Reviews & Daily News with a Difference!
= View Recent Site Features List = - Freq. Asked Questions (FAQ) - - Systems Features - - CPU Card Articles - - SCSI/Disk Articles - - Video Card Articles - - Audio Articles - - Game Related Articles - - Tips & Misc Articles - - L2 Cache Articles -	Need Help? Ask the Men in Mac! First 400MHz ZIF Upgrade Review for G3 Macs! World's first 400MHz G3 Upgrade Review Visit the G3-ZONE for G3 Specific info! Bring in the Noise! (Mac Audio) Complete Site Contents Send News items, Tips and Guest Reviews Advertise here! - Help support Accelerate Your Mac!
11/14/98 - Saturday's News:	Click for Current News Page
The Unreal news page has a massive update for Nov 14th. Check out the exclusive screenshots of the Cops Unreal solo map in progress and tons of other Unreal news of interest. = [11:30 PM Update] = PowerBase/G3/Bravado Video Capture Feedback: Mike Tyo reports that his G3 upgraded PowerBase with a IDE hard disk and ATI VR card upgrade made a dramatic difference in video capture performance with his Bravado 1000: " Mike, I just wanted to follow up on some issues around my Bravado 1000 and PowerLogix-accelerated PowerBase 180. I emailed you several months ago, stating that MacOS 8.1 didn't work with video capture on the Bravado. It turns out that the culprit is QT3, which I've since learned is incompatiblw with the Bravado card - it needs QT2.5 to work. Running OS8.5 with QT2.5 works great for video capture. Now the really good news for PowerBase owners. Because of something in the Alchemy board's hardware, the maximum rate of video data capture seemed limited to about 2.5 Meg/sec. Truevision's engineers told me last year that nobody had had success with capture at 3.5 Meg/sec using a PowerBase. When I added an Xclaim VR video card to my system, suddenly video capture rates upped to the max. Probably the bottleneck was in the PowerBase's onboard ATI video riser card, not in the SCSI bus. Sensing the need for serious data storage, I added a Maxtor 10 GB EIDE drive, replacing the Seagate 1.2 Gig drive that came with the unit. MacBench 4 disk scores increased from about 300 using internal SCSI to 525 on the Maxtor, and FWB's benchmark shows data transfer rates of 8-9 Meg/sec. I now can do video capture at 640x480 at 3.5 Meg/sec without dropping frames, and playback is smooth. Moreover, I installed an S-video cable from the Bravado output to the VR's input. This allows me to view video playback on my monitor, rather than having to use an external TV monitor. At last, the Bravado is providing the full-sized high-quality video it was supposed to. One final note - The G3 card shouldn't be set above 300 mHz for the Bravado to capture video, but it does work fine at settings of 300 mHz and lower. I'm running at 292 mHz, and everything is stable. --Mike Tyo " More on OS 8.5 Built-in Graphics Accel. Extension: Performance: More reader performance tests with/without it (see yesterday's news for more results) " 7500 with RailGun 292/41, no cache DIMM, no video card, 8.5GM, loads of RAM. [Assuming this is frames per second-Mike] Test w/Extension w/o Extension Sample RAVE Demo (software rendering) 14.54 14.78 My own product 40 42 It certainly runs faster without builtin accel, and if that fixes those damn lines on the right edges of things I'll be very happy. =td= " Mychailo Toloczko sent a long gif image ( 86K) showing all the MacBench 5.0 graphics primitives scores with and without the extension. Dale Emery sent a summary of MB 5.0 tests on his G3 CPU card upgraded Mac with onboard video: " I downloaded MacBench 5.0, and found that for some tests there was no major difference (with the extension slightly slower) and with others there was a significant increase by disabling the extension." MB 5.0 OS 8.5 Built-In Graphics Accelerator Tests Test Enabled Disabled DrawChar 83.55 91.98 DrawString 934.94 972.29 DrawText 905.43 993.48 FillRoundRect 44186.09 44196.00 FillRect 32654.16 44896.82 FillPoly 21809.22 21968.79 CB - ScrollRect 17299.98 26396.35 PaintArc 26297.86 26318.06 LineTo - Diagonal 3553.53 3580.31 Another Retrospect PowerForce G3 Design CPU card Tip: Gary Schlei wrote that a tip from on using integer ratios (and bus speeds) from XLR8 solved his Retrospect backup problems in OS 8.5. I've added Gary's story to the Retrospect Tips page. If anyone can verify that integer ratios (x:1 vs x.5:1) and bus speeds (40.00, 41.00, etc.) solve the problem with PowerForce cards and Retrospect backup in OS 8.1 please contact me. More XLR8 G3/400 Feedback: As I noted in my review - the XLR8 G3/400MHz