(corrected 24 Nov '97
to include complete quote from Apple Tech Library;
created by Rob Art Morgan on 17 Nov '97)
© 1998, 1999 Rob Art Morgan,
editor of BARE FEATS
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Email Rob Art at barefoot@hawaii.rr.com
Which Power Macs do disk operations faster, those with SCSI or those with IDE drives?
My quote of Apple's Technical
Library's article entitled "Power Macintosh G3: EIDE Hard Drive
Specifications" dated 14 Nov 97, was incomplete.
The full statement it makes goes like this:
meet or exceed these specifications:
Average access time: 15ms
Maximum Throughput: 8MB/sec Maximum"
Contrast this with the table in the article entitled "SCSI Transfer Rates 6/96" which lists the internal Fast SCSI interface of the 7500, 7600, 8500, and 9500 as 10MB/sec. The same rate applies to the 7300, 8600, and 9600, as you can read in their Tech Specs.
This graph answers at least one question. The G3/233 is slightly faster than the 8600/300 in terms of CPU rating. Yet the Disk Rating of the 8600 is slightly faster than the G3/233. Based on that, one could conclude that
in Apple's implementation of each.
Relative speeds are not only dependent on interface but on drive design (not all drives are created equal). If you know what drives to buy and what interface cards to buy, you can build an IDE setup that beats the SCSI. But the reverse is true as well.
(All drives were running with 512K disk cache, had recently been formatted, had very little stored on the drive, and were running Mac OS8.)
© 1998, 1999 Rob Art Morgan,
editor of BARE FEATS
Gotta Question? Comment? Want to advertise?
Email Rob Art at barefoot@hawaii.rr.com