" So far I'm into my third day of running it on a PowerCenter 132. I just read your review about using RAMometer as a burn-in test and I will definitely subject it to that.

For my testing method I opened several apps like Quark and such and then booted up Starry Night and set it to run continuously for the past 36 hours. So far no problems. I've got it set at 300/150.

I have generally preferred Newer products in the past based on their dependability in my experience. But if this accelerator passes all of my tests, I have 6 machines at work that will get immediate upgrades (although I will likely notch down the settings to make them as safe for those users as possible. Mine, however, will continue to run as fast as possible)."
Terrence Meehan

Craig Moritz wrote with more conservative speeds, but still impressive for a under $500 G3 card:

" Mike,
After a fair bit of study and a few E-mails with you, I finally took the plunge and bought the PF220/110 from Mac Gurus this week for my PowerWave 604/120. Initially, I was leaning towards a 604 accelerator for obvious cost reasons but I was concerned about tweaking bus speeds with my older PowerWave based on what I had read. You began to indicate that cheaper G3's were on the horizon and after last week, I couldn't wait any longer after your positive review on tweaking up the speed of the PF220/110. A wolf in sheep's clothing I figured.

I am now two hours into the "improvement". I have a PowerCenterPro 210 at work and I was trying to match or exceed that speed level with my PowerWave604/120 at home. I had added a Sonnet 1 Meg cache last year so I was tweaked out with a 315 processor MacBench.

I started the card at 260/130/40Mhz with no problem and ran an 867 MacBench processor score, just like your results. So I said crank it up a notch to 270/135/45Mhz and ran a 901 MacBench processor score. At that point, I thought I would drop you a quick line and let you know that my PowerWave is handling the chore so far and is acting like a new machine. The disk speed is up a little and the machine feels spunkier across the board. I run a Power3D board and the games seem to load up fine so no obvious conflicts noted yet (now 2.5 hours running at two different speeds).

I'll keep you posted as I complete my tweaking and testing over the next week. I am going to leave it at 270/135/45Mhz for now. The 45Mhz bus speed and 135Mhz cache speed seem to be maximums based on your observations. Any suggestions on next speed jump from here?

Thanks for your valuable service to MacHeads."
Craig Moritz

From all the mail I've gotten, I think dealers will have a hard time keeping these cards in stock - for good reason. It's the best bang for the buck in Mac history. [7 PM update]

More Quake 1.09 Feedback: Here's the latest reader comment on the new Quake update:

" Mike,
I had a problem with Quake 1.0.9 running slower, too, until I realized I'd forgotten to reset the 3Dfx Tweaker extension. I was at first getting only about 20.9 fps, but after resetting the Tweaker refresh rate to 60 Hz and the swapbuffer interval to 0, I got 37.5 fps.

I'm running a 7500/234 MHz 604e, Power3D card, 64 MB RAM, and a 3Dfx Cool fan. Keep up the excellent work on your site. I check it daily.
Thanks,
Steve McNutt"

[7 PM update]

VPC Video Tip: Ty Davison (who wrote the VPC 2.0 Guest Review) sends this note about Virtual PC working best with onboard video instead of PCI graphics cards. He says this tip came from Connectix.

" Unless your accelerated video card is a 3Dfx, you're best off using on-board video, as the architecture of VPC is just not set up to use accelerated graphics. The overhead of transfering the data across PCI instead of just to main RAM causes added delay."

[7 PM update]

Elvis Lives: After moving the motherboard SCSI cable from the top vertical SCSI connector to the one on the motherboard the Apple CDROM and Seagate narrow drives work fine. Must have been a problem in the one connector. The battery was also dead in the 2nd motherboard (with power off it kept losing the date and time), so I had to swap it out of the first one with the bad PCI slots.

However all seems well now, but I've got some four-leaf clovers nearby just for luck. [7 PM update]

HAPPY EASTER! I'll try to update today's news later this evening as I have to visit family for Easter (if they still remember what I look like ;-), so news today will be a little light. Monday's news will be much better.

Just a quick note that I did get the CDROM working on the Genesis, and with a 5 MB disk cache (384MB total Ram) the Ultra-Wide Cheetah boot disk driven by a ATTO ExpressPCI SCSI card is getting 800+ in Macbench 4.0, not bad.

In order to raise money for a 9600 Mach 5 based test system for the site, I've sold the 8500 and still have the following items for sale as well:

• Twin Turbo M8 (8MB Vram) [like new - came with the PowerTower Pro]: $250

If you're interested in any of these items please contact me. I think the PowerTower Pro 1 MB cache, the 256K cache and Imagine 128 S2 8MB card are sold, but if not I'll post them again next week.

Site T-Shirt Artwork Wanted: As mentioned Tuesday, I'm asking for readers to submit ideas for a 1st anniversary T-Shirt design for the site. I can't pay those that submit designs anything but a "thanks", credit for the design and a free T-Shirt of course. If you are a creative type who has an idea for a design, please submit a sample. All input is welcome.

Need Help? Don't forget to check the FAQ, Performance Basics, Links, and Forums for solutions to your problems or answers to tech support questions. They have a lot of good info and are a great source of help.

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