Newer Tech's v1.3 Control Panel - is the 60ns memory setting really faster? Does Disabling The Motherboard Cache Help Performance? By Mike Published: November 18, 1997
With the release of the latest version 1.3 of the MaxPowr Pro/Pro+ control panel Newer Technologies provided existing owners with a double bonus - both improved memory access timing and options to run the backside cache at faster speeds. For Pro+ card owners this means the chance to run the backside cache at the full cpu speed (266mhz) and Pro owners now have a 166mhz option (1.5 ratio). From my limited tests (at that speed) with two Pro cards and one Pro+ card (thanks to Newer Tech.) both cards seem to have the ability to run these settings reliably. Your results may vary, as each card and Mac is unique to some extent. Newer's control panel also offers the ability to disable the motherboard cache in software. The purpose of this page is primarily to determine if the new faster memory timing settings and motherboard cache enable/disable settings in the v1.3 control panel really do affect real-world application performance. From the tests I have run, I would say that answer is yes, compared to the prior version 1.1 software. (Note: version 1.2 was pulled immediately after release due to problems with OS 7.6.) Version 1.3 works well with both OS7.6 and OS8.0 but Newer Tech. recommends version 1.1 for those running OS 7.5.x. The following table represents a series of four Photoshop tasks that were run on a 250mhz Pro card, set to 125mhz (stock) cache speeds for each version of the control. This was done to ensure that only the software performance differences were being measured, not the additional cache speed options allowed in version 1.3. Photoshop was restarted between each task to ensure memory and disk caching effect was minimized. The Mac was rebooted between each control panel version and settings change as well.
Test Parameters:
A Apple 8500 with 128megs of 60ns RAM installed, running OS 7.61 was used, running the current production version of the MaxPowr Pro card. Speed Doubler 2.03 and LibMoto were active for all tests. A 1 meg PowerLogix Rapidcache was installed on the motherboard. Software Settings Used for Testing: - Photoshop set to 100meg memory allocation. - Image sizes - 2meg and 8meg (no swap file activity seen) - Cache speed was set to 125mhz for all tests. - Versions 1.1 and 1.3 of the control panel was used with their matching extension version. - All combinations of options were tested L3 cache disabled (software switch) 1 meg L3 enabled 60ns with and w/o L3 enabled (v1.3 feature only) 70ns with and w/o L3 enabled (v1.3 feature only) The Photoshop 4.01 Tests were: Perform Unsharp Mask on a 8MB image file Rotate 45 deg CW a 8MB file G.Blur 8meg file Scale 4X a 2 MB file
Chart Of Results:
Task V1.1 L3 ON V1.1 L3 OFF V1.3 L3 OFF 60ns V1.3 L3 OFF 70ns V1.3 L3 ON 60ns V1.3 L3 ON 70ns UnSharp Mask 2.97 2.53 2.28 2.62 2.59 2.66 Rotate 6.50 6.06 5.63 5.69 6.10 6.43 Scale 4X 6.43 6.10 5.63 5.85 6.00 6.40 G.Blur 2.38 2.34 1.88 1.94 2.03 2.40 Totals: 18.28 17.03 15.42 16.10 16.72 17.99 Note: Scores in Red indicate best performance. Motherboard L3 cache size was 1 MB.
Results Summary:
The final analysis is that the version 1.3 60ns memory timing obviously works. The additions (since initial product release) of increased cache speeds, aggressive memory timing settings and software disabling of motherboard caches is a welcome bonus for MaxPowr Pro/Pro+ owners. Overall performance increase averaged 10%, with the G.Blur test showing a 24% boost from version 1.1. Both are impressive from a software tweak along. I'll gladly take a 10% boost that's this painless. Also, in my mind at least, I've settled the issue of whether L3 (motherboard) cache is better left enabled or disabled. From these results even in this case - where the L3 cache was twice the size of the Backside cache - better performance was obtained with the L3 cache disabled. Newer Technologies has done a very good job of supporting the product with these software updates that substantially improve overall performance and value of the product. A future update of this page will show the speed increase of the faster cache timings, when we have a chance to test another MaxPowr Pro/Pro+ card.
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