02/12/98 - (For the Current Day's news - see www.xlr8yourmac.com)
- EXTRA!: [NOTE: The links in this news post from 1998 are no longer valid.] Insignia has released the beta RealPC and Softwindows 95 updates that support 3Dfx, Ace reporter Peter Kaplan tells me. Download the files at:
- http://www.insignia.com/RealPC/realpc_download.cfm
- http://www.insignia.com/RealPC/softwindows_download.cfm
Wish I owned RealPC about now. I've got a ton of 3Dfx PC games I'd like to try. If it wasn't a 120 mile drive I'd go buy it tonight.
- MacTell Upgrades Sticker Shock: I was disappointed at the list prices of MacTell's new CPU upgrades for the Apple G3 machines, even at the low end 2:1 cache speed models. The ZIF socketed design of the G3 CPU/Cache assy has very little components on it. The 2:1 cache models have basically $50 (1MB) worth of cache chips (based on working in the electrical engineering field for over 12 years) and a PowerPC 750 cpu - far fewer parts than the older CPU cards.
These upgrades should
be able to be sold for far less - and will be in the future I'm sure. I guess like all new products, it's what the market will bear but folks don't jump on this early bird bandwagon, you'll be sorry you did. You have a fast Mac (a G3) - wait until a real speed bump option comes along. They are way overpriced in my opinion. I really had hopes the simpler, lower parts count G3/ZIF socket design would result in lower cost upgrades. I know I will wait for a much faster than 300mhz cpu upgrade is available before I spend that kind of money on a
machine alreay as fast as the G3. Wait a few months and get a real speed boost when the higher speed chips are released. The parts count and design costs are much lower on the ZIF socket upgrades and don't be bitten by an early rush to buy. When more companies start offering their versions prices will drop if past history is any guide. No mail on this please, I'm trying to catch up on reviews and the new G3 pages. Just trying to save you some $$ and regrets later on.
- Bottom Line Specials: Bottom Line just sent a sale price of $1399.99 on the PowerForce 250. They also wrote:
"
We will beat MacGurus Price on the PowerLogix 250/250 by $25.00 at all
times
Also we have 8 of the 200Mhz PowerLogix PowerBoost Pro cards left,
and 4 of the 233Mhz. After those are gone it will be another 3-4 weeks
before we get more."
Looks like a price war is brewing here - and my readers are the winners.
- I've not forgotten about the G3 Pages - they are coming next - with a review
of the VillageTronic MacPicasso MP540 w/3D Overdrive video card as the first
G3 upgrade review. (NOTE: - see the Video articles page for the review.) A Cheetah + PCI U/W SCSI card is next.
The initial post will
also have a illustrated look inside and SDRAM and Vram upgrade as well.
The G3 page will be posted no later than this weekend.
- SCSI Report Update: Well I managed to post
Part 2 of my ongoing SCSI card comparison report at 6AM this morning. I worked all night on taking Remus Lite data and creating the pages. One of my monitors died in the process unfortunately. Murphy's law working overtime.
Part 2 documents tests using pairs of each SCSI card brand with a two drive Raid 0 (striped) array (one drive per card). Currently
results with Conley Softraid 2.0, Remus Lite v1.4 and FWB's Raid ToolKit 2.06 are posted. By the
end of the week I'll be adding results with CharisMac's Anubis Raid and ATTO's Raid. Stay tuned and don't draw any conclusions yet. As a note, the disk cache was set to 512K for these tests,
not 4MB as used with the single card/single drive Part 1 report. The large cache boosts Macbench scores by 150 points or more. All the details of the tests and cards are listed at the first page of the report. Stay tuned later in the week for updates on the remaining Raid packages.
- I thought I'd just pass on this tidbit as a possible warning. In the last two weeks I've been trying to add a IDE hard disk to a friend's computer. So far 3 straight drives have been bad out of the box. They all were Seagate IDE models (2.5GB and 2.1GB) ordered from Computability, a company I have done business with since I had an Atari 800 in 1978.
All three packages were well padded and the boxes and drives showed no obvious damage. The first drive had bad sectors at track 0, the 2nd
has bad sectors at the last 25% of the drive (and they grew with each surface scan) and last night was the topper - the third drive sounded like a police siren (rising and falling loud whine).
