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Top stories of the day: |
| Review of MetaBox G4/450 2MB Cache CPU Upgrade: |
| I've posted my review of the MetaBox Joecard G4+ 2MB cache G4/450 CPU upgrade. I compare the JoeCard to a low cost G3/450 upgrade as well as my single CPU G4/500 AGP system. The review includes benchmarks and applications test results including iMovie, Photoshop, SoundJam MP, CineBench 2000 and more. Quake3 and Unreal Tournament game performance tests are also included with ATI Rage128 and Voodoo5 graphics cards.
Sorry the news has been light today but I had to finish this 7 page article. Have a great weekend!
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| Newer Tech Paper on OS X Compatibility with Older Macs: |
| Roger Kasten, CTO of Newer Technology has posted an article on OS X compatibility with older Macs titled Mac OS X... What You Should Really Know & Why There Is No Need To Worry Today . Roger also noted they will be releasing beta versions of OS X drivers for their products within the next few weeks.
As I commented last year, it will be a long time before OS X has amount of software and hardware support of the current MacOS versions. With 99.999% of the installed Mac base running pre-OS X versions, software vendors will obviously continue to support pre-OS X operating system users for years to come. Although OS X is the future and will be highly desired for new G4 dual processor system owners in my opinion (for its SMP core), It will be a long time before OS X has near the software library that the current MacOS has. And it's unknown how performance under OS X will compare to OS 9 or earlier versions, or what issues will be discovered in the early versions. And remember it will also be some time before OS X has the 3rd party hardware and device support of the current MacOS. For most owners you'll be losing a lot of functionality with the early versions of OS X until the industry catches up with hardware and software support even if your system is 'officially supported'. |
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| CineBench 2000 Released: |
| I had used the 1998 version of Maxon's Cinema4D Cinebench for the MetaBox G4/450 2MB CPU Upgrade review tests recently (review should be posted tonight). However I saw some strange results and wrote Maxon last week about it. I was told then they were working on an updated version and yesterday they released Cinebench 2000 v1.0 for both Macs and PCs. FYI: Cinebench 2000 has a default RAM allocation of just over 136MB, so owners of Macs with less than 192MB of RAM may need to either enable Virtual Memory (they don't recommend this) or lower the memory allocation using the Finder's get-info command.
Enter Your Cinebench Results: I've added Cinebench 2000 as one of the benchmarks on the entry page of my Mac Game/Video card performance database since it compares software mode to OpenGL accelerated mode. If you download Cinebench 2000 please enter your scores. (Note: Please run Cinebench at 1024x768, millions colors so that all entries use the same settings. If you change Cinebench's ram allocation please note it.)
As part of the MetaBox G4 450 review, I ran tests with the Voodoo5 in my B&W G3 (66mhz slot) versus the original Rage128 and was disappointed to see the Voodoo5 was slower at hardware opengl mode than the Rage128 (scoring less that Cinema's software accelerated mode). I'll be posting the results as an update to the Voodoo5 review 3D apps or Benchmarks page later today.
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| Impressive results with G4 MP System and 39160 Cheetah RAID: |
Although past results seemed to indicate the Adaptec 39160 Ultra160 SCSI card had less than expected write performance (see SCSI topics page for past article), a reader with a G4/500 MP system and 39160 card sent some impressive results with a 3 drive 10,000 RPM Cheetah RAID array - over 100MB/sec peak and over 70MB/sec sustained write speeds. Perhaps the new G4 motherboards have better PCI bus performance than previous Sawtooths or the dual processors are a factor (I assumed OS X would be needed for full MP support at the file IO level, but maybe not).
I have his ATTO benchmark results for posting on a page as soon as I can.
He's also going to be testing some 18GB 15,000 RPM Cheetahs in the same system next week. When my G4/500 MP system arrives I'll try some tests with my 39160, but I don't have drives as fast as the 10K Cheetah to use.
