The Performance Edge: Turning
Your G3 Computer Into A Screaming Beast!
Reader Report
I
enjoyed reading your review
of the Sonnet Encore G3 500 ZIF Upgrade. I recently purchased
the upgrade and your experience with the product was similar
to my own. I give Sonnet credit for having such detailed and
well photographed instructions. I was in and out of the Mac
in about 10 minutes, with the removal of the heat sink being
the most time consuming....pushing the heat sink down to remove
the clip hurts the fingers with those sharp metal fins.
But I just wanted to pass along my experience and results
to you. I got the 500 from Outpost.com for $679 with no tax
and free overnight shipping, thanks to Sonnet recently dropping
the price. (The 466 model is now $579). At this price, this
is a great upgrade and worth the money.
I installed the G3/500 into my beige desktop that was a
233/512K cache model. Since I went from the slowest to the
fastest G3 as well as doubling the size of the backside cache,
I saw a considerable speed increase. (As I noted in your experience,
you upgraded a 300/1 MB model so I can understand why you
did not notice such a drastic speed increase). I also replaced
the stock 4 GB (5400 rpm) IDE drive with a Quantum
13.6 GB IDE 7200 rpm drive. My disk cache in the memory control
panel is also set to 3 MB for both drive tests.
So here are my MacBench 5.0 results (Mac OS 8.6):
I was not able to do the Graphics test as I do not have
a MacBench CD. But I have installed an ATI Rage Orion 128
Card and the graphics are considerably faster than the ATI
Rage II on the board. The test I do not have is the speed
of is the 13.6 GB drive with the 233 processor. So I am not
sure how much faster, if any, the drive is with the new processor.
However, in either case, the new hard drive is considerably
faster than the stock hard drive.
I chose the Sonnet card because their upgrade cards do not
require any Control Panels or Extensions to make them active.
Additional software only leads to possible conflicts down
the road. I also did not want to mess with jumpers or fine
tuning of the card to ensure stability. The Sonnet card is
a simple installation and no more worries. I had great success
with their QuadDoubler 100/50 68040 Card in my old Centris
650, with no problems...and it has been installed since March
'96. So in my opinion, the Sonnet card is the way to go. Oh,
another interesting point....the 500 G3 runs much cooler than
the original 233 (possibly due to the new copper-based CPU?).
The 233 ran at 51"C versus 35"C for the 500.
Peter Hillman
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I
enjoyed reading your 
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