The PowerForce card software consists of a Cache Control panel and speed checking utility on a floppy disk. You simply copy the speed checking utility anywhere on the hard disk and copy the control panel to your system folder, then restart the machine. After rebooting open the control panel and set the desired CPU to cache speed ratio and click the "Enable Now" button.

Initial startup tips:
Should you have problems booting up, try powering up again with the shift key held down in case the cache ratio was set too high. You can then open the control panel, select a higher ratio (lower cache speed) and try again. I recommend a 2:1 cache ratio when using CPU speeds up to 260 Mhz, and a 2.5:1 setting for any CPU speeds you try above 260 Mhz.

Remember when exploring the CPU limit, keep the cache speed low (2.5:1 ratio) so that you isolate the CPU speed, not cache speed, as the source of any errors. I suggest running any settings for at least 8 hours continuously (Newer Tech's RAMometer is a great burn-in tool for this) before thinking any high speed settings are reliable. Final speeds should always be run for at least 24 hours before considering it reliable for normal use.

Cache Control:

The G3 Cache Control panel is basically the same and operates identically to the one used on previous PowerForce cards, but I was told to use the particular version that ships on the floppy disk. You can adjust backside cache speeds as a ratio of the CPU speed - from 1:1 [Warning - not for these lower cost cards!] to 3:1 (1/3 of CPU speed) in 0.5x increments. The current status of the cache (enabled or disabled) is also shown. There is an option to disable the backside cache which may be of use in troubleshooting or benchmarking. I found no need to do so during the tests.

Tips on using the Cache Control:
Since this card is sold as a 220/110 card, the stock ratio would be 2:1, however as reported in the installation notes, I had to run the card at a 2.5:1 cache setting as the CPU speeds were set to above 260 Mhz due to the lower cost (slower) cache chips. Your card may show different results, but always start low and work up, keeping the cache speed low on these less expensive cards. Use the speed checking utility to verify your CPU and cache speeds as you go. Just a bit of advice from someone who's spent more time with adjustable CPU cards of every brand than anyone on the planet I expect. (But as Maxwell Smart used to say - "and... Loving It".) Showed my age on that one!

The floppy also contains a speed checking utility called SpeedMeter that reports the total size of the backside cache, and the size of any motherboard (L3) cache present and the speed of the CPU, cache and system bus. I noted one bug in the beta version I had, which reported a 4 MB motherboard cache when the CPU speed approached 300 Mhz.

To verify that the speeds reported by the PowerLogix utility were accurate, I used the latest version of Newer Technologies Clockometer - they both reported identical speeds.

Software controls were easy to install and use. My only wishes would be a option to disable the motherboard cache and a fix for the bug in the speed checking utility (cache size mis reported at high CPU speeds). Deducting one point each for these, I rated Software Controls a 8.

The next page describes the documentation and installation instructions supplied with the card. Or you may use the links below to jump to a specific page.