I've never had a bad Seagate drive out of the box, and have used their IDE drives for most of
the PC builds at work. I'm stunned at three in a row bad. The fact it occurred on different models makes me thing there has to be some shipping problem (from the factory or in transit to us) as I can't believe Seagate would be shipping product like this. I've wasted many hours of
my time on this and it's been very frustrating (not counting my friend's cost and hassle of returning three straight drives). I have no choice but to avoid Computability
until they can determine what the problem is. I called them about it after the second bad drive
in a row, and will do the same again today. The odds of getting three bad drives in a row
is probably the same as picking a winning lottery number. Wait a minute...where's that 6-digit
order number? ;-)
- RAVE Quake Setup CheckList: Ray Swartz of ATI sent this Checklist for MacQuake Performance on ATI RAGE PRO boards. It must work, as he claims he's getting up to 31fps! Here's the procedure:
"Here's a checklist for playing MacQuake on ATI RAGE PRO boards:
===============================================================
* Download latest drivers from ATI web site.
* ATI Displays control panel set to "Standard" 3D quality. Important!
* QuickDraw 3D 1.5.3 or later extensions
* Video set to thousands of colors
* Quake version 1.08.4 or later.
* Monitor connected to ATI board (duh!)
* Turn off Virtual Memory in the memory control panel. Quake's memory
allocation does not need to be boosted.
* Remove unnecessary extensions, especially ones that work in the
background, like File Sharing, FileSaver, and DiskExpress.
* Make sure your Xclaim board has a RAGE PRO chip. Upgrade if necessary.
(All Nexus GA boards have it.) Quake requires 4 MB frame buffer (min).
* Quake settings:
For highest performance type these commands at Quake console (~ key):
R_WATERALPHA 1.0
R_MIRRORALPHA 1.0
R_FULLBRIGHT 1
{With these settings, I get 31.2 fps on my 9600/233 with an Xclaim VR.}
=================================
For coolest looking graphics:
R_WATERALPHA 0.3
R_MIRRORALPHA 0.3
R_FULLBRIGHT 0
{With these settings, I get 21.1 fps on my 9600/233 with an Xclaim VR.}
BTW, I am using v4.2.2 of the ATI 3D Accelerator driver. To get the
timings, I used this command at the ~
TIMEDEMO DEMO2 "
Thanks Ray! Ray is a regular in my video card forum also, answering questions and
assisting with readers questions. It's much appreciated! (And thanks to the many other
regulars who do the same there - I welcome the help you are providing!)
- Beware OnSale.com 2940's: Mike Fayman learned this the hard way. I was leery of their
2940 sale and apparently with good reason. He writes:
"
I don't know if you remember but, about three weeks ago I wrote you about a
deal from ONSALE on 2940UW cards. You said be careful, they might be the
PC version. I said no way, they were advertised as SCSI Manager 4.3
compliant and they called them PowerDomain Cards which is Adaptec's name
for Mac cards.
You were right! They sent a nice PC card version, at least all the
software is PC so I don't want to install it. Worst of all, when I used
their Customer Service System, they just ingnored me. They claim that they
provide answers within 1 business day, I've been waiting more than a week.
I checked with their system and they have my complaint logged, they just do
not choose to reply. I have written to my credit card company and informed
them that I choose not to pay! So far I have their card and my money!
I'll wait until Friday after which I'm going to write them again and let
them know that as of next Monday, I am charging them to store their card in
my home.
I think I will probably pass on anything they offer in the future because,
when you do have a problem, they could care less.
"
You can find some good buys at times there, but you can get burned. I've been lucky
so far with two Atlas II drives and a Seagate 8GB SCSI tape drive ($135). I tread carefully,
and as with all auctions, watch prices. I've seen some products go for more than the
regular mail order price (this happened on Newer Tech MP180's and 9600/200MP systems at another auction site recently). Shop carefully and read the fine print. Verify warranties and exchange/return policies.
- Hard Disk ToolKit Feedback: Rob Kennedy wrote about recent problems he was having with HDT 2.06, and how Apple's OS 8.1 drivers boosted performance dramatically:
Just thought I drop you a line on some performance issues I've found.
Now I only have lowly 6500/250 and not a G3 :-( , but I do try to
squeeze all the performance I can. (yes I have a 1 meg cache card!)
Every since upgrading to OS 8, I've had two issues that had me stumped.
1) Copying a file in the Finder from the internal IDE drive to an
external Zip caused and instant hang. Other means of copying worked
fine.
2) Riven would only run with, get this, virtual memory turned ON!
