Accelerate Your Macintosh! Current Reviews Report

= Keep in mind this was our first card review, dated April 18, 1997 =

Introduction
Speed. Most users can never get enough, and as XLR8 's motto says "Faster is Always Better". We couldn't agree more. However with the current number of processor card upgrades and wide range of prices and features available even experienced users can be uncertain of what is the best upgrade choice. This article will hopefully provide some useful information on accelerators in general, and the XLR8-180mhz processor upgrade in particular. This is our first in a series of reviews on PowerPC 604e accelerator card upgrades for the Power Macintosh and clones. In the future these pages will be updated to show results of other manufacturer's cards to assist you in purchasing decisions. The XLR8-180 card was selected as the first in this series due to its low price, as low as $341.27 (at Bottom Line - now RIP), and the fact it has a large number of bus settings (second only to the PowerLogix Pro), a faster but more expensive card. The main purpose of this site is to show you how to maximize performance at the lowest possible cost. Stability, price/performance, tuning options (bus speed selections), quality of manufacture, and support policies are all factors we consider in the final analysis of product value.

Project Overview
The purpose of this project is to examine relatively low-cost performance upgrades for the Apple Power Macintosh 8500/120 and similar machines. We set out to prove that you can extend the performance of these systems to the level of more expensive, newer machines such as the Power Computing models at a fraction of the cost. For more details on the hardware and software configurations used, view the System Specs & Software Specs pages. Due to its rave reviews (and inclusion with Power Computing machines) Speed Doubler 2.01 was installed on the machine prior to the tests being run. In addition, Motorola's LibMoto Math extension was also used (freeware). Some may argue that this skews the results, but since both the stock processor and the accelerator card are running the same software suite the comparison is a valid one. From our experience, all users should consider the LibMoto extension, as the results show significant floating point performance gains from it.

Benchmark
All tests were run using MacBench 4.0 (no longer available). All graphics tests were run at 1024x768, thousands of colors , not the 800x600, 256 colors used by most of the magazine reviews. We feel our setting is more in tune with actual users. Consider this when evaluating the video scores. Other system scores shown for comparison (PowerTower Pro 200) were from the standard results database provided with the benchmark. The PowerTower Pro 200 was used for comparison since it also uses Speed Doubler and was a very close match in processor performance with the best scores achieved with the XLR8 card.

Table of Contents - XLR8 Review:

System Specs Test system hardware specifics

Software Installed Details on installed system software

Observations Tips & observations from the test

XLR8 MacBench Scores What you're really after - the Scores!

XLR8 Support Rating Warranty & Support info

Final Analysis Results Overall Summary and Comments

= Top of Page =

= Back to WWW.XLR8YOURMAC.COM =

Copyright © 1997, all rights reserved.
No part of this sites content is to be reproduced in any form without written permission. All brand or product names mentioned here are properties of their respective companies.
Users of this web site must read and are bound by the terms and conditions of use.


= Keep in mind this was our first card review, dated April 18, 1997 =
Introduction Speed. Most users can never get enough, and as XLR8 's motto says "Faster is Always Better". We couldn't agree more. However with the current number of processor card upgrades and wide range of prices and features available even experienced users can be uncertain of what is the best upgrade choice. This article will hopefully provide some useful information on accelerators in general, and the XLR8-180mhz processor upgrade in particular. This is our first in a series of reviews on PowerPC 604e accelerator card upgrades for the Power Macintosh and clones. In the future these pages will be updated to show results of other manufacturer's cards to assist you in purchasing decisions. The XLR8-180 card was selected as the first in this series due to its low price, as low as $341.27 (at Bottom Line - now RIP), and the fact it has a large number of bus settings (second only to the PowerLogix Pro), a faster but more expensive card. The main purpose of this site is to show you how to maximize performance at the lowest possible cost. Stability, price/performance, tuning options (bus speed selections), quality of manufacture, and support policies are all factors we consider in the final analysis of product value. Project Overview The purpose of this project is to examine relatively low-cost performance upgrades for the Apple Power Macintosh 8500/120 and similar machines. We set out to prove that you can extend the performance of these systems to the level of more expensive, newer machines such as the Power Computing models at a fraction of the cost. For more details on the hardware and software configurations used, view the System Specs & Software Specs pages. Due to its rave reviews (and inclusion with Power Computing machines) Speed Doubler 2.01 was installed on the machine prior to the tests being run. In addition, Motorola's LibMoto Math extension was also used (freeware). Some may argue that this skews the results, but since both the stock processor and the accelerator card are running the same software suite the comparison is a valid one. From our experience, all users should consider the LibMoto extension, as the results show significant floating point performance gains from it. Benchmark All tests were run using MacBench 4.0 (no longer available). All graphics tests were run at 1024x768, thousands of colors , not the 800x600, 256 colors used by most of the magazine reviews. We feel our setting is more in tune with actual users. Consider this when evaluating the video scores. Other system scores shown for comparison (PowerTower Pro 200) were from the standard results database provided with the benchmark. The PowerTower Pro 200 was used for comparison since it also uses Speed Doubler and was a very close match in processor performance with the best scores achieved with the XLR8 card.
Table of Contents - XLR8 Review:
System Specs	Test system hardware specifics
Software Installed	Details on installed system software
Observations	Tips & observations from the test
XLR8 MacBench Scores	What you're really after - the Scores!
XLR8 Support Rating	Warranty & Support info
Final Analysis	Results Overall Summary and Comments
= Top of Page = = Back to WWW.XLR8YOURMAC.COM =

Copyright © 1997, all rights reserved. No part of this sites content is to be reproduced in any form without written permission. All brand or product names mentioned here are properties of their respective companies. Users of this web site must read and are bound by the terms and conditions of use.