, my experience with O/Cing PPC's has been less than stellar, even if it was limited. I O/Ced my Beige G3/300 MT to 333, and it worked great in OS9, but OSX(PB) would kernel panic if I just looked at it funny. Drop it back to 300, and it was solid as a rock. I haven't tried again with 10.1, but it's not really enough of a speed gain to warrant the hassle-factor.

Did Apple put 600 MhZ-capable chips in the older 500 MhZ Dual iBooks? For reasons stated by others, very likely. But I'll probably never know about my particular Book. I love my Book, and don't think I'll put it in harm's way like this any time soon.

That's my $0.02... Feel free to make change.. :)
 
Thanks for your thoughts guys. I hadn't seen the overclocking instructions until it was posted on /. . After Fryke responded I thought I'd just let the thread die.

I was actually thinking about overclocking this machine. I'm with you in that putting a soldering iron in my hands might be dangerous. However, I hit a lot of large web pages and IE 5.1 takes a long time to render them( > 20 seconds). I see that my CPU is maxed out while I'm waiting so overclocking would probably help me out.

My thinking was that 500 MHz chips were the norm a long time ago and that Apple just decided to configure the new machines so that they go faster. The tought was that I had the same machine that's shipping today and that I could just "upgrade" it myself. Now I'm not so sure.
 
Hello,

What are you doing that is maxing out your CPU? I haven't accessed any page that hits the top of my < 500 mhz processor! Are you certain you are not experiencing network throughput problems?

You may want to create a new user. Myself and others have reported speed increases by either creating a new user or renaming (mv ~name/Library ~name/Library.old) and logging back in. Something gets corrupt in the library and slows everything down.

The only time I have hit speed issues is encoding iMovies - to have an altavec unit :-(
 
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