Having VM on also resolved (mostly) Finder to Zip copying. This was a
work-around, not fixed!
After spending a day low level formatting, I now know that the source of
several problems is FWB Hard Disk Toolkit PE 2.0.6 with latest (12/97)
device files. (BTW: Their online tech support never responds!)
Problems solved by switching from FWB drivers to Apple's drivers (Disk
Setup 1.4):
-Disk performance increased dramatically!
-Finder file copying to external Zip drive no long hangs
-Riven runs without virtual memory turned on
MacBench tests also reveal major performance improvements in disk tests.
MacBench Disk test results - Power Mac 6500/250, OS 8.1, VM Off, 1024k
Disk Cache
------------------------------------------------------------
193% Factory formatted with FWB driver applied
197% FWB low level format - write cache off (HDT default)
195% FWB low level format - write cache on (actually slower!)
195% Drive Setup 1.4 low level format with FWB driver applied
313% Drive Setup 1.4 low level format with Apple driver
That's a big difference! I don't know if the full version of HDT and/or
version 2.5 are any better, but 2.0.6 HDT PE blows!"
I've gotten several similar letters - where OS 8.1's drive setup was much faster than even HDT 2.5. So far I feel like my upgrade to HDT 2.5 has been of zero benefit here as well.
- ByteMarks - PII Bitten? John Syko (?) sent in a Pentium II 300mhz vs. 8500/250 604E comparions. The results appear to back up Apple's recent performance claims:
"I thought you'd be interested in some benchmarks. The latest (and only)
Apple ad sparked some interest in the BYTE bencmarks and results. Here are
my findings:
BYTEmark tests results on PII 300 running NT (of course)
_________________________________
BYTEmark (tm) Native Mode Benchmark ver. 2 (3/95)
NUMERIC SORT: Iterations/sec.: 129.048855 Index: 3.335027
STRING SORT: Iterations/sec.: 8.440605 Index: 3.710156
BITFIELD: Iterations/sec.: 33128179.219118 Index: 5.682531
FP EMULATION: Iterations/sec.: 5.422158 Index: 2.606807
FOURIER: Iterations/sec.: 3350.366611 Index: 3.793612
ASSIGNMENT: Iterations/sec.: 1.799862 Index: 6.857401
IDEA: Iterations/sec.: 255.387641 Index: 3.907400
HUFFMAN: Iterations/sec.: 183.200031 Index: 5.091011
NEURAL NET: Iterations/sec.: 3.197450 Index: 5.410237
LU DECOMPOSITION: Iterations/sec.: 99.595656 Index: 5.880013
...done...
===========OVERALL============
INTEGER INDEX: 4.248975
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 4.941691
(90 MHz Dell Pentium = 1.00)
==============================
BYTEmark tests results on 8500 250hz 604e running 8.1
_______________________________________
BYTEmark (tm) Native Mode Benchmark ver. 2 (10/95)
NUMERIC SORT: Iterations/sec.: 145.806523 Index: 3.739300
STRING SORT: Iterations/sec.: 13.220976 Index: 5.907496
BITFIELD: Iterations/sec.: 31158783.160381 Index: 5.344831
FP EMULATION: Iterations/sec.: 17.508174 Index: 8.401235
FOURIER: Iterations/sec.: 6235.123992 Index: 7.091186
ASSIGNMENT: Iterations/sec.: 1.905162 Index: 7.249474
IDEA: Iterations/sec.: 483.106430 Index: 7.388982
HUFFMAN: Iterations/sec.: 281.640961 Index: 7.809910
NEURAL NET: Iterations/sec.: 3.814100 Index: 6.127068
LU DECOMPOSITION: Iterations/sec.: 62.226166 Index: 3.223636
===========OVERALL============
INTEGER INDEX: 6.347048
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 5.193164
(90 MHz Dell Pentium = 1.00)
==============================
A Software Engineer friend of my ran the test on his PII 300. I asked him
the validity of the test and if it actually meant anything. He read the
source code as well as the BYTEmarks documentation and concluded that the
tests BYTEmark perform actually do contain code that we may find in
everyday applications, as well as not-so everyday applications. His
results are actually in par with the ones Apple are using in their
advertising."
I had to laugh recently when a PC Bigot at work commented on Apple was going
down the tubes, and now was going to be sued by Intel (over the recent snail ad). I set the record straight immediately.
The resulting silence was golden.
Yesterday's News
Please keep this site alive by supporting my
Sponsors
|
