Not long ago G3 CPU cards were priced too high for most Mac owners to afford, but thankfully times have changed. Newer Technology was the first to market recently with a "affordable" 220 Mhz G3 card priced at $679. PowerLogix just responded with a PowerForce G3 card with the same CPU, but priced at an amazing $499 (estimated street price). After testing the card I've nicknamed it the "Little Screamer". (Did I just say that?)

You can use your real name when you send me your maximum speeds, because as usual, PowerLogix encourages you to run the card as fast as (reliably) possible. That's why I've always admired PowerLogix attitude - they're in touch with Mac users who feel the need for speed!) They will honor the warranty regardless of the speeds you run with it. (Update 8/98: Readers have reported XLR8 and MacTell no longer honor warranties on overclocked cards)

Before the competition sends flames or posts more white papers, I'm not saying this is for everyone, or that you should crank it to the max with reckless abandon. What I am saying that it's a well known fact that most CPU card owners are overclocking their cards, have been for some time and will do their next card as well. Even the Newer Tech cards have undocumented overclocking settings, and based on feedback a lot of owners are running them at these higher speeds. So let's wake up and smell the coffee. Damn the white papers Scotty! - Full speed ahead!

Based on what I saw with this card, and the feedback from Newer Tech 220 Mhz owners, it appears that these cards can run much faster than their rated CPU speed. Cache speed range is limited, as I'll explain that later in the review. With the speeds I and other 220 Mhz card owners have seen, the low cost of these new models makes them outstanding values. Those of you who were looking at fast 604E CPU cards and a cache upgrade may actually get more performance at less cost with one of these 220 Mhz G3 cards. Considering that many 233 Mhz 604E adjustable cards are still about $400, and a 1 MB cache upgrade is another $130-$150, the cost of these new G3/220 models is very attractive. They provide a surprising bang-for-the-buck.

For those not used to the standard conventions of denoting CPU speed/cache speed/cache size, the PowerForce G3 220/110/512K contains a PowerPC 750 (aka G3) CPU rated at 220 Mhz, and 512K of cache that runs at 1/2 the CPU speed (110 Mhz). CPU and Cache speeds are adjustable via hardware switches and a software control respectively. Since the PowerForce 220/100 has a large number of speed settings, often the card will run far above the default 220/110.

I've said this a million times, but I'll repeat it here. Each CPU, cache and system are different to some extent which can affect maximum operating speeds. There is no guarantee that the next card off the production line will be able to run reliably at the same speeds I did, or that this same card will run as fast in another system. Different lots (batches) of CPU chips will have different amounts of "headroom" (tolerance for running above the rated speed). Your speeds will almost surely be different than mine.

Since I was sent one of the first production cards without a manual (it's in printing I'm told), I cannot provide a documentation rating (attempts to download the PowerForce G3 PDF manual at PowerLogix's site were not successful either). otherwise I'll rate the card using my standard categories as shown below:

1. BenchMark Performance: MacBench CPU scores are run at various speeds found to be reliable with this particular card, cache and system combination. BYTEMARK performance is also shown.
2. Applications Performance: How the card did in CPU intensive tests like Infini-D and Bryce 2. The Bryce 2 tests are about 5 minutes in duration typically, but the Infini-D test takes approximately one hour complete and should show meaningful deltas in performance (rather than a 3 second filter operation in photoshop). Standard sample files are used, and the applications are using their default RAM allocations. It's not perfect, but considering my current review backlog and time constraints it's the best I can do at the current time :-).
3. Software Controls: Ease of use and features of the supplied software controls.
4. Documentation: How clear and complete the installation and setup instructions are in the supplied manual.
5. Specifications: Features and details on the hardware design.
6. Price/Performance: Overall value rating. Covered in the summary.

For this review the ATI XClaim 3D video card was installed in the lowest slot. To remain consistent with my other CPU card reviews, screen resolution was set to 1024x768, thousands colors.

The L2 Cache dimm of the PowerTower Pro was installed at all times except for one comparison test to see what difference it provided.

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