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Guest Review of Sonnet Crescendo G3 215-225
MHz Card Sonnet Crescendo G3 for NuBus site I'm sure that the hearts of many of you leapt in late 1997 when you heard about the potential G3 upgrades for our old, first-generation PowerMacs. Hopes were high during the January Macworld in which the Newer MaxPowr G3 for NuBus Macs was given a "Best of Show" award. Amid all the hoopla, Sonnet was quietly developing its Crescendo G3 cards for NuBus Macs, and released them the first week of May, becoming the first manufacturer to tap the 2.1 million machine-strong NuBus Mac market with G3 upgrades. Tired of waiting for Newer to release the MaxPowr, I became one of the first purchasers of the Crescendo G3, buying it for my Performa 6116CD (actually a Powermac 6100/60). It has surpassed my wildest expectations for such a card and has found a happy home in my machine over the one and a half months since I purchased it. This review will tell you why. System Tested Performa 6116CD (Powermac 6100/60) with replacement IBM Ultrastar XP 2.1 GB HD, 40 MB RAM, disc cache 1024 K, base bus speed 30 MHz, running MacOS 8.1. Ordering/Delivery I ordered my card directly from Sonnet on April 30, requesting overnight delivery. It arrived the next day without complications. Installation Instructions were included for 6100, 7100, and 8100 series machines. The instructions for the 6100 were clear and concise, taking up one side of a photocopied sheet. They are summarized thus: 1. Open machine and insert card, CPU sink side toward outside edge. 2. Start machine and insert included floppy, then place Crescendo and LibMotoSh (if you choose--but that's another debate) extensions into the Extensions folder. 3. Restart machine. 4. Voila--new machine! As someone familiar with the interior of my machine, the instructions were extremely simple and took less than five minutes to implement. One needs to change no software to optimize the card's function because the extension automatically measures the system bus speed, and then uses a multiplier to come up with the speed of the G3. In my machine's case the multiplier is 7.5 times the bus speed of 30 MHz, making the G3 speed 225 MHz. I didn't try a clock chipper with the G3 card because increasing the bus speed to 40 MHz reduces the multiplier to 5.5, making the G3 speed 220 MHz according to Sonnet's online documentation. Some have commented that the motherboard cache needs removed when installing this card. I had 256 K of cache on my motherboard and have run the Sonnet card flawlessly with the cache installed. Benchmarks MacBench 4.0 scores in various configurations are listed below. I started with the generic system, then the generic system with the Other World Computing 601-Rocket clock-chipper I'd used over the previous year (with and without Virtual Memory on), and then with the Crescendo G3 with and without Virtual Memory. I am not sure why such a huge performance hit occurs with Virtual Memory on--perhaps someone from Sonnet would like to comment. The last measurement I did as a lark, tweaking the cache ratio to 1.5:1 rather than the baseline 2:1 using Powerlogix's Cache Control v 1.0.1P. The machine crashed in mid-boot when the cache ratio was set to 1:1. All results except the PM 6100/60 and /80 were with the LibMotoSh extension installed.
BYTEmark benchmarks were performed using the DR/3 version, the only version available from Byte's site since its major revamping in May 1998. They are compared to a Dell with Pentium-90, for which the results are both 1.00. Neither machine has Virtual Memory, and the 225 MHz version has LibMotoSh installed. Please note that based on this, the first-generation PowerPC chip was faster than a P-90! Imagine the ads that might have been.... The overall indices follow:
G3 Temperature This hotly debated topic will be lightly treated here. I measured the G3 temperature using Powerlogix's Speedmeter 1.1.1 after the machine had been running for six hours. Please note that the motherboard cache is incorrectly reported as 64K by this utility, it is actually 256K.
Functional Assessment If the numbers above don't tell you the whole story, this will. All software, even non-PPC native software, runs noticeably faster with this G3 card, given its nearly sevenfold processor speed increase. Even the screen redraws, notoriously slow in the 6100 series, are noticeably faster. The computer even boots faster. Booting:
ClarisWorks 3.0 (partially non-native PPC): booting from 60K document was 11 seconds on original system with old HD, is 4 seconds with Crescendo and new HD Netscape Navigator 4.04 (native PPC): booting was 20 seconds from old system, 6 seconds with new. America Online 3.0 (native PPC): booting was 14 seconds with old system, 5 seconds with new. Performance Tweaks Because of the automatic software settings for the Crescendo, it is not possible with my knowledge to overclock the chip on the card. However, with the Powerlogix Cache Control Panel, one may alter the backside cache ratio to 1.5:1 to achieve 10-20% better performance. To make the initial booting process faster, one can place a space in front of the "Crescendo" name after accessing the extension. This makes the extension load first, and, may avoid some extension conflicts. Lastly, make sure you are using the latest version of the Crescendo extension. There have been three versions in the last month and a half: 1.2.1, which came with the card, was extremely stable, 1.2.3 was extremely crash-prone, and the current version, 1.2.4, is not only stable but runs slightly faster than 1.2.1. The latest version of the extension is always directly available from Sonnet's web site. Summary For $499, the speed boost given to the four-year-old NuBus design is phenomenal and economical for those who can't yet afford a new G3 machine. The card makes my 6100 run at nearly the speed of a new G3 233 MHz system, for 1/3 the cost. For someone like me who doesn't need PCI cards yet, doesn't need an AV card (yet), and has a lot invested in their current system, this is an ideal solution. Two other cards are available, a 240-250MHz/1 MB card, and a 257-266 MHz/1 MB card, if you need more speed. In addition, a rumored "revision 2" card which will accommodate the 6100 AV card may be released withing the next couple of months (IF the rumor is true!). Pros: Economical speed boost, total compatibility with MacOS software, easy installation, actually available for 6100 Cons: Incompatible with 6100 series DOS card and AV card at this time. But you can run Virtual PC 2.0 with good results! | |||||||||
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