Benchmark tests were run in MacBench 4.0 and the Motorola compiled version of BYTEMARK. I use the standard practice of listing speeds in the format of CPU Speed/Cache speed (in mhz), so 300/300 would mean a CPU speed of 300 Mhz with a backside cache speed of 300 Mhz. For reference, the maximum bus speed I ran was 44.53 Mhz which occurred at the 266mhz speed setting. As with all current PowerForce designs, the maximum bus speed possible is 45 Mhz (only the first PowerLogix production runs allowed faster bus speeds).

Even with the motherboard cache dimm removed, I could not boot with the card set to 42.66mhz bus speed/299mhz CPU speed but the 40mhz bus speed/300mhz setting worked fine. Since the 44.68mhz bus speed/266mhz CPU speed was reliable, I can only guess there was some extension or cache issue with running the 42.66mhz bus speed at the higher CPU speed, since the CPU ran at 300mhz fine with the lower bus speed. That just goes to show you should take my advice and start low in bus speeds and work up.

Although the MacTell manual contains a table showing a myriad of switch settings, they list 6 preferred settings ("100% supported") ranging from 266mhz to 300mhz at various bus speeds. The fixed 1:1 cache speed setting of the PowerJolt extension does limit the amount of CPU speeds possible since you can't set the cache speed independent of the CPU speed, however 300/300 is still not bad for a 266mhz card. As usual, I caution owners to ensure that the setting they use is reliable.

MacBench and BYTEMARK tests were run at several combinations found to be reliable extensive use. As noted on the first page of this review, I saw errors in ByteMark at speeds above 266mhz, but normal applications were reliable.

Remember that each card and system has some tolerance variation, so the speeds I obtained may not be possible in every card or system. The specific CPU chip on each card and your motherboard components and RAM can affect maximum reliable speeds. For this reason I've listed MacBench scores for both the stock 266/266 and 300/300 speeds that were reliable with this particular card/system combination.

The MacBench graph below shows how the card scored at two different speeds (stock and max) and shows its performance relative to some of the other G3 cards I've tested. It also lists scores for the Apple G3 266 and 300 systems to allow you to see how the CPU performance of this card compares to those new systems.

In the graph below the stock 266/266 score was assigned a 100% rating, and the other cards/settings are normalized to that figure for comparison. I also noted the stock PowerTower Pro 180 scores in the text for reference.

As the scores above show - the best performance was obtained at a CPU speed of 300mhz (obviously). Again, since the PowerJolt extension fixes the cache ratio at 1:1, the cache speed was 300mhz also.

As noted previously, the only ByteMark test that completed normally was at the stock 266/266 mhz setting. For comparison, scores from the XLR8 266mhz card and PowerForce 220 card reviews are shown for reference:

Since Bytemark results are primarily dependant on the CPU speed, the fact I could not obtain a score for the 300/300 speed looks bad here, as the PowerForce 220 at 291mhz scores higher. Just keep in mind that at 300/300 the card would perform better than a 291/116 card in actual applications. Just how much better is shown on the next page - applications tests.  

Benchmark performance was good, marred only by the problems in ByteMark at the higher speeds, so I rated Benchmark performance a 9.

Bytemark scores at 300/300 should be identical to the XLR8 card since they are basically identical cards.

The next page has comments and some results from real world applications. Or you may use the links below to jump to a specific page.