card is not just another clone. Here's the latest owners feedback I've gotten on the card: " Hello, Mike. A nice job with your article! Just to follow it up, I have been using an XLR8 400 mhz card in my 8500/150 for over 3 weeks. I have tested the card with 512 meg of ram and system 8.5 as well as 8.1. Of all the XLR8 cards I have tried out, this one by far is the most stable and best performing of the lot. It has had no trouble accelerating the Memory bus in my machine to 51 mhz (none of the other cards came close to that) and has run reliably at that speed for nearly 3 weeks. Above 51 mhz graphic system glitches begin appearing (certain colors fail to redraw correctly, etc.). The cache has remained trouble free at 2:1 ratio. All apps I have, which include Lightwave 5.6, After Effects, Photoshop 5 and others have worked very well. Sincerely, Kurt Wiley. " More on IXMicro Drivers/OS 8.5: Reader reply to the post in yesterday's news: " Hi Mike, I am running my 8600/300 with an IX Micro Ultimate REZ 8MG Card with the NEW driver v1.05.1 and it is flawless on System 8.5. I do have the "Built-In Graphics Accelerator" disabled. But i am also not running a G3 card. That might have something to do with the problems. I have a friend who is running a G3 card in an 8500 and had all kinds of startup problems until he did a NEW Clean install. All is fine now. Regards, Dennis R. Najuch " Vision 3D Graphics Card Feedback: Joe Schaedler sends some compatibility info on the Mactell Vision 3D Lite cards: " Mike: I've recently bought the Lite model and was impressed by it's performance (NUM V4.0 System Info rates it's video performance better than the iMac) [It should be much faster than the RageII iMac-Mike] but I've been experiencing a few glitches that I thought I'd pass along. Applications that make extensive use of Quickdraw to generate output, experience "garbage" in the final output. Specifically I speaking of GDT Power Print (V3) and Global Village GlobalFax (V2.5.6). This appears usually as additional characters and/or spacing errors. This can be corrected by disabling the MacTell Control Panel and restarting. I have submitted this defect to MacTell and I'm waiting for them to respond. Hopefully they can fix this in a later release of the Control Panel. Joe Schaedler " As noted on the Update to my Vision 3D Pro review - there is a conflict reported between using ATM and the card's font cache, leading to very bad looking fonts on screen and in printouts according the reader report and image samples. This is a big negative for graphics professionals that use ATM. Disabling ATM or the Font cache fixes that problem I hear, but without the font cache readers say preformance is dramatically reduced (in text speed at least). I hear the font cache/ATM issue has been around for many years (even present in the earlier #9 Imagine chip designs), leading me to wonder if it will ever be fixed since it has remained after many revisions to the control software. Formac's drivers (OEM of the MacTell card based on my info) also has the same ATM/Font cache issue readers say. Today's Unreal Tips page has a possible fix for the LAN issues in Unreal, notes on Unreal servers and another installment of Frank's daily Monster tips. Sonnet has a reply to the MacWeek G3 CPU Upgrade stability article at: http://www.sonnettech.com/news/g3_comp_stmnt.html. (Note that their "Accelerate Your Mac" image/banner has nothing to do with this site, although it's our trademark name). See yesterday's news for links to articles by XLR8 and MacGurus on the issue and Monday's news had my comments and article links on the subject. Note: Before sending tech support related questions please check the Freq. Asked Questions, Site Contents, CPU Card reviews/articles, SCSI reviews articles, Graphics card reviews, Tips/Misc, Message Boards and Help pages - in many cases the answers to your questions are there and they have far more detail than I can list in an email. For Apple G3 system info - see the G3-ZONE. News and guest reviews that don't require a reply are always welcome. Looking for past articles? Check the menu frame topics links (CPU Cards, SCSI, Graphics Cards, Systems) under the logo above or in the menu frame below or check the Recent Features page. Make a Difference: Be the Difference Randy Mita, Brad Lau and I came up with a new slogan and theme for Mac advocacy - "Make a Difference: Be the Difference". We're asking that all Mac owners take advantage of every opportunity to let others know the Mac advantage. It's a grass-roots approach that will surely help.