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| Griffin Announces CubePort Serial Port Adapter for G4 Cubes: |
Griffin Technology today announced their new CubePort serial port adapter for the Apple Cube that they say supports all Mac compatible serial and Midi devices as well as Localtalk file sharing and printing. "You will
now be able use any Mac compatible serial device with your G4 Cube", says
Paul Griffin, CEO of Griffin Technology Inc. The CubePort is expected to ship in early October for $49 suggested list price.
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| Reminder on G4 CPU Card Upgrades Issues in 6 PCI Slot Macs: |
| Early this year it was noted here that G4 CPU Upgrade cards often had problems (including lockups) with 6 PCI Slot Macs (9500/9600/PowerTower Pro/Genesis, etc.) when there was a PCI controller card (ie SCSI, audio card, etc.) used in the lower 3 PCI slots (2nd PCI bus). This was one issue noted in my PL G4/350 upgrade review and also mentioned in many of the spring 2000 Rate Your CPU Upgrade database owner reports.
To date, only Newer Technology seems to have addressed this issue - their revised G4/400 card is the only brand of G4 upgrade card that has run reliably in my loaded Genesis with dual SCSI cards (one in each PCI bus). Every other brand of card would hang during mounting volumes in the Finder (at best, some didn't get that far).
I posted this reminder since yesterday a reader with an XLR8 MAChCarrier G4/450 reported he had networking problems with a Farallon 10/100 Network card after installing the CPU upgrade.
"
Hi Mike,
I installed 2 Xlr8 g4/450 cards the other day and since then the
network connection is unstable and will rarely allow me to copy from
network on both machines. The network card is FarallonTX 10/100 and
our network is NT based. One has OS8.6 and one 9.0.
I called Farallon and no help because I have the newest software.
No word from XLR8 yet.
Thanks,
-Zeno"
I mentioned the issue of PCI card slots and suggested moving the card if it was in a lower slot. (He didn't note a Mac model but I guessed this may have been the problem.) He replied later that day moving the network card to an upper slot solved the problem. The FAQ networking section now has a note on this issue as well for future reference.
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| Rate Your CPU Upgrade Database Updates: |
| The Rate Your CPU Upgrade database has been updated with 5 new reports today (total to date: 4,523)
- Newer Tech G3/400 in PowerTower 166 (rated 9)
- Powerlogix G3/366 7600/120 (rated 10)
- Sonnet PowerBook 1400 G3/333 upgrade (rated 10)
(includes notes on battery life)
- Sonnet G3/240 in 6100/60 (rated 9)
- XLR8 G4/400 in 9600/350 (no rating given, problems noted)
You can find these full reports by searching the database selecting the indicated Mac model and upgrade card brand/type. If you've upgraded the CPU on your Mac, please post an entry in the database. Search the database of over 4,500 entries from most every upgradable Mac model *before* you buy.
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| Drive Compatibility Database Updates: |
| The Drive Compatibility database had 10 new entries today (current total 1,411).
CDRW Drives:
- HP SCSI CD-Writer Plus 9200e
- Plextor IDE PX-W8432Ti in B&W G3
- Plextor IDE 12/10/32A in ADS Pyro case
DVD ROM Drives:
- Matshita IDE SR-8583 (from B&W G3) in PowerTools clone
(notes some odd system behavior)
Removable Drives:
- Castlewood IDE Orb 2.2GB in G4/AGP
Hard Drives:
- IBM Travelstar DARA-212000 12GB in iBook
- Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 30GB in iMac
- Quantum IDE lct10 20GB in B&W G3 rev 1
- Western Digital IDE WD205BA 20GB in G4/AGP
(He bought the Sam's club bargain noted in Monday's news.)
- Western Digital IDE WD205BA 20GB in B&W G3 rev 1
(Reported no problems as replacement drive. FYI: I saw data corruption using Apple's drivers with a WD expert drive in my Rev 1 B&W as noted in my slave drive article in 1999.)
If you've added a IDE, SCSI, Firewire or USB hard drive, CDRW, tape drive, etc. make sure you add a report to the database.
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