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- Apple Power Macintosh 8500/120 - Mfg date: 3/96
- Memory: 80 megs, 60ns - two stock 8meg , four 16meg dimms,
interleaved access.
- Hard Disk: Stock 2 gig Seagate, 2 partitions. Test partition 90% free.
- Video: built-in Apple video with 4 megs Vram
- Mode:1024x786, thousands of colors ( 16 bit )
- Cdrom: Apple CD600i 4x speed.
- Apple L2 cache: 256k ( 11ns Sram, 8ns tag chip)
- 512k Cache tested: XLR8 dimm ( IDT 9ns cache - 12ns tag ram)
- 1 meg Cache tested: MacCPU dimm ( SEC 9ns cache - 12ns tag ram
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About the L2 Cache upgrades:
The stock L2 Apple cache would not allow the
XLR8 card to be set above 45mhz bus speed. It is important to note that the XLR8 card as
shipped ran reliably in the stock system. The card ships with a setting of 45mhz bus speed and
a CPU clock ratio of 4 (45 x 4 = 180mhz CPU speed). In an effort to squeeze more speed out
of the many higher settings provided by the XLR8 card, we procured a XLR8 512 L2 cache
- and it was used for the duration of the testing. The stock 120mhz was retested with the
512k cache to provide both a cache upgrade comparison and to reflect a "apples to apples"
base system comparison as we tried to push the XLR8 and PM8500 to the limits. Sadly this
particular XLR8/PM8500 combo did not seem to function reliably with any combination that used
a bus speed greater than 47.6 mhz. This varies with each individual Machine, and your
results may differ from this particular system.
Cache Update! (4/23/97):
Using a 2nd 8500 motherboard, this one with a 1meg L2 cache
Dimm from MacCPU resulted in some surprises. The XLR8 card would not boot at even a 45mhz bus speed
with the 1 meg cache installed, although the Newer Tech. card ran fine at 52.5mhz bus speed. Thinking it
was the 1 meg cache at fault, we restored the 512k XLR8 cache from the original system. The XLR8 card would run fine at a 45 mhz bus
speed ( stock setting ), but not at 47.6 mhz
in the new 8500 motherboard, even with the identical XLR8 512k cache and memory from the original system.
It had run very reliably in the previous motherboard with the exact same cache and memory at 47.6 mhz. Strange... However it did run fine
at the stock 45mhz bus setting. Our guess is that the XLR8 runs with no wait states ( or fewer than the Newer card) as it seems extremely
sensitive about motherboards/cache. The Newer card would consistently run at 7 mhz+ faster bus speeds, but the XLR8 scores were
still very good in comparison. This leads us to believe that the ( lack of ) wait states are the reason for both the good scores
and cache/motherboard sensitivity shown in the XLR8 tests.
( Update:
For the whole story on cache, see the new Cache Crop page)
The above update is an example of what this site wants to provide for our readers -
information you're not likely to see in magazine reviews as they don't test as fully, as long, or with as many configurations as we do.
Sometimes the results are well worth the extra effort and expense ( we're going broke here folks, and getting NO SLEEP!)
I rip my Mac apart every day so you don't have to! |
