General Impressions: The PowerLogix was the last
in a series of G3 upgrade cards we tested. While the contrast
between cards was minimal, the contrast going back to our unaccelerated
9500 was extreme. All of our more demanding applications became
unbearably slow and everyday finder functions lost their zip
as well. Our 9500 is certainly no slouch with its 604e/200MHz
chip. If you are upgrading from a slower machine the improvement
should be even more striking than the ones we note below.
For the MacBench 5.0 scores higher numbers and longer bars are
better. For the "real world" tests shorter bars are
better.
Installation: This card comes with two adjustable dials that
control the bus speed and ratio. For those of you who like
to push the performance/stability envelope, the card's manual
comes with a guide for testing different settings. If you
are feeling bold, go ahead and try different settings; PowerLogix
states on their web
site that overclocking will not void your
Supported Models
Apple: 7300, 7500, 7600, 8500, 8600, 9500, 9600
Power Computing: PowerBase, PowerWave, PowerCurve, PowerCenter,
PowerCenter Pro, PowerTower, PowerTower Pro
UMAX SuperMac S900 and J700.
warranty. Although the manual estimates you can gain an additional
30% performance by tweaking the settings, we opted to stick
with the default settings for our tests. The software installer
places a control panel for adjusting and activating the backside
cache as well as software for verifying your new settings.
Stability: We had the card in our 9500 for roughly one week
and used a wide variety of games and applications during that
time. We experienced only one minor glitch. After installing
the card we got a flashing question mark on restart. We zapped
our PRAM and didn't experience any further problems. To be
fair, we did skip pushing the reset button on our logic board
as recommended in the installation instructions. If we had
followed the directions we probably wouldn't have had any
problems at all.
MacBench 5.0 Results
Processor
FPU
Disk
Graphics
(Scaled to fit)
"Real World" Tests
(Shorter bars are better)
Photoshop 4.01 Test Results
(Shorter bars are better)
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