Buyer's Guide: G4/400 PCI Upgrade
Cards Redux - Save Over $200 On Your G4 Upgrade!
4-3-2000
A couple of months ago we did a buyers' guide on G4/400 upgrade
cards for PCI Macs and clones. At the time, of the four upgrade
manufacturers, only Sonnet's cards were readily available.
In the intervening two months, availability has improved somewhat.
Cards from Newer, Sonnet and XLR8 are all available with only
PowerLogix missing from the shelves. Availability on XLR8's
card is severely limited but it can be found. Prices
varied wildly in some cases. Newer's card, for example, had
a $220 price spread! We have had a chance to test and review
several of these cards from various manufacturers and have
included our benchmark results below. Be sure to read our
full review for each card for more detailed information. Also,
be sure to swing by MacSpeedZone's PCI
Upgrade Cards Page for a wealth of other G3/G4 upgrade
reviews and benchmarks.
XLR8 MACh Carrier - G4/400 not currently reviewed at our
sites.
With
both G3 and G4 upgrade cards currently available on the shelves
the question of which to choose becomes an issue. You should
consider the kind of work (or play) you do on your computer
as well as the applications you use most often. Programs like
Photoshop 5.5 and SoundJam can make use of the AltiVec
instruction set on the G4 processor for impressive performance
gains. A while back we did a review
of XLR8's MACh Carrier G4/350/175/1MB card. This card comes
with an AltiVec plug-in for Photoshop 3.x and 4.x. We ran
a few Photoshop tests with and without the plug-in installed
and noted a 4x performance
gain with the plug-in installed! If you use these programs
or others that have been updated for AltiVec the performance
increase will outweigh the price premium. If, on the other
hand, you are looking to hotrod your Mac for gaming or overall
responsiveness a faster G3 might be a better investment. Bear
in mind that (without AltiVec use) MHz for MHz, the G3 and
G4 processors are not all that different with the exception
of slightly improved FPU scores in the latter.
Read on for performance information,
installation tips, and low price information.
As you check out the pricing information below you might notice
a couple of changes. At our readers' request we have added
availability information for each store. Hopefully this will
save everyone a little grief. Based on another suggestion
we have added eCost to out roster of stores to check. As they
are new to our list, we would be interested in hearing from
our readers about their experiences (positive or negative)
with this store. Post you comments on our Discussion
Board or drop me a
line.
MacBench 5.0 Scores
The scores below are from our review of three G4/400 upgrade
cards, PowerLogix's PowerForce Sonnet Technologies' Crescendo
and Newer Technology's MaxPowr. MacBench 5.0 is a subsystem-level
benchmark that measures the performance of a Mac's processor,
disk, and graphics subsystems to name a few. MacBench normalizes
all scores relative to the base machine, a Power Macintosh
G3/300. The base machine receives a score of 1000. For all
MacBench tests, higher numbers mean better performance.
The AltiVec Advantage
Below are a couple of graphs that show the advantage of running
software that is optimized for AltiVec. The scores are from
our review of XLR8's G4/350 MACh Carrier card. XLR8 bundles
their own AltiVec enabling software for Photoshop versions
3.x and 4.x with their cards. Adobe recently made public their
AltiVec enablers for Photoshop 5.5. Users of Photoshop 5.0
are out of luck for the moment...
Read all the instructions before starting - This should go without
saying but it always bears repeating. If you are not comfortable poking
around the insides of your computer have the card professionally installed.
The few extra $$$ are worth the peace of mind.
Ground yourself - These cards are sensitive and static electricity
can damage them. Any card you buy should come with some form of grounding
strap. Turn off all the power to your computer, monitor etc. and connect
the grounding strap. Leave it on until you are done. If the strap is decent
quality, hang on to it for other upgrades: RAM, PCI cards etc.
Make sure you have the latest extension/control panel for your card
- I would do this before starting the install as it is hard to download
drivers off the net when your computer is frozen.
Zap your P-RAM -Hold down the command, option p and r keys on
restart. You will probably have to reset some control panels that went
back to their default settings. Many manufacturers also recommend pressing
the motherboard reset (cuda) button for 10-20 seconds when installing
their cards.
Card Terminology Demystified
If you see a card with a description like G3/400/200/1MB don't let it
intimidate you. Here's a breakdown of what each element means:
G3 - The Processor, less commonly referred to as 750 or Arthur. 400 - The clock speed (in MHz) of the processor. This is adjustable
on some cards and fixed on others. 200 - The speed, in MHz, of the backside cache.Faster,
of course, is better... 1MB - Refers to the size of the backside cache, a storage area
with high speed, direct access to the processor.
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With
both G3 and G4 upgrade cards currently available on the shelves
the question of which to choose becomes an issue. You should
consider the kind of work (or play) you do on your computer
as well as the applications you use most often. Programs like
Photoshop 5.5 and SoundJam can make use